Why the ecosystem wants us to win: Auditstage builds momentum a year after its first round

As featured in Trends, 14 May 2026 (article by Myrte De Decker). Read the original →

From the audit floor to a software company

Natalia spent nearly fifteen years inside the profession at a large firm, and her heart still lies with the technical craft of audit. But from a front-row seat she saw how inefficient many processes were. When she led the tech and AI team there, she tried to bring technology into the work as an intrapreneur, to make the job more attractive again. She kept running into walls, and realised the corporate world would not move fast enough.

So at the end of 2024, with limited entrepreneurial experience but a clear vision, she left her secure position. She joined the Start it @KBC accelerator, and shortly after her path crossed with Jürgen Ingels, who recognised her drive. His investment fund Smartfin put in 750,000 euros of seed capital, and the platform took its first shape.

A platform built to take work off auditors' plates

Auditstage is software built to lighten the load on the audit sector. It understands the profession's many specific rules. The technology automates the repetitive, often tedious administrative number-crunching, and helps reviewers carry out their audits in line with regulation. That frees them to focus again on what matters: deep analysis and strategic recommendations.

Auditing is a wonderful profession, and our aim is not to replace it but to give it back its substance.

A princely mission to the United States

In late 2025 we brought our first module to market, aimed at mid-sized audit firms. We are deliberately not knocking on the door of the Big Four, the consultants Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG. They have the people, the expertise and the means to build their own solutions, but they do not bring those to market or keep them for internal use. Right underneath them sits our target group of mid-sized firms, where our software package makes a world of difference.

Since launch, things have accelerated. In early October, Auditstage took part in the Belgian economic mission to the US West Coast led by Princess Astrid. Although Silicon Valley is the natural home for tech entrepreneurs, the head offices of the largest American auditors are mostly in New York. So Natalia flew out to the East Coast a week early to explore the market and pitch Auditstage to potential clients, leaning on her Belgian network to line up meetings in advance. In the meantime she reconnected with former colleague Valérie Brouwers, who lives and works there, to run market research. They were highly productive weeks, with a stream of new technology and trends to absorb.

Vibe coding an audit feature overnight

There was a moment that captured how fast technology now moves. Unable to sleep on her return because of the jet lag, Natalia created an account with Lovable, the Swedish company whose software lets people build entire sites or programs from spoken or written instructions, without coding knowledge. So-called vibe coding. Within a few hours she had built a fully operational audit feature. Had she handed the same brief to a developer, it would have taken weeks, perhaps months. It is absurd what acceleration technology is going through. To be clear, you would never put such a result straight into production. It works as a sharp blueprint, to make crystal clear to developers what you have in mind, which is anything but obvious with jargon-laced audit software.

A team taking shape and a new round in motion

A little over a year after its first round, Auditstage has grown into a team of five people, plus an office dog, Sammy. Valérie Brouwers now represents the start-up permanently on American soil. Jonas Plancke, another former colleague, joins the leadership team at the end of May. Auditors work on a regulated playing field, and that is exactly what is needed to safeguard the quality of the profession. Audit firms worldwide face the same challenges, so we are building an international story from the outset, with a team and software of the very highest level.

That naturally takes capital. Auditstage is working on a round of a few million euros, to close by the end of this year. It is ambitious, but Jürgen gave us a choice: go big or go home. He invests, and he sits on our board. He does that less often these days, but he is incredibly involved in how we operate, and that pushes us forward enormously. There are plenty of leads in the pipeline, so the goal is to get the next module to market as fast as possible.

The contacts with potential investors are already in place. And the signals from business leaders and from the sector itself are positive. It keeps surprising Natalia how much entrepreneurs support one another. You can ask for so much advice. Everyone wants you to succeed and roots for you out loud. That is genuinely different from a corporate job, where everyone tries to protect their own corner.

By her own account, Natalia still cannot quite believe she became an entrepreneur. She never thought she could work more hours than she did in corporate life, but it turns out she can, and she loves it. She refuses to choose between entrepreneurship and audit. She remains a statutory auditor at heart and in soul. One day she will return to it, but only once her mission to build a modern audit product is complete.