Cresco is a leading Belgian law firm working with entrepreneurs, start-ups, scale-ups, investors and corporates, and has been a committed partner of Scale-Ups.eu for many years. Its core mission is to enable its clients in achieving their critical business objectives and executing their strategies.
In this interview we talk with Glenn L’hoëst and Elske Bleeker, senior associates at Cresco, on how Cresco contributes to the scale-ups ecosystem.
Glenn: our vision and mission from inception has been inspired by our passion for entrepreneurship. We truly believe that stimulating and encouraging entrepreneurship contributes to societal needs, and are energized by working with great entrepreneurs and investors on a daily basis.
From the start our main focus has been to contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations of entrepreneurs.
Elske: it is very encouraging and inspiring to see how the Belgian ecosystem has grown the past decade with many start-ups and investment firms being created and growing their activities. Economic growth and innovative solutions are crucial to tackle societal challenges and we strongly believe that Cresco has an important role to play in stimulating such growth.
Elske: in addition to providing top notch advice to entrepreneurs, we strongly believe that legal advisors have an important educational role to play within the scale-up ecosystem, from workshops and seminars through white papers and academic contributions.
Glenn: from day one we have dedicated significant resources to creating partnerships with incubators, accelerators and networks so as to share our knowledge and expertise with entrepreneurs, investors and corporates. We strongly believe that the sharing of knowledge and expertise on a pro bono basis to the wider ecosystem ultimately benefits all participants.
Glenn: the most prominent example of knowledge sharing is embodied in the Cresco business book “Innovate. Collaborate. Grow!” on best practices for corporate partnering transactions. This book incorporates decades of expertise and knowledge on how to build and scale successful enterprises, and is designed to provide hands-on guidance for structuring and negotiating a large variety of corporate partnering transactions.
Elske: we have further operationalized our knowledge through a series of master classes and seminars elaborating on growth strategies which are provided at no cost to entrepreneurs, but also to investors and research institutions. Aligning all relevant players around common best practices ultimately enhances economic activities, and hence contributes to the societal good.
Elske: firstly, discuss your aspirations and potential concerns with other entrepreneurs. People are very supportive and love to share their knowledge and expertise. Secondly, agility is key and pivoting rapidly to achieve the best product-market fit crucial to ensure success.
Glenn: finally, pay sufficient attention to the legal structuring of your business activities. From adequately structuring the relationships between founders, negotiating financing transactions within market standards, to scaling your commercial activities on the best legal footing will only benefit scale-ups in the long run.
Do you want to know what Cresco offers to entrepreneurs and scale-ups?
Discover our approach and services through www.crescolaw.com