What Belgium is missing is an actor that works across existing initiatives and across regions, with the ambition to look beyond the classic regional borders. That actor already exists. Twelve years of continuous operation, entirely privately funded, 7,300 entrepreneurs steered directly rather than through intermediaries. BeTech is not asking to be started. It is asking to be scaled. Here is what that costs, and what it produces.
€50M over ten years is €5M a year. Techleap ran on roughly €7M a year, and a handful of its core programmes alone cost the Netherlands about €5M a year. We are asking for less per year, over a longer horizon, in a market we openly call harder.
The amount can be assembled as a puzzle of Brussels, Flemish, Walloon, federal and private money. Brussels is not asked for €50M. Brussels is asked to anchor €50M, as the launchpad for a programme that then scales nationally.
We commit to outcomes and we fund the instrument that measures them. Elsewhere in this country, €800M a year carries a spending commitment and no results commitment. Activating an employee yields one person; activating an entrepreneur yields one or many.