From Financial Auditor To Chief Presentation Officer: The story

After founding my presentation agency Shoow, I still got several times the question "But Matthias, how do you go from being a Financial Auditor to suddenly becoming a Chief Presentation Officer?" "Can you fill your days making presentations?" or "Can you make money with some PowerPoints?".

So I want to take a moment to share with you my "story to entrepreneurship" and how the foundation of Shoow started. Because when I announced on April 1, 2021 that this was going to be my full-time job, it was definitely not an April 1 joke.

Ever since I was young, I was bitten to organize things. Sometimes I organized small parties but also a real soccer event during the World Cup Brazil 2014 (Rio de Cornetto) & European Championship France 2016 (Stade de Corn). Together with my cousin Simon Denys, now Partner of Ocular, we built a little stadium with 800 euro-palettes where about 150 fans could watch the matches of our Red Devils on big screen.

The entrepreneurial seed was then definitely planted, the desire to be an entrepreneur never went away but even though no one ever taught me some PowerPoint tricks... After all you will not find the genesis of Shoow in myself but rather in my career with great companies where I learned what was really important.

At Vandelanotte I started as a financial auditor, which gave me the opportunity to study numerous companies -in various sectors- from the inside. This gave me insights into how both internal and external business processes were set up and followed. What was even more important, however, was the personal guidance I enjoyed there.

On a daily basis, I was challenged by various projects, both as a junior and senior, which allowed me to learn that making mistakes is essential to achieve (personal) growth and the knowledge that the core of a problem is often the key to solving it.

In addition, top management involved us in various issues, giving us responsibilities without prior knowledge. There, everyone's opinion was respected and heard, and everyone had the freedom to challenge, regardless of knowledge level or years of experience.

Like many other startups, we were all responsible with sales, marketing, giving workshops, project management, and much more, resulting in countless presentations. While creating these presentations, CEO Karel-Jan Vercruysse -who also invented the name "Shoow"- repeatedly remarked that I had some talent in this and suggested that perhaps I should do something more with it. Although a presentation agency was not immediately on my mind, I continued to work on my presentation skills.

In my DULL story, I realized that concepts like "Company Culture" and "Employer Branding" arise from the people in your organization and are not artificially created. Choosing the people you want to work with, both as colleagues and subcontractors, is critical. This insight guides me in the continued growth of Shoow.

StoryMe, an ambitious scale-up with significant challenges that despite growing out of its startup skin, still was looking for a sustainable structure and optimization of its existing processes. Personally, I learned quite a lot about sales and production processes. It was inspiring to see how a need was translated into a creative solution that in turn was turned into a vivid video. Processes that partly match what we at Shoow do. 

By nature, I always try to work as efficiently as possible, which is why I took the opportunity to challenge some things with COO/CEO Dimitri Van Hoe. For example, there are always ways to work more efficiently, but it sometimes takes some time and effort to conduct small experiments before applying them on a large scale. Efficiency often starts with self-reflection.