Every startup founder gets the same advice: move fast, pivot often, expand into adjacent markets. But what if the real competitive advantage lies in doing the exact opposite? Quinten Vandermeulen, Co-founder and CPO at Mbrella, opened his PR_D_CT DAY 2025 Ghent talk with a disarmingly honest admission: almost nothing changed about what Mbrella does. The discipline was in staying the course.
Since its founding in 2020, Mbrella has raised 10 million euros, grown to 42 people, and serves over 700 customers. But the path from scrappy startup to category leader was not a story of bold pivots or dramatic reinventions. It was a story of patience, conviction, and the compounding effect of focused effort over time.
Original Presentation Slides
Download the slides from this talk as presented at the gathering.
The Emotional Rollercoaster of Building a Product
Quinten walks the audience through the emotional arc of Mbrella's journey year by year. The first year was the honeymoon phase, full of optimism and a conviction that this was going to be huge. Everything felt like validation. Then came the second year: the plateau. The early enthusiasm faded, growth stalled, and the internal question became uncomfortably honest. Are we delusional?
