This news was originally published by De Tijd.

EyeSee has successfully concluded a round of private equity financing totaling 3 million euros from well-known Belgian investment firms. The main investors are ING Corporate Investments of Brussels, Belgium, and Smartfin Capital of Antwerp, Belgium acting as strategic financial partners. The new round of capitalization for EyeSee is geared towards further international business expansion and ongoing development in behavioral market research technologies and stabilizing further growth.

“We are convinced that EyeSee has the potential to be a key player in the highly innovative market for behavioral marketing research,” says Tom Bousmans, Private Equity Investment Director at ING Corporate Investments in Brussels, Belgium. “This is due to their uniquely qualified management and technology teams, their proven track record, and long-time market expertise. Through this substantial capital increase, we secure their continued growth. We believe in the strategic direction of EyeSee and the market potential for innovative market research.”

ING Corporate Investments, which is part of ING Belgium, and Smartfin Capital are investing 1,5 million euros each in EyeSee. Bart Luyten, a Partner at the technology investment fund Smartfin Capital comments: “As an investor in innovative companies, Smartfin Capital believes that this capital round will enable EyeSee to realize its full potential and become a key player in the behavioral marketing research sector.”

EyeSee allows companies to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and the impact of new product launches. By applying state-of-the-art technology such as eye-tracking, facial coding, virtual shopping, and others. EyeSee created an innovative business model in market research. This technology enables measuring consumer behavior remotely through worldwide online test panels by using the respondent’s devices – standard computers or mobile phones.

EyeSee was founded in 2013 by Olivier Tilleuil and received its initial round of financing from business angel Stefan Grosjean. “We are excited to welcome ING Private Equity and Smartfin Capital as new partners to support our further growth into the US and Asia,” says Olivier Tilleuil. “We are well-positioned for a significant share of online market research.” Joris De Bruyne, a partner at EyeSee, adds: “The funding will allow us to expand the sales team and further invest in technological development. This will allow EyeSee to offer behavioural market research for mobile applications and increase performance by using artificial intelligence.”

The funding round comes after several significant recognitions for EyeSee such as being listed as one of Deloitte’s 20 fastest-growing technology companies in Belgium for the third consecutive year, our work for Microsoft awarded the Global Market Research project of the year by Quirk’s, and Olivier Tilleuil named one of the GRIT Future list honorees.

About EyeSee

EyeSee is one of the fastest-growing behavioral market research companies in the world, with offices in New York, Antwerp, London, Paris, and Belgrade. Our team of over 90 employees works with the biggest global brands such as Google, Microsoft, Disney, L’Oréal, Nestlé, Colgate, Johnson & Johnson, Twitter, etc. Learn more About us.

About ING Corporate Investments

ING Belgium invests in companies with high growth potential, through its private equity division, ING Corporate Investments and with a total envelope of € 200 million. ING Corporate Investments supports small and medium-size enterprises in Belgium, providing venture, development and buy-out capital. This activity of ING Belgium is based in Brussels, and is part of the worldwide ING group. The group has been active in the private equity transactions for more than 20 years.

About SmartFin

SmartFin is a Belgian based private equity firm founded by Jurgen Ingels and Bart Luyten with +300 Mio € assets under management. The fund combines totaling successful venture capital and private equity track-record with extensive operational experience in building and managing leading international technology companies and targets investments in growth companies in the B2B technology segment with a European focus. SmartFin holds investments in a range of scale-ups including MariaDB, UnifiedPost, Itineris, Theo Technologies, Silverfin, Deliverect, Akinon, etc. 

Download the press release.

After building a global insights company with almost 100 employees in only 7 years and no significant investment round, Olivier Tilleuil, the founder of EyeSee, got featured in the competitive GRIT future list that celebrates individuals propelling consumer insights forward in relevant and unexpected ways.

2019 GRIT insights practice report published the honorees of the GRIT future list for the second year in a row. This year’s nomination featured hundreds of impressive submissions including published researchers, entrepreneurs and awarded multi-disciplinary individuals with outstanding academic backgrounds. To sum it up in the words of the jury: “To be in the GRIT future list, you have to have a clear view of the current state of consumer insights, a picture of how things can be better, and the grit to see it through.”

Olivier Tilleuil received a nomination and subsequently got selected based on his professional growth path, personal integrity, and the passion for excellence as part of the group of next-generation insights leaders. Olivier’s election comes after an impressive record of building a game-changing global insights company in 7 years. The company’s breakthrough in the market research industry was making behavioral insights scalable – fast, cost-effective, and global. Instead of relying mainly on surveys, EyeSee tracks behavior (eye-tracking, emotion tracking…) of consenting respondents via their own device and webcam.

We used this unique opportunity to pick Olivier’s brains regarding the honor, state of the insights industry, and much more.

Q: So, how does it feel to be featured on a list that recognizes leadership and forward-thinking actors in the industry?

Oliver: It feels great! We’ve worked very hard to get to the point where we double in size each year, can claim a global reach, and boast about a client list that includes ½ of the top 30 CPG companies, media and tech giants, and about 40 or so other power brands. To put things in perspective – we’ve only been around for 7 years, and the first 3 of those we spent as a knowledge-hungry startup with less than 20 employees. These were also the years during which we’ve set up the basis for the vast expansion and reach we have today. The decisions that the team and I made back then informed the GRIT future list nomination. Our initial driving force and core values revolve around constant (tech) innovation that enables our clients to employ smarter and more efficient ways of leveraging behavioral insights.

Q: What are some of the challenges and turning points that defined EyeSee’s and your personal growth?

Olivier: Building an insights solution that would revolutionize the industry was our key goal In the beginning – and it remained the same to this day. We were disruptive in the ambition to make behavioral and neuro insights accessible – 3 times faster, 3 times lower-priced, and globally scalable. Based on this vision, we first developed packaging, advertising and e-commerce testing solutions.

Then, the challenge became to convince clients of it, educate them about the newly available options, and build strong relationships. For us, a behavioral framework and scalable remote model of testing via respondents’ devices was a no-brainer in terms of massive added value. But the industry’s go-to for decades was a conscious-based survey, which has low predictive power. Only a few companies could afford costly central location behavioral testing with neuro methods. We were faced with a challenge: what if we make behavioral scalable?

I firmly believe that we are still in the early days of switching to behavioral and that clients currently are only tapping into 5-10% of the potential of subconscious insights. However, to grow EyeSee further, our organization is the key. We have fantastic talent, but how do we create an environment that is both stimulating and automated, that produces predictable quality output, and provides enough freedom to keep on innovating?

Q: You mentioned that your current focus is shifting to organizational development and optimization. What’s the next step on the organizational trajectory to keep the company a success story?

Olivier: A Deloitte study found that 87.7% of employees in the USA they are not working to their full potential. Most organizations are still using organizational structures invented decades ago but face very different challenges.

With a traditional pyramidal organization, people at the top will complain about meeting overload, while people below feel disempowered. The critical question is how to push decision-making further in the hierarchy.

Ideally, you’d create a new social system which is complex. All building blocks need to fit. As Grant Botma (‘the problem isn’t their paycheck’ guy) says: “Freedom creates ownership mentality, affirmation creates confidence, purpose creates impact.” The challenge is to provide all three of these blocks to achieve effectiveness.

Google and Intel already did a great job in reinventing processes and structures with their OKR systems, as explained in detail by John Doerr in Measure what works […]. Some authors even question the need for bosses; others examine the current prevailing control system and focus more on trust. In Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux mentioned the need to change the policy from control to trust: “When you ask employees who claim that their self-image changed, they say that they used to work for the paycheck, while now they feel responsible for their work and they take pride in a job well done.” He asked entrepreneurs who reinvented their organization about the risk involved in letting people decide without a top-down control, especially when money is involved. In their experience, it is less risky than not doing so, because better decisions get made. But, to me, the fascinating thing is that the choice between trust and control is seldom debated on a rational level.

This is what we are seeing in consumer decision making, as well. When a complex decision needs to be made, often gut feeling will prevail over rational reasoning using control systems. The reason why we tend to rely on conscious decision making in these circumstances is that we have a sense of more control and people are afraid of the unknown or uncontrollable. However, more and more researchers and business experts are fighting these urges and employing subconscious methods – the future is behavioral!

Today is the International Day of Women in Science and Technology!

Although over 2/3 of EyeSee employees are women, we know that the playing field in tech is far from equal. That’s why we are taking a moment to celebrate the fantastic group of women who work at EyeSee on developing innovative solutions and tech to push market research forward. 

Here’s what they have to say about the state of (market research) industry, challenges, and developing smarter tech solutions.

What to know more? Check out our formula for predictive insights.

Growing in revenue by 489%, EyeSee secured a spot as one of the 500 fastest-growing tech companies in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA region). Additionally, EyeSee is the 10^th fastest-growing Belgian company on the list, keeping the ranking it assumed in Deloitte’s 2018 fast 50 list.

EyeSee is honored to have earned place number 198 on this prestigious list, highlighting our accomplishments after another successful year of smart and innovative client-oriented work in the behavioral insights field.

In the past year EyeSee:

• Was recognized as the finalists of the Market research and insight excellence awards,
• Expanded and affirmed relations with our UK clients;
• Grew its talented team, which now gathers over 90 people;
• Launched new solutions and tools,
• Has done hundreds of impactful projects for Twitter, Microsoft, Coty, Johnson&Johnson, Smurfit Kappa, and many others.

The winners were chosen based on the percentage of fiscal-year revenue growth for 4 years, between 2014 and 2017. The Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ EMEA program is an objective industry ranking that recognizes the fastest-growing technology companies in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) during the past four years. The program is supported by the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 initiatives, which rank high-growth technology companies by location or specifically defined geographic area.

With a 489.25% increase in revenue growth in the past four years, EyeSee ranked as the 10th fastest-growing tech company headquartered in Belgium within Deloitte’s 2018 Technology Fast 50 program. Deloitte Belgium annually awards local companies with a technology-related product or service, based on their percentage of growth in turnover during the previous four-year period.

“We are honored to be included in the impressive list of companies honored this year. We have come a long way since last October, with new projects, growing team, and capabilities. It has been a whirlwind, but this nomination shows that we managed to remain in the top tier of the industry through all the changes and challenges we embraced,” stated Joris De Bruyne, Partner at EyeSee.

In 2018, we opened an office in France, launched new solutions, started sharing knowledge via expert-oriented webinars, and upgraded our brand identity. The team currently consists of more than 70 people, in four offices around the globe. Our mission remains the same – making behavioral data accessible to unlock next level insights for our clients. We are looking forward to more milestones by the end of the year!

Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 competition is an annual selection of the 50 fastest growing and innovative technology companies headquartered in Belgium. The competition is open for public or private companies that develop a technology related product or service and that have experienced substantial revenue growth over the last four years.