Panenco was founded in September of 2014 by
Egwin Avau and
Maarten Baeten. Following their studies at KU Leuven with a degree in Information Systems Engineering, they started out in the university's student incubator center -
KU Leuven KICK - to lay the foundations for a mixed service and product strategy. Teams started to shape up in Belgium, Ukraine and Portugal, amounting to 40+ specialists. Maarten joined McKinsey & Company in 2018, yet he remains Panenco's biggest fan from the sidelines.
The offices quickly moved towards the Innovation and Incubation Center from KU Leuven on the Heverlee campus, followed by a move towards the
Van der Elst building in Leuven in October of 2020. Over the years the activities kept broadening into a full-service product development offering. Panenco has been following an organic growth trajectory, and aspires to continue to do so. The company's success will be the sum of the product successes.