Herculean Chronicles – the first edition. In the previous chapter, I explained how we bootstrapped the Hercules Trophy. Now, let’s zoom in on 1998, with the first edition organized in September 1999.
Cafe Talks
Our weekly rendezvous was next to the famous “Cafe De Vijfhoek” in my hometown St-Kat-Waver, close to Mechelen in Belgium. This quaint and atmospheric Cafe was (and still is) a popular meeting spot for various business people as it’s situated in the middle between Antwerp and Brussels and very near the Mechelen business area. And it was also where Ivo used to run his catering company.
The team dynamics were interesting. Ivo mediated heated debates with Mario about operational intricacies, avoiding a mediocre consensus.
I focused more on the marketing and IT side, Mario on operations and Ivo was the catering guy. But, despite our differences, we were one team who decided everything together. The dream was big, there was open communication, and we cheered each other to victory with many Belgian beers. It was never about the money; we just wanted to build something unique. As we considered it as our hobby, we didn’t pay ourselves and reinvested profits in the following editions for the next seven years.
Sales comes first
With no prior B2B sales and marketing experience, the initial journey was a schooling in itself. I discovered that you don’t sell to a company; you sell to the people within it. Convincing individuals and aiding them in advocating for your solution internally is challenging and time-consuming. It’s now our unique strength that we try to improve daily.
I also learned something else: that the advantage of being a founder is that it doesn’t feel like “selling”. You connect with diverse people, listen, inspire, think long-term, give a lot and solve their problems. The energy boost you get when a company eventually signs up for your dream is the best feeling ever. Even if they only participate in your event with 1 team. You know they will love it; they will spread the vibe and will stay for a few years.
Later, when I quit my job as a CIO to join network integrator Telindus (now Proximus), I had the opportunity to be immersed in sales. I learned about B2B sales, solution selling, and customer loyalty for large projects. These new learnings reinforced the importance of my early entrepreneurial lessons.
Much later, I realised it’s about building trusted communities and selling through them. The book “Permission Marketing” by Seth Godin was released in 1999 and became my first “Aha moment”, but more about that later.
I’ve noticed that many people in a business-to-business environment stop connecting with others after a while. Some of them become complacent and think all the leads should come from marketing. Unfortunately, they couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s a continuous effort of nurturing and giving.
Target setting and pricing.
How do you set targets or prices without a real market reference? For something that doesn’t exist yet and has no direct competitors? My 2 cents? You can’t, although I would love to say otherwise. Instead, you listen to the market, stay agile, practice patience and have a flexible budget file.
I called all my connections, mainly in IT companies, to ask for feedback before starting the campaign. Based on their feedback, our initial sales targets were too ambitious, as they were about 10 times higher than the biggest edition we ever organised in the past 25 years…
Pricing is highly underestimated as a marketing tool in B2B. Instead of spending money on ads when you don’t have a brand yet, you better award discounts to your early believers. We started with a low registration fee, which is still the best way to launch a new market.
Feedback is food for champions.
Feedback is food; feedback is a gift. And our reaction to feedback is so important. Don’t take it personal. And remember what Steve Jobs said: “If you want to make everyone happy, you should sell ice cream.” It’s a balancing act, especially for something that doesn’t exist yet, especially if you sell an “experience”. And an experience that is also crafted by the people who participate.
Handling feedback is an art. It’s about discerning between genuine concerns and baseless doubts. You encounter those who promise to join but never do, and then there are the ones who predict your failure. Transforming doubts into opportunities is vital. Identifying early adopters—those who genuinely trust you—becomes paramount. The key is to give first before you can receive.
Remember that most people will never dare what you do and will only follow the herd once success is established.
Cash is king
And then there are the payment issues. They are still the worst part of entrepreneurship in B2B. Most companies have payment policies that can kill you. You receive all sorts of excuses why your invoice isn’t paid yet. It puts you under a lot of pressure, especially in the early days when you have no leverage.
I’ve learned that the contact persons are not the ones to blame. They don’t understand the full impact of cash pressure on an entrepreneur. Moreover, many of them have no control over their internal payment terms or company policies. I’ve seen that trend become even worse year after year. Honestly, it’s killing small companies. It makes it almost impossible to start nowadays without capital, like we did.
Operational excellence
The process back then was completely different as there was no social media, and people still liked to receive emails (yes, that time did exist!). Most of the orders still came in through a fax machine or via our Hotmail account. The order form was in the flyer. Windows 98 was released with Internet Explorer 4.0.
Together with Werner huysmans, my colleague and friend from Pauwels Trafo, we built the first static website. I convinced Cronos to host it for free, and the guy who looked after the server was Bjorn Van Reet, still a big fan and now CDO of the Year in Belgium. We updated the teams in plain HTML. We were still living in dial-up modem times, and I believe ADSL came one year later.
We started building the first version of our platform in MS Access 97 and Visual Basic. As Object Orientation and IT architecture were my interests, we created the relational database that became the foundation for our current platform, which now runs on Azure. The platform eventually became one of our Unique Selling Propositions.
Werner volunteered to be the referee of our competition. As true IT nerds, we were both obsessed with automating everything that could be automated. A CRM, teams, scoresheets, leaderboards, planning…: it was all there since day one. And the IT infrastructure enabled us through the years to increase the scale without adding overheads.
The first edition
The first edition unfolded in the Indian summer of 1999. It was a modest circus tent, the size of the current warehousing tent. It housed a dance floor in the middle, tables flanking the sides, and a bar across from the DJ booth. This original setup, crafted by our hands, withstood the test of time.
12 games were installed during that week with our own bare hands. It took us an entire week to install something that would take us a fraction of that time today. The venue (De Nekker) had only some of the infrastructure it has today. Els, Ivo’s sister, worked at De Nekker and Danny, the accountant, eventually became the boss of De Nekker and still is. Organising events was easier back then at least from an administrative point of view, as there were fewer rules and environmental regulations.
About 50 teams of 5 participants showed up at the gates on that very first edition. The teams came from both large and small companies. They didn’t bring any supporters at that time. The weather was beautiful. The teams simply loved it.
Our initial Hercules crew included a lot of paramilitaries mixed with our friends. The local radio station called “Radio Reflex” played during the day, and in the evening, the amazing DJ “Wiffe” played vinyl records. We partied hard (yes, like it’s 1999), together with the customers and the crew. One thing we totally underestimated was the clean-up during the days after the event. That was quite painful.
But we did it.
We asked for feedback through an online poll (which was extremely long) and sent a personalised fleece vest to all the contact persons to thank them, hoping they would come back next year.
And they did. But more about the growth phase in the following story. I can tell you that Telindus, Safmarine and Inge were the key players.
5 LEARNINGS THAT WORKED FOR ME
- Sales and marketing are everything.
- You need to be obsessed and work hard.
- Passionate but respectful discussions in the core team are crucial.
- It’s never about you or money. It’s about building a community.
- Party hard with your customers and your staff.
THANK YOU, EARLY HERCULEANS
Our first crew, our first customers, DJ Wiffe, Els and Danny from De Nekker and all our suppliers who believed in us and helped us. And all the people I thanked in the previous episode.