Fortino CTO Summit 2022 encourages experience sharing

In the atmospheric setting of the Yust Hotel in Antwerp, 23 CTOs from Fortino portfolio companies met for the first time. After the gathering, they returned to their growth companies armed with advice, an expanded network and tools to strengthen their teams.

Fortino’s first CTO Summit took place across one evening and one day in October. The CTOs who took part – from start-ups and scale-ups in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany – shared a host of useful tips and forged valuable new relationships.

In the evening, the 23 participants created a delicious cocktail, within a safe, confidential team atmosphere where they were able to talk openly about their business challenges. During the day, they were inspired by colleagues and speakers.

Collibra inspires CTOs

Among the speakers was Stijn Christiaens, co-founder and Chief Data Citizen of Belgium's first unicorn company, Collibra. He kept his audience hooked with a keynote speech on how Collibra grew from a start-up into the prized data manager and data intelligence specialist it is today. The best practices he shared are sure to be useful to the CTOs in their own growth journey.

“The advice I would give to CTOs is to spend at least as much time on the code and the computer as you do on the people in your team and in the market,” he says in the aftermovie.

Shared experiences

What lessons did the participants take back to the office with them? “We all have similar problems, but we solve them differently,” says Herman De Prins, Chair of BizzMine. “Through this Summit we were able to share experiences and learn from each other.”

Karim Benchaaboun, co-founder and CTO of Flowlity: “What I take from this Summit is that investing in code quality and security is part of the journey. And it’s really exciting to meet other CTOs.”

“We had a very interesting session on tech due diligence,” adds Don van der Krogt, co-founder and CTO of D2X. “And I learned that a lot of security-related features should be built through continuous integration, continuous delivery pipelines. It’s definitely something we will take a look at when I get back to the office in Amsterdam tomorrow.”

We’re already looking forward to our next get-together. Enjoy the aftermovie!