We do not start from scratch. BeTech has run for twelve years, privately funded, and works with 7,300 entrepreneurs directly rather than through intermediaries. Every neighbour worth comparing to funded an engine like this, and in each of them tech now ranks first or second as a driver of growth. Everything needed to scale is already in place. What is missing is the investment.
The engine is already built and running.
Belgium only has to fuel it.
France and the Netherlands invested first and built afterwards. BeTech was built first, at no cost
to any government, and is waiting on the investment. That is why the same money buys more here,
and why this is a Series A rather than a start-up round.
The public budget starts the loop; it does not carry it. BeTech co-builds with private partners, and that private share grows across the ten years until it carries the work again. Techleap did exactly this and now finances its community entirely privately.
You do not invest in BeTech as an organisation. You invest in economic infrastructure. BeTech is the engine, and what it unlocks reaches beyond BeTech itself: talent, capital and growth.
The amount can come from one budget or be assembled across Brussels, Flanders, Wallonia, the federal level and private partners. That is a political choice, and it is not a neutral one. Taking it alone puts Brussels forward as the tech centre of this country and shows the ambition belongs to whoever signs it. Pooling costs Brussels less and gives Brussels less.
€50M is one budget covering ten years, committed once, against the roughly €7M a year Techleap received over a shorter run. A longer horizon, a harder market, and the engine already built. We recommend the top level because it is the only one that signals to talent and capital that this country intends to keep them.