The Founder Link: A New Bridge Between Research and Entrepreneurship
On Tuesday, September 8, ULiège-RISE, HEC Liège, and the Pulse Foundation organized the first edition of The Founder Link, with the shared goal of enabling researchers with spin-off projects to meet experienced entrepreneurs who might join the venture and help build a future founding team. This inaugural edition marks the launch of a pilot initiative that is set to continue and expand as part of the Wallons-y! program.
Promising technology alone is not always enough to launch a company. Creating a spin-off also requires bringing together complementary scientific, entrepreneurial, and managerial skills around the project.
This is precisely the role of The Founder Link – Meet the Research, Build the Venture. For this first edition, three projects stemming from research at ULiège met with ten CEOs, entrepreneurs, board members, and experienced business professionals, brought together in particular through the HEC Liège alumni network.
3 projects stemming from research at ULiège
- Lou Freuville, VENOM
- Gabriel Digregorio, MICROBENCH
- Antoine Ferré, ATLAS LAB
Following a brief presentation of each project, several small-group meetings allowed participants to better understand the projects and their needs, share their experiences and skills, and identify potential synergies.
The Founder Link is part of a broader support network for spin-off creation, alongside initiatives such as Gesval, the SPW Recherche Win4SpinOff program, and the FR2B training offered in partnership with VentureLab. It complements these initiatives by addressing a critical challenge for certain projects: identifying complementary entrepreneurial skills early on and fostering team building around the project.
This first edition represents one of the commitments made as part of Wallons-y!, a collective movement launched in 2026 to strengthen the entrepreneurial spirit in Wallonia. It serves as an initial testing ground for a format that can be refined—based on lessons learned in Liège—with the goal of rolling it out in other ecosystems and, eventually, at other universities.
Jean-François Desguin, Startup Support Advisor at Wallonie Entreprendre and Wallons-Y! ambassador, confirms: "The Founder Link is part of Wallons-Y!'s vision. It’s a practical, replicable, and impact-driven program. The more we pool our energies, the faster Wallonia will move, the farther it will go, and the more it will achieve what it deserves.”
Given the initial positive feedback from participants, a second edition of The Founder Link is already being considered.
