Why I Stepped Up for PULSE: Leadership, Mindsets, and Moving the Needle for Luxembourg’s Ecosystem

“Why on earth are you taking on a presidency when you’re already scaling a company?”

If I had a euro for every time someone asked me that over the past few years, I’d probably generate enough to angel-fund a few early-stage startups myself.

And look, on paper, the skepticism made sense. Running Tadaweb, navigating rapid headcount growth, and keeping up with the chaos of tech founder life doesn't leave you with vast oceans of idle time. Taking on the role of President at PULSE—the voice of Luxembourg's startup ecosystem—was, by traditional productivity metrics, a wild decision. But one that I will never regret. And in doing

But as both a founder and a self-confessed psychology junkie, I knew one thing to be true: If you want to shape the waters you swim in, you can’t just stand on the bank complaining about the current.

Here is the truth about why I took on the role, what leading an ecosystem association taught me about collective brainpower, and the tangible impact we managed to carve out together.

1. It Started with a Pain, then a Mission

When you’re building your own startup down in the trenches, it’s easy to get trapped in an isolated bubble. You deal with your own product or technology, your own local legal friction,  your own hiring bottlenecks, ESOP complications, and fundraising nuances, all while thinking, "Why does it have to be this hard?"

Don’t get me wrong, being swept up in an isolated cocoon to try and get your company off the ground is completely normal, necessary even. You see, in psychology, there's a concept called In-Group Alignment. When an ecosystem is fragmented, founders see themselves as isolated islands competing for localised resources. Now, don’t get me wrong. The progress Luxembourg has made over the past 15 years is hugely inspiring. The Luxembourg of today is lightyears ahead of the Luxembourg in 2011. But I still found it extremely frustrating that despite the Government support and plethora of positive initiatives and organisations, the true founders voice wasn’t at the table. The founder that had actually walked the road, cranked out the late nights, pulled there hair out at the bureaucracy. And above all, there wasn’t a solid forum for founders to actually talk to founders.

If we put this idea against the backdrop of group psychology, we see that when one creates a unified identity—a shared "in-group"—the friction shifts from friction between each other to momentum for everyone. This is one of the key reasons why I agreed to first join the PULSE board, all those years ago.

Luxembourg is a powerhouse of potential—it’s agile, hyper-international, and positioned right in the heart of Europe. But an ecosystem doesn't scale by accident; it scales by design.

 2. What I Learnt: The Neuro-Leadership of Ecosystems

Leading a voluntary association of passionate, opinionated, and highly ambitious founders was a masterclass in leadership dynamics. To add to that, when you’re leading an entity comprised of people that are doing what they are doing for change, rather than a salary, you have to rely purely on vision, empathy, and collective value.

Here are my top three takeaways from the seat:

• Empathy over Ego (The Cognitive Dissonance of Ecosystem Building): Every stakeholder in a startup hub—founding teams, investors, policymakers, and corporate partners—views the world through a completely different mental model. Getting everyone to agree requires shedding your own biases and listening to what people actuallyneed versus what you think they need.

  
  

• Friction Kills Entrepreneurial Energy: Startups live and die by speed. When legal ambiguity or lack of access to expertise slows a founder down, it drains their cognitive bandwidth. The best thing an association can do is strip away friction so founders can focus on execution.

  
  

• The Power of the Small, Connected State: An organization like PULSE would never have flourished so fast if the eco-system wasn’t ripe for it. Since day one the association was greeted with open arms from key eco-system players, such as the national innovation agency, the incubators, the investors, the service providers and lastly, but most importantly – the startups.  

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• The "Kiwi" Lesson on Community: Back in New Zealand, community resilience isn't an abstract corporate value; it's a survival trait. Leading PULSE reinforced that the strongest tech ecosystems are built on radical knowledge sharing—the raw, unvarnished "here's how I messed this up so you don't have to" conversations.

3. The Impact: Ideas to Actions

Talk is cheap in the startup world. For me, the presidency was never about holding a title or speaking at events; it was about building assets that move the needle.

Looking back at what the PULSE board, team, and community built, a few milestones stand out:

• Giving Founders a Collective Voice: This was a key pillar from day one, when Patrick Kersten first created the association. It was the mission of “from founders to founders”, ensuring that everytime startups were spoken about it in Luxembourg, we were at the table. From public affairs to ecosystem policy, we turned individual founder feedback into a unified advocate for a more startup-friendly Luxembourg.

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• Democratizing Legal Know-How (The Legal Toolbox): We launched standardized, Luxembourg-adapted legal templates—from SAFE notes to ESOP drafts and employment agreements—saving early-stage founders thousands in legal fees and months of friction. This is important, because often for (particularly tech) startups, the early legal phases of incorporation and creation can be extremely daunting.

  
  

• 300+ Hours of Shared Brainpower: Through our Startup Advisory Program, we rallied over 50 expert volunteers and experienced founders to give back, opening up hundreds of hours of free, high-impact advisory sessions across fundraising, strategy, and go-to-market execution.

  
  

• Creating Spaces for Real Talk: From Ask a Founder nights to VC roundtables, we built a community of 350+ members where founders could drop the "everything is great" pitch deck persona and talk about the real realities of building.

  
  

• Policy Reform: This was a huge team effort of local players (thank you again), but a huge win so far has been getting two key amendments across the line. One being the investor incentive scheme, which provided tax incentives for private investors in early stage companies. The second, has the ESOP reform. This set out to make stock options much more efficient and appealing in early stage companies.

  
  

The Next Chapter

Stepping back or handing off leadership roles is always a bitter-sweet moment, but it’s also the mark of a healthy ecosystem and a finished 2-year mandate. “An association built on a single person fails” as Patrick once wisely told me, while convincing me to take over the reins, however an association built on a shared mission endures and evolves.

To everyone on the PULSE board Patrick, Pierre, Tom, Xavier, Elfy,  the volunteers, our partner institutions, and every founder who showed up to ask hard questions and share their playbooks: thank you.

Luxembourg’s startup scene isn't just growing—it's maturing and Pierre is the perfect person to accompany this maturity. And being able to play a part in steering that momentum has been one of the most rewarding chapters of my journey so far.