Step up to the challenge!
While it is an open secret, only insiders talk about European Entrepreneurship Foundation’s (EEF) programs.
The foundation launched its first entrepreneurship program in 2009 at the St. Ignatius College, with 15 university students as an experiment. The second course took place in the Ybl Club. Over hundred people applied to a simple Google page announcement, ranging between 20 and 50 years of age.
Meanwhile the program has become a movement in the region, Young entrepreneurs, who have started or are about to setting up their business, participate. The fifth course, called Startup Accelerator, is under way at EEF’s new home at the CEU Business School in Budapest. The program is about launching a venture successfully. In ten weeks, participants have the chance to meet entrepreneurs like Marton Szoke, Adam Somlai-Fischer and Zoli Piroska, who built globally successful businesses. Guest speakers do not offer cooking recipes, instead they share their wealth of experience, their lessons learned and of course their failures. This is the most convincing part for the students: there is no entrepreneur who has not made poor decisions. If you are a pioneer, you experiment. Not the business idea is important, but the team, the passion and the ethical attitude.
Leading Jeremie fund capos participate in this program, too. Zoltan Bruckner (Primus), Ivan Halasz (Finext), Peter Oszko (PortfoLion) and Peter Tánczos (Euroventures). Why? Because they are looking for teams, who work on a promising venture projects. Now, that venture capital is available in abundance, one can see clearly that entrepreneurship know how is the bottle neck. EEF is addressing this void: how to get started, how set up and build a company. Alumni are regular visitors and compete for the 10 seats reserved for them. They return to listen to the guests speakers who come from Munich, Paris or California. Sessions end with a 2 hour networking session, accompanied by wine and cheese sticks.
In the end, teams are requested to produce a professional business plan. During the ten weeks, participants keep competing: who gives the best pitch, who writes the most persuading executive summary, which holds a winning prezi. Competitiveness is at the heart of the entrepreneurial culture. The current program started with 28 participants, two third make it to the finals, where they present and defend their business plans in front of potential investors on the 30 May. According to Mel Horwitch, CEU Business School’s new dean 100 participants are expected to show up for the event!
