9 ideas we took home from Durbuy

1. Build an ecosystem, not just a brand

Tomorrowland grew from a Belgian festival into a global brand. But that growth also meant making a deliberate choice to bring more expertise and creativity inside the organisation.

“After a few years, we could no longer rely on external suppliers. We needed our own in-house creative team.”

His bigger lesson? Create an ecosystem with deep roots around your project.

The stronger that ecosystem becomes, the harder it is to replicate what you’ve built.

2. Don’t build what nobody needs

For Roeland Delrue, growth starts with something surprisingly simple: make sure people actually need what you’re building.

That means staying extremely close to your customers.

“We’ve built incredible customer proximity. We’re sort of obsessed with what our customers need.”

And once you know what matters?

Prioritise ruthlessly. Work relentlessly on what matters most.

3. Ask the people who’ve already done it

Entrepreneurship often celebrates figuring things out yourself. Sébastien Deletaille offered a useful counterpoint.

You don’t need to make every mistake yourself. Sometimes the smartest shortcut is simply talking to someone who’s already been there.

4. Small is beautiful

Growth doesn’t always have to mean more complexity, more people or a bigger organisation.

Sam Heymans reduced his lesson to three words.

A reminder that focus, speed and simplicity can be competitive advantages too.

5. Success shouldn’t cost you everything else

The Let’s Talk Challenges sessions were deliberately built around the side of entrepreneurship that rarely makes it into the polished success story.

For Maarten Michielssens, that also meant drawing a very personal line.

Growth matters. But so does deciding what you’re not willing to sacrifice for it.

6. Don’t get comfortable

One of the shortest quotes of Durbuy may also have been one of the sharpest.

Coming from Silicon Valley, Nadine Khouzam challenged European entrepreneurs to think about speed, ambition and our willingness to keep pushing once things start going well.

Comfort can feel like success. It can also be where momentum starts to disappear.

7. Belgium can still be the place to build

Why build one of Europe’s largest satellite factories in Belgium?

Benoît Deper, Founder & CEO of Aerospacelab, made the case for why investing and building ambitious industrial companies here still makes sense.

His message was a useful counterweight to the idea that global ambition automatically means leaving Belgium behind:

Think global. But don’t underestimate what you can build from here.

8. Give voice to your vision

Having a great company, product or idea isn’t enough if nobody understands why it matters.

James Vincent’s message was simple:

A strong story doesn’t replace a strong business. It gives people a reason to understand it, remember it and believe in where you’re taking it.

9. You don’t always need to innovate. Renovate.

Entrepreneurs are constantly told to innovate.

Wim Maeyens offered another perspective:

Not every opportunity requires inventing something from scratch. Sometimes the better entrepreneurial move is seeing the potential in what’s already there and making it significantly better.

And then there were the conversations in between

Of course, Durbuy was about more than nine quotes.

It was two days of conversations across industries and across the language border. On stage, during How to Crack the Code and Let’s Talk Challenges, over lunch, during Taste & Connect, on a morning run and long after the official programme had ended.

Different businesses. Different ambitions. Different challenges.

But perhaps one common takeaway: entrepreneurship becomes a little easier when you don’t have to figure everything out alone.

That is exactly what clubWAW!Yaka! is here for.

Until the next conversation.