Founder · Director
Paul De Cannière
Operator-investor with twenty years in software and infrastructure. Belgian ICP Community Organizer. Plays chess online as Allusion-dc.
Allusion BV was founded in 2018 by Paul De Cannière as a personal operating vehicle. Today it's three practices under one roof — Ventures, Infrastructure, and Lab — sharing a building, a balance sheet, and a set of convictions about what foundational systems look like.
Allusion began in 2018 as the vehicle through which Paul supported organizations working on cohousing, short food chains, inclusion, and alternative energy. Patient capital, advisory work, the occasional bridge loan.
In 2019 the first venture investments went out. In May 2021 we onboarded as the first Belgian Node Provider for the Internet Computer — a decision that put real hardware behind the conviction that decentralized infrastructure was about to matter. We've been operating that infrastructure ever since.
The Lab pillar — research, experiments, long-horizon bets — grew out of the operational practice. Some of it became Aviate Labs. Some of it became ICP Belgium. Some of it stays internal as the kind of work that doesn't fit a portfolio thesis but feeds everything else.
The model is unusual: an operating company, an investment vehicle, and a research lab sharing a balance sheet. It works because each pillar makes the others more honest. Founders we back become operating partners. The hardware tells us what's actually hard. The lab keeps us from getting stale.
A small, deliberate group. Decisions are made in person at Predikherenlei.
Operator-investor with twenty years in software and infrastructure. Belgian ICP Community Organizer. Plays chess online as Allusion-dc.
Capital allocation, structuring, and the unglamorous discipline that lets a small firm operate at this scope. Co-founder of Brontide Partners.
Built Node Monitor and most of the operational stack. Leads Aviate Labs and the academic-advisory work with KU Leuven and VUB.
Investment manager and contractor. Sources, screens, and follows portfolio companies — and built the predecessor of this website.
Runs ICP Belgium operationally — events, the coworking space in development, and the day-to-day rhythm of the Predikherenlei community floor.
First checks into pre-seed and seed founders in digital infrastructure, health tech, and energy. €50K — €400K opening ticket; follow-ons up to €5M.
Internet Computer Node Provider since May 2021. Three Belgian data centers, three subnets, full redundancy. Aviate Labs runs the monitoring layer.
Research, experiments, and community work that doesn't fit a portfolio thesis — HORUS maritime consortium, ICP Belgium, brand systems, the occasional pamphlet.
Patient capital, operational depth, and the willingness to say no. We pass more often than we invest — and we say why.
The Allusion identity is distilled from the engraved frontispiece of François Mazois, Les Ruines de Pompei (Paris, Firmin Didot, 1812). Five colors, two typefaces, one disciplined system — built to age well in correspondence, presentation, signage, and the occasional building.
Petrol · Bone · Ochre · Ink · Slate — five tokens, one accent per view, no gradients. Set in Newsreader and Hanken Grotesk.
The current Earth-as-'o' wordmark by Martine Decroos has served Allusion for years. With the Mazois palette as the new visual anchor, three replacement directions worth weighing. Direction 01 is the recommended primary; the others are real alternatives, not filler.
allusion in lowercase italic Newsreader, the 'i' rebuilt as a clean stem with an Ochre accent dot. The wordmark and the brand-signature are the same gesture. Reduces to a single 'a' as favicon or social avatar.
Mazois-direct: Roman inscriptional caps in Newsreader, set wide, with an Ochre baseline rule and Hanken eyebrow underneath. Makes the archaeological provenance explicit. Risks reading as academic or institutional.
A Pompeian-fresco-derived 'A' mark with an Ochre keystone fragment, paired with the lowercase italic wordmark. Honors the icon-plus-text tradition of the current logo while replacing the figurative Earth with material, archaeological geometry.
Note: these are working directions, not finished marks. If Direction 01 is chosen, the next step is to commission a clean typeset of the wordmark — ideally with Martine Decroos, who built the current Earth-globe identity.
Founders, researchers, would-be collaborators — drop a line. We read everything.