The Cost of Connection

A few months ago I had a call with a Belgian engineer at a robotics company in Zurich. I asked him: "Why aren't you building in Belgium?" He said "The ecosystem's not ready." Replace "Belgian" with "European" and "Zurich" with "San Francisco".

This is the cost of connection — on a local and European level.

The 5x Problem

Every tech job corresponds to 5 more jobs being created. UC Berkeley economist Enrico Morietti analyzed 11 million American workers across 320 metropolitan areas in his book — The New Geography of Jobs.

He found that each high-tech job generates 5 additional jobs.

In 2024, 128,168 people left Belgium. Assume 10% of that in STEM → 12,817.

Let's throw in an average salary of €70k for a tech job, €897M.

And then the multiplier effect jobs with a salary of €40k, €2.5B

In total we're looking at around €3.4B in unrealized economic potential.

The STEM Crisis

The problem starts even before employment.

According to European Commission's Education and Training Monitor, STEM university enrollment is at 18.7% compared to EU's 26.9% average.

In a class of 30:

• 6 will study STEM
• Of those 6 only 2 will graduate on time
• The rest will repeat years, switch programs, or drop out

There's a problem with starting — and then with finishing. Run the math on ~555,000 university + applied students and you get ~20,900 STEM graduates per year. At the EU-average enrollment rate, we'd have ~30,000. That is 9,100 engineers and scientists missing every single year.

The economic loss is not even the most important point. There is the aspect of human capital. These are people who will never mentor an intern, never start a company, and never give their first talk at a local meetup.

Brain drain breaks the chain of people lifting other people up.

The Diagnosis

How many of Belgium's tech problems can be solved by a room full of the right people?

Annual reports like the State of Belgian Tech and State of European Tech analyze the competitiveness of Belgium and Europe.

Here are some quotes from the Belgian report:

• High quality talent is missing
• Entrepreneurship in universities
• Valorizing ambition
• Ecosystem attractiveness

The State of European Tech draws a painful comparison:

"Europe's most mature ecosystems, such as the UK, France, and Germany, reflect decades of investment in tech and as such have created deeper talent pools."

The implication is that success is a function of time and volume. History shows that ecosystems exist in two phases: Foundation and Ignition.

Foundation is infrastructure — universities, companies, capital. Ignition is when the right collisions happen often enough to compound.

France, the UK, and Germany are already dense. The right people bump into each other by accident.

Belgium has the foundation. But the intellectual capital is fragmented across cities, languages and sectors.

How do you ignite it?

To create a startup, you need a reaction between three key profiles:

• The Technical — Ability to deliver
• The Domain Expert — Deep knowledge of the problem
• The Entrepreneur — Engine coordinating the two worlds

In your city — where do you go to find these profiles? If you can answer this easily, that's great!

But if you can't, you just found your bottleneck.

So what does it take to change this? We need a solution that creates density without the decades of investment seen in France or the UK.

This is something that's been done before.

"Go West, Young Man"

To be honest, I've never known the full story of San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. All I know is the now — A vibrant ecosystem of ambitious people, leaving their countries to pursue a dream.

In 1946 there was no dream, there were apricots.

Did you know California accounts for approximately 95% of U.S. apricot production? Probably not. There are more interesting things happening there now.

There was no way the future of American tech would be conceived in an orchard. All while Route 128, "America's Technology Highway" in Boston was drowning in military contracts, high profile talent and prestige.

Frederick Terman dreamed of a different future. How do you compete with Boston? You build something different. He started building the infrastructure for what is today known as the Silicon Valley.

First by supporting his two students, Hewlett and Packard with $538 and a garage.

Then with Stanford Industrial Park — renting space to companies to remove the friction between students and professionals.

The culture of non-competes and admin complexity was left in the East. Things moved faster than ever before. The average tenure was just 2 years.

Everything was optimized towards removing the cost of connection and creating collisions.

In 1975, 32 hobbyists gathered in what was known as the Homebrew Computer Club.

A space where techies could share knowledge, swap parts and show off their inventions.

At some point an engineer named Steve Wozniak brought a computer to the table, and the rest is history.

"Without computer clubs there would probably be no Apple computers"
— Steve Wozniak

Can you identify a Homebrew Computer Club for your profession? In your city or country?

The Cost of Connection

Ecosystems are made of dots and lines. An event is a dot while a community is a line. Dots don't compound — lines do.

The difference between a stalled ecosystem and a thriving one is whether the same people keep running into each other. Suddenly faces become familiar and turn into co-founders, investors, employees.

But when friction is high, these lines never form. Fortunately, friction is something that can be removed at every level.

The Government — In the 90s, the Swedish government subsidized home computers. The downstream effect of lowering the barrier to entry was Klarna.

"Computers were inaccessible for low-income families such as mine, but when the reform came into play, my mother bought us a computer the very next day."
— Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Klarna founder

The Infrastructure — Today, the barrier to entry is being lowered by physical hubs that force density — for example Station F in Paris, Maria 01 in Helsinki and Wintercircus in Ghent.

The Community — The social fabric. Student-led giants like Slush and the START Network. Technical labs like the ETH Zurich Robotics Club. Organizations like Tech Europe and my beloved North Star that actively weave the network tighter.

When these work in harmony, the lines form on their own.

Ecosystem building is a team effort. But ultimately, it comes down to people like you and me who want to see the world in a different way — and take action to shape it.

This is why I started North Star — a fight against friction, a push for a stronger ecosystem in AI & Robotics. In just 9 months we organized 12 events and built a community of engineers and entrepreneurs. As we enter 2026, we move beyond just events to building permanent infrastructure — in Belgium and Europe.

Turn the dot into a line — follow us here and reach out to me personally here.

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