‘Don’t forget all the problems you have already encountered and solved’
You don’t need to be a developer anymore to create your own dashboard and integrate it into any existing technological platform. Cumul.io reduces months of development to just a few days. The US is falling for the platform and already accounts for a quarter of its turnover. But founder/CTO Haroen Vermylen is most proud of the team he built. “Half of the team is working for Cumul.io for 3 years now. In the startup world, that’s an eternity.”
Haroen Vermylen, Karel Callens and Thomas De Clerck originally founded Cumul.io to create better dashboards. “If you want to make decisions based on data, you need to make sure that you get access to the right data. We noticed that the end user was hardly involved in developing dashboards for data visualization. By the time the developers finally came up with a first version, the requirements were outdated again. The dashboards showed data the end user didn’t need. And, even worse: the data they did need were missing.”
“We developed a platform to create your own dashboard. A marketing dashboard will need to show different data than a sales dashboard or a HR dashboard. One-size-fits-all does not exist. Cumul.io allows the end user to build a tailored dashboard. There is no coding involved, you don’t need a developer anymore to create your own dashboard. We invest heavily in testing, to make sure that people with no technological background are capable to work with our platform.”
100,000 SaaS-companies in sight
A lot of startups pivot after a while. So did Cumul.io, Haroen explains. “Our product is still the same, but we focus on a different market. The end users are no longer our main target group. We mainly sell to SaaS-platforms now. We integrate dashboards into those platforms. You can use the technology stack you love the most, our dashboards integrate seamlessly into any technology.”
“When you start from scratch, it takes you weeks or even months to develop a dashboard. We offer all the necessary building blocks so you can create a dashboard in just a few hours. The integration into the SaaS-platform only takes a day. In an age where speed gives you a competitive edge, that’s what sets us apart.”
Cumul.io has customers in 28 countries. A quarter of the revenue comes from the US. “It’s a huge market for us. The US alone has over 100,000 SaaS-companies. The budgets are much bigger and the willingness to pay for software is much bigger as well. In Belgium and other European countries software is still being considered as a tool to support your growth. In the US they see software as a multiplicator that does not just support your growth, but actually drives it. That’s a totally different mindset.”
‘We have not built a team, we have built a family’
Imec.istart learned Haroen that running and scaling a startup is a marathon, not a sprint. “I know, it’s a cliché, but there is a lot of truth in it. As a founder you need persistence. We have adapted the story we tell 2,000 times already. Meeting after meeting after meeting we finetuned our pitch in order to convince leads or investors. Startup life can be hard. You tend to focus on the obstacles you still need to get rid of, but you must not forget all the problems you have already encountered and solved.”
“What I’m most proud of is definitely the team we managed to build. That’s a tough challenge. In the beginning, when it’s just the founding team, one wrong hire can turn out to be a real drama. It can kill your startup. It sounds a little cheesy, but we have not just built a team, we have built a family. Half of our team has been on board for 3 years already. In the startup world, that’s an eternity.”
Cumul.io has ‘graduated’ a few years ago, but Haroen still highly values the imec.istart network. “It’s incredible. Every year, imec.istart organizes a barbecue for the startups and the alumni. I always go home with new ideas, new investors, new collaborations,…”
