Vincent Declercq and Ward Van Laer have just secured €1 million in pre-seed funding for Dalton AI, the start-up they founded to supercharge conversion rates on sales websites. Yet not that long ago, their story looked very different. “Without Wintercircus, we might have just as easily parted ways.”

Few founders at the Wintercircus Startup Campus have a journey quite as unique as that of Vincent Declercq and Ward Van Laer. At the beginning of this year, they walked in with their first venture, FirstMate, which they founded in May 2024. Within weeks, they shut it down and decided to start all over again. “I won’t say the idea wasn’t already in the back of our minds,” Ward reflects, “but being here made it easier to take that step.” With FirstMate, their ambition was to use AI to spread knowledge and feedback more efficiently among software engineering teams. “The problem was,” Ward admits, “no company took the bait. And being surrounded by other startups that were gaining traction forced us to face that reality more quickly.”

With FirstMate out, it was back to the drawing board—literally. Vincent and Ward holed up in a Wintercircus meeting room, marker in hand, and they began mapping it all out: their interests, the lessons they’d already learned, the experiences they’d gained, and the kinds of people they wanted to collaborate with in the years ahead. “We were going really broad and dreamy,” Vincent laughs. “Even my lifelong fantasy of becoming a travel influencer made it onto the board.”

In the end, after a discussion on growth hacking and e-commerce, it was one of Ward’s old frustrations that lit the spark. “During the pandemic, I launched a webshop where you could download and print escape rooms,” he recalls. “It even came with a platform full of visuals and voice actors.” The concept struck a nerve: parents could ‘lock’ their kids in a room for an hour—every parent’s secret dream at the time—and 13,000 of them signed up. “I built the site from scratch, handled the marketing and ad targeting myself, and in the process learned a ton about selling and scaling online.”

But like anyone who has ever run a webshop, Ward soon hit the ceiling of sales tools. “I kept wanting to tweak things I suspected would boost conversions. But most software only lets you A/B test one variable per quarter—and unless you have massive traffic, you can never really tell if A was better than B, or just a fluke. And don’t get me started on the sheer effort it took to add even the smallest new feature to my store.”

The genius of Dalton AI—the company born out of that brainstorming session—lies in how Vincent and Ward turned their expertise in machine learning, mathematical optimization, and AI into a tool that tackles an age-old pain point. Instead of clunky A/B tests, Dalton analyzes vast amounts of data in real time and then automatically tweaks a website’s design to boost conversions. In other words: the kind of solution every growth manager secretly dreams of.

But just as ingenious was the way the entrepreneurs pitched their idea to companies dealing in online sales. “We asked growth managers how much more they thought they could sell in an ideal world—where they could change anything on their site with the snap of a finger,” Vincent recalls. “That’s when we had them. They all threw out huge numbers because they all know there’s still massive growth potential hidden in their websites. The problem? Unlocking it is usually so complicated that they default to pouring more money into online ads—easy to adjust, yes, but rarely the real growth lever.”

By now, every major company knows the playbook for online advertising. One potential customer is lured in by a video promising a healthy product; another because the product is local. “But then both potential customers land on the exact same website,” Ward points out. “Which makes no sense. Dalton fixes that, too. We don’t just optimize sites for any visitor—we give each visitor a tailored experience. Without anyone lifting a finger, we generate hundreds of personalized landing pages. And that, of course, means even more conversions.”

The bottom line? For Dalton, a website is never finished. It’s a living, breathing entity—constantly evolving, endlessly testable, and adaptable not just for broad audiences but for every individual visitor. A bold vision, yes, but one that resonated with early customers and angel investors alike—enough for the latter to pour €1 million into the company. The contrast with Vincent and Ward’s previous start-up, shelved less than nine months ago, could hardly be starker.

“Pretty great, right?” says Vincent, quick to co-credit the Wintercircus Startup Campus for Dalton’s success. “It may sound a little cliché, but being here has really brought out the best in us. Everything inspires—the masterclasses, the other start-ups, the founders, the knowledge, even the building itself. It’s hard to pinpoint, but there’s a real sense of opportunity in the air.” Vincent chuckles. “Would now be a good time to mention we’re hiring?”

“This isn’t just another coworking space,” Ward concludes. “Every start-up here is aiming for something big—you can feel that energy. And yet, it’s just as fun to lose yourself at the one-year Wintercircus rave in the Arena or watch Bicep’s 360-degree film TAKKUUK in Club Wintercircus. Only getting to the gym remains a challenge. I pictured myself there daily, but instead I keep wrestling with emails. Sorry!”