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For those with dreams of starting their own multinational businesses, the business school or university that they choose needs to be international, innovative, exciting—and, preferably, have a history of producing forward-thinking entrepreneurs.
EU Business School is one such school. With campuses in Barcelona, Munich, Geneva, Montreux and online, it provides students with ample opportunities for international experience, promoting a global business outlook that can only benefit those with ambitions in the startup world.
One example of this is their MBA program, which is offered across all of the school’s campuses, and supported with the opportunity of intercampus transfer to widen the international experience of its students. EU’s MBA also features a dedicated major in Entrepreneurship, designed to set graduates on the road to their creating their very own startup.
EU has produced a number of entrepreneurial alumni over the years—for example, Christoph Kastenholz, the CEO and co-founder of the Pulse Group, and Mark Dencker, the co-founder of Wiredelta.
Another successful EU-educated entrepreneur is Phillip Bückendorf, who graduated with a BA in International Relations in 2012.
For much of his degree, Phillip was more interested in political research than startups, but this quickly began to change when he saw the opportunities that entrepreneurship offered.
“I soon learned that I am more interested in building things that people can use than just writing about the future,” Phillip says.
This is exactly what Philip went on to do. On graduating from EU Business School, Phillip started GoodTime Labs, a tech company that developed the order-ahead app Downtown and the parenting app Hiro Baby.
“GoodTime Labs started out more as a side project with a few friends where we were building different mobile applications around predictive commerce,” Phillip recalls. “The company started off in Germany but quickly moved to Silicon Valley as we were eager to learn from the best.”
It worked—the company received $2 million in funding from international investors and was even featured by Forbes and ABC before closing after four years of business.
Phillip believes that those four years were a valuable learning experience, aided by the actionable advice and teaching he received at EU Business School—and that they have helped him in his current venture, a stealth startup based in California.
Joad Lopez, the CEO and co-founder of multinational gelato franchise eyescream & friends, was also educated at EU Business School, where he studied a BBA. Like Phillip, he believes that the practical instruction he received at EU helped him to realize his entrepreneurial ambitions.
He describes himself as having been a ‘wantrapreneur’ for some time—he was just waiting for the right idea to hit him.
“It was at a night market while on a trip to Taiwan with my wife when I spotted a man selling shaved ice,” Joad recalls. “Coming back to Barcelona I started digging more into shaved ice, and I understood that this was not yet present in the western world, and that ice cream is a high margin product.
“We went through a process of undressing an Asian concept and dressing it up with an international appeal. The creative branding, the concept, the final product, is what you can find today [in our stores across] Barcelona and four other international markets.”
Joad believes that he is indebted to EU Business School’s approach to business education for his start in entrepreneurship.
“My experience at EU Business School was basically a roll out of the red carpet—laying the foundations not only of my business skills and knowledge, but also of understanding the key implications and outcomes of working in a multicultural environment,” he says.
In particular, the experience of networking across borders and cultures at EU was particularly valuable for Joad. He believes that starting your own business is not only about selling; it’s about building meaningful relationships that have a positive and lasting power.
So—would he recommend the school to ‘wantrapreneurs’ like himself?
“Absolutely!” he says. “In all honesty, I would recommend EU Business School not only to aspiring entrepreneurs, but also to anyone who aspires to have solid foundations to go out there and make a difference from a leadership standpoint in this world.”
