A platform that structures and drives indirect sales worldwide

“It was the most crucial moment in our existence,” Andreas explains. “Ninety per cent of start-ups fail because they stick to the path they initially chose. It was an extremely difficult period, but we made the right decision.” And indeed today, just over two years later, Introw has grown into a scale-up with more than 100 customers in 32 countries. The company builds AI-driven partner portals that help B2B companies organise their indirect sales. With innovative starter support and subsequently the Scale-Ready guidance programme from Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (VLAIO), the team effectively bought time to think in a genuinely innovative way.

From student to founder

As a corporate finance student at Ghent University,  Andreas Geamanu attends a guest lecture by Pieterjan Bouten,  founder of Showpad and now also an investor in Introw: "His story was so infectious that I could hardly wait to start something myself. That hunger, that drive pushed me straight into entrepreneurship.”

The step into and introduction to Ghent’s tech network soon followed. “I simply typed ‘technology entrepreneurs in Ghent’ into Google and worked my way down the list,” Andreas laughs. People are often hesitant to send that message. Time is lost that way, whereas your mindset should be that you already have a ‘no’, but you might get a ‘yes’. If you want to speak to someone, contact them – it really is that simple.

That’s how he ended up having coffee with Lorenz Bogaert of StarApps and how he came across Laurens Lavaert, now the company’s CTO. Andreas: “If someone with that kind of track record posts a call for a CTO in their network, it carries far more weight than if I, as a young newcomer, were to do it. That’s how you see your network working for you.”

Introw’s third founder, Head of AI Simon Van Den Hende has known Andreas since secondary school. Together, they set out – through trial and error – to shake up the world of Partner Relationship Management (PRM).

Frustration as a driving force

The choice to build such an innovative PRM platform grew out of frustration. Andreas spent two years in partnership sales, working with distributors in the United States, and experienced first-hand how cumbersome existing systems are: “Difficult to set up, not user-friendly and barely integrated into the organisation. We immediately saw that this could be done much more smoothly, with far better data integration. The potential of AI to structure and automate processes was largely untapped.”

Andreas is happy to explain what a PRM is and does: “Some companies sell their products directly to customers – that is direct sales. But many companies sell through partners, resellers or distributors – effectively an external sales team.” 

Andreas: “Introw builds a portal to stimulate those indirect sales. Partners can get started, access content, follow training modules and receive 24/7 support. With a dynamic view, they see customer data that is relevant to them and accessible only to them.”

Pivoting at its best

The first product turned out not to be the right one. Andreas soon realised it: “You can pull customers, or you can feel that customers are pulling you. But if you constantly have to pull, something is fundamentally wrong. If adoption doesn’t materialise, you have to make a drastic decision: a complete reset.”

That painful choice also had a human side, as a handful of pilot customers had already signed up for the first version. Andreas: “They told us, ‘We won’t remain your customers if you completely change the product. We signed up for A, while you’re now going to develop B. That isn’t how it works.’” Andreas pauses. “We were convinced of B. We decided that even if we lost those four or five customers then, we would rather have hundreds of satisfied customers worldwide. And the best part was that all our existing customers ultimately migrated to the new version anyway. All’s well that ends well.”

Positioning as a lever

Andreas is clear about what a young start-up needs to break through internationally. “Because you have limited resources, you cannot afford to do the same as your largest American competitor. You have to excel at something, something you do ten times better. It might be your marketing, your product or your expertise – but you must make a fundamental difference.”

At Introw, that difference lies in speed and artificial intelligence. “We’ve already signed a customer contract with an American company that was ready to go within half an hour. Traditional PRM systems take three to six months. And in terms of AI, a vast number of use cases are running in the background. You gain relevant insights, match the right data with the right partners and immediately establish proper attribution. The impact of that at scale is enormous.” 

VLAIO as a time machine

“You can also turn the expression ‘time is money’ around,” Andreas explains, explicitly pointing to the role played by VLAIO in general and business adviser Kris Honraet n particular. Money is time. “With innovative starter support and a development project from VLAIO, we gained the time and space to build a truly solid solution and achieve our product-market fit.”

After a full year of further development, Introw is now ready for the next phase: scaling globally. Andreas: “Once again, we can accelerate – and that’s what really matters in the competitive tech world – thanks to a Scale-Ready grant. Admittedly, this kind of application is no small task. Writing 30 pages to substantiate your plans is not something you do lightly. But when anyone asks me for advice, I tell them to do it themselves – because the process teaches you a great deal, makes you look at your company from a different perspective and leads to valuable discussions between founders. It isn’t something you should outsource, especially when you can regularly sound out a VLAIO business adviser who challenges you critically but constructively.”

The Introw team now consists of 15 people, sells in 32 countries and serves customers in every time zone worldwide from its headquarters in Dok-Noord, Ghent. Andreas: “There is no sales office in the United States, no sales team in Spain. Everything happens online from Belgium. We are an inbound sales organisation that uses our own platform to work with implementation partners. But all deals are concluded directly with us from our Ghent office.”