New Entrepreneur (NE)
Name & surname: José Garrido
Country: Spain
Age: 26
Sector of activity: Social community
Did you already start your business? No, and unfortunately I won’t be doing it
Name of business/website: Settleabroad
What is your future business? My business idea was an app for exchange students that wanted to travel abroad to Spain, since the COVID-19 situation, I found out that right now there is no market for such an app. Therefore, I won’t start the business. Nonetheless my stay with my HE was very good and successful, I learnt a lot thanks to this program.
Host Entrepreneur (HE)
Name & surname: Philipp Stelzer
Country: Germany
Sector of activity: IT supplies for office and communication
Experience in running a business (in years): 9
Name of business/website: FORMATION GmbH / www.tryformation.com
Period of exchange: 02/03/2020 to 13/03/2020 and 02/07/2020 to 21/08/2020
Duration of exchange: 9 weeks
What are the key entrepreneurial skills that José aquired during his exchange in Germany?
My name is José Garrido and I am an entrepreneur from Spain. I have a strong interest in how technology can connect people. That is why I choose to create an app for exchange students. My journey started in December 2019 when I discovered the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs. The program allows young entrepreneurs to contact more experienced ones, who can offer hands-on experience. The challenge sounded very interesting and quickly I started looking for a host that could help me create my App.
I focussed on improving my website, creating a marketing strategy and adapting it to this new normality. Also, I have kept working in the development of the app as well as more general tasks like setting up a team or understanding my business model.
Thanks to Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs, my host and I have managed to grow and improve at different levels, from marketing skills to human resources management.
After this collaboration José has discovered that despite the current events with a pandemic, he wants to pursue a career by himself as an entrepreneur. Concerning marketing and sales, now he can manage a SEO campaign, as well as create good keyword research and KPIs metrics. With social media, José has learned how to create a proper content calendar and how to write content in a way that will attract people. Also, he wants to point out that he has gained experience with cold calling & lead generation on the sales side. But the most important thing that Philipp has helped him with, is understanding failure. As an entrepreneur you are going to face failure sooner or later, even if his project won’t be successful that does not mean that he has to stop trying.
José has helped Philipp to sharpen his company’s go-to market approach with his new perspective on how they are doing things. José’s cultural and educational background gave them a fresh pair of eyes on current topics and valuable input for their current marketing and sales activities.
He actively supported the sales and marketing teams for hands-on learning and experience while creating materials such as lead lists, marketing materials as well as proposals for marketing KPIs and so on.
José also supported their work on business plans and award as well as grant applications. In the short time that José was with FORMATION, he very quickly integrated with the team and helped to onboard new team members only shortly after. Overall, the two entrepreneurs covered a substantial amount of topics for the available amount of time due to Corona.
Both sides agree that the benefits accomplished during these months would have never been attained otherwise, leaving aside the fun and interesting experience at a personal level.
Concluding Remarks
José Garrido (NE): “I sincerely have only good words for my Host Entrepreneur, not only did he help me to understand how to create a business from scratch, but he also let me participate in his company. Since the beginning I felt part of the team. I’ve loved the experience and the program.”
Philipp Stelzer (HE): “José is a great and ambitious Young Entrepreneur. He is very willing to learn and open to trying new things. During the stay he made great progress on his skills and knowledge on how to run a business, also because he kept asking for things he would like to try and learn more about. It was also a great experience for our team to have a young entrepreneur with us who connected and worked well with our team.”