Students in the Venture Advising  Consulting Course taught by Clifford Holekamp, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship, spent 10 days in Budapest, Hungary this month working with real startups, solving real problems, and learning about Eastern European history and culture. Each team in this year’s course submitted a blog post about their experience.
N’Goundo Magassa submitted this post for his team.

Our team: Four students, from four different backgrounds. The only common thread between us is that we’re Olin-educated. The task:assessing a market entry into a new industry for a market leader in construction equipment rental.

Of obstacles there are no shortage. Aside from the very new-to-us accounting system employed by our European counterparts,and the very present language barrier that some times slows communication, we find that common threads of business remain the same, and that our preparation in the halls of Simon Hall have given us the tools and capabilities to create value despite the aforementioned hurdles.

Our project has led us to research topics ranging from the European farming subsidy system to ascending 10-meters on a scissor lift, and as we sit here writing this post, we’re excited for the places that this project will take us as we work through it to completion.

We’ve found that despite its small size, Hungary has no shortage of talented people to learn from. This experience has allowed us to work shoulder to shoulder with international business students. Learning about their educational system, and how it differs from ours; we’ve shared ideas about what it means to be a business academic in this increasingly global world.

Indeed, even in our own group we’ve had the opportunity to encounter a diverse professional pedigree truly making this an immersive learning experience wherein our backgrounds and education give us each unique problem solving approaches to learn
from and utilize.   At the end of the day, we’re all here to learn and grow our base of knowledge both professionally and globally.

As the week concludes, we’ve finally found the direction to take for our project with the help of our advisors here in Budapest.  With a Hungarian learning curve to overcome, sorting through this complex business problem at the start of the week seemed like an insurmountable task, but with the help and guidance of our advisors both here and at Olin, we’re confident that in a few weeks time we’ll be able to provide a sound and feasible solution to this real world issue.

Team:
Seung-Gwan (Paul) Ahn
Alaina Flowers
N’Goundo Magassa
Spencer Romo