Our team

Stijn van Daele

Founder / CEO, Stretch Innovation

Stijn van Daele is the founder and CEO of Stretch Innovation. He started Stretch in 2020 as an innovation partner that helped companies, many of them in food, develop new business concepts and bring them to market. As the market changed, he moved Stretch towards growing the core of a business: connecting marketing, sales and data so that growth becomes predictable instead of one-off.

He leads the vision behind the Growth Engine approach and is also co-founder of Falora, the growth platform that builds on Stretch's method with AI agents. He was named in Forbes 30 Under 30.

Stijn van Daele on LinkedIn

AI and search 5 min read Why a lesser-known competitor can outrank you in AI answers Ask an AI assistant who can help with your problem and a smaller competitor may be named while you are not. It is rarely random. What the research says about where AI answers come from, and what to do about it. Stijn van Daele Founder / CEO 26 Sept 2026

Growth strategy 7 min read What does commercial due diligence cover? A guide for private equity and M&A teams What a commercial due diligence looks at, how it differs from financial due diligence, which red flags matter and what a decision-ready report should contain. Stijn van Daele Founder / CEO 23 Sept 2026

Growth strategy 4 min read Growth experiments versus marketing campaigns: what is the difference and when to use which A campaign delivers a planned output. An experiment tests a hypothesis. How to design a good growth experiment, how to prioritise them, and when a campaign is still the better choice. Stijn van Daele Founder / CEO 2 Sept 2026