Operator, not adviser · Bruges · NL / FR / EN
I read organisations —and find the growththat is already in them.
I'm Stefaan Maene. Twenty years of walking into companies, working out what is actually happening inside them, and deciding what to do about it. Then staying long enough to be judged on the result.
Let’s talk
Inspiration
What I build.What it taught me.
What I do
Two weeks inside.Then an honest answer.
I don't sell advice. I sell a read, and then I sell doing something about it.
- 01
Step one — the read · two weeks
I come in. I use the product, talk to your people before anyone briefs them, read the few numbers that matter, and work out who really controls what. You get one document: what is actually happening, what is leaking, and what I would do first. If there is nothing worth doing, I tell you that, and we stop.
- 02
Step two — the mandate · months, not years
I take one piece of it and run it myself — with your people, inside your business, with numbers attached to my name. Not a deck handed to someone else to execute.
- 03
How it's paid
A fixed fee for the read. For the mandate, a fixed fee plus a share of what it actually produces. Where it makes sense for both of us, equity instead of some of the fee.
I take two mandates at a time.
Starcasino Group
Operator · Board of Directors
Marketing and commercial operations for a licensed gaming group — eight brands, three countries, a seat on the Board of Directors. The most constrained marketing environment in Europe, and the one where a wrong call is a regulatory event, not a bad quarter.
We Are Witty
My own company · since 2003
The constant behind everything else. Client work for Hello Bank, FIA, Elia, Coca-Cola — and Starcasino, before I joined it. Now also products I fund, build and have to sell myself. It changes how you advise people doing the same.
Agency world
Founder years
Built and ran an agency of forty people for blue-chip clients. Payroll, pitches, margins — the tuition was real, and it's why my advice is cheaper than the way I learned it.
Coca-Cola
Client · Digital commerce strategy
Two years inside as an outside voice: rebuilt how the commercial engine sells through digital — reseller plans, brick-and-mortar, pure players. The plan shipped. It worked.
Mastercard
Employer · Head of digital, Europe
What a global system does when it meets thirty local markets that each believe they are the exception.
Contact
Show me the part of the businessyou've stopped looking at.
One conversation, and I will tell you honestly whether I am useful to you or not. If it isn't a fit, I'll say so on that call and point you somewhere better.
I take two mandates at a time.