A dose of reality among the success stories.
💠 At Medifs (2010), we launched Healthappointment, one of the world's first online medical appointment systems for doctors, including support for group practices, drag-and-drop functionality (before even Google and Microsoft had it in their online calendars!) and Outlook synchronisation. At the time, many doctors were still using paper diaries. We aimed for global, or at least European, conquest.
💠 Proxisales (2014) focused on improving the sales experience with a mobile sales app for tablets, designed to optimise and automate information flows for sales teams. This was in the era of the newly launched Windows App platform, two years after the launch of Microsoft Windows 8 RT (mobile Windows OS), on which we developed a product with extensive functionality.
They were innovative applications that, in hindsight, may have been ahead of their time. Neither company reached the profitability I had envisioned within a reasonable timeframe, which led me to decide twice to step away. Naturally, those were not exactly happy-ever-after stories among fellow shareholders, but I still look back on these experiences with pride and gratitude.
I worked days and nights with passion, devised technical solutions and wrote code to make these products market-ready. Despite many "eureka" moments and a loyal customer base, expanding our customer base was a major challenge. A product can be exceptionally well built and at the forefront of innovation, but if you cannot sell it, the story ends there.
I do not look back on these stories negatively. It is unfortunate, because it literally feels as though you are throwing several years of work in the bin, but they are experiences to learn from. Technical innovation and wanting to make a difference is a steep uphill climb, but it shaped me as a person: someone driven to keep experimenting, to innovate and, yes, sometimes to fail. Because every misstep contains hidden wisdom that helps us move forward step by step.
That is also why I now strongly believe in the power of artificial intelligence. Although I feel that - even now - it still seems "early days" to many people, I see it as a key to unlocking new possibilities within our IT landscape. In any case, I am looking ahead to what the future brings.
Or, as they say in Aalst: weir doeng voesj - we keep going! Or in Ghent: nie neute, nie pleuje - no whining, no giving up! 💪
