Tag: Hungary

On our first day in Budapest, our Hungarian professor Kristian Orban gave us a lecture about the history of Hungary and its effect on the mindset of the Hungarian people. The whole lecture was interesting but one line stuck with us the most. Orban joked: “Hungary is the St. Louis of Europe.”

He made the joke while describing one of the brief periods of prosperity and industrialization in Budapest’s history. In 1867, the Austrian Empire, compromised with the unrelenting Hungarian separatists to rename the empire the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Under the new empire, Buda and Pest were combined to become Budapest and Budapest grew into the booming modern capital of a significant empire. This was the peak of Budapest’s history and the wealth of the city can be seen in the beautiful architecture that shapes the city.

St. Louis also has a grand past. After the Civil War, it grew to be America’s fourth largest city. St. Louis hosted the World’s Fair and the summer Olympics. It also became a music hub and home to two major league baseball teams. Throughout the late 19th century, St. Louis attracted large and growing companies. New beautiful buildings popped up all over Downtown St. Louis and many of those are still standing today.

Today, St. Louis and Budapest are both optimistic that their future can be as bright as their pasts. We could, thus, easily see the historical similarities between the two cities but it took us the rest of the trip to understand that they are similar in other ways as well.

At a mixer with Cornivus, the Hungarian students described the growing amount of human capital. They explained that education used to be free and is still inexpensive so many Hungarians are pursuing multiple degrees. The country has now been relatively stable politically for about 25 years and that has created the opportunity to develop a generation of well educated people. That generation is choosing to stay in Hungary.

In a different conversation, some of the analysts at Oriens – which is the private equity firm founded by Professor Orban – described Budapest’s growing financial and tech sector. Hungary is one of the five countries in Europe that received the most VC investment relative to its GDP in 2012. Prezi is a Hungarian startup that has gained international recognition. LogMeIn is a Hungarian startup that went public on the NASDAQ. Deloitte, McKinsey, BCG, and Morgan Stanley all have large offices in Budapest.

From our own experiences in St. Louis, the amount of human capital and the tech sector are also growing. Articles in multiple publications have demonstrated that young people are migrating to St. Louis to benefit from the low cost of living. Universities like SLU and Wash U are growing in prominence and attracting more and more talent in the form of students and professors. Prominent figures like Square’s Jim McKelvey are coming back to St. Louis to invest in the city’s startups. McKelvey has also started Launchcode in St. Louis to increase the number of developers and job opportunities.

Now that our time in Budapest is coming to a close, we have reflected back on our week and what we have learned from our experiences. While St. Louis and Budapest still have many differences, their similarities suggest that both cities have a bright future.

Juan Espinosa
David Clark
Jolijt Tamanaha
Kathleen Szabo

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.

Image: Budapest Heroes Monument, Giannis Arvanitakis, Flickr creative commons

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

It was a great way to start the summer for twelve Washington University students to travel to Hungary to experience the Hungarian entrepreneurial character firsthand through Olin Business School’s Venture Advising course.

Though our visit to the beautiful city of Budapest has involved touring and events presented by our gracious Hungarian hosts at Oriens Capital Management and its leader, Krisztian Orban, we quickly began work on three projects presented to us by Oriens.

Oriens is an independent, privately owned boutique investment management firm that focuses on firms located in Central and Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia with activities in private equity and corporate finance advisory.

Our team, consisting of Olin’s Nelson Nolte (PMBA 34), Lena Wang (MBA ’15), Jaemin Ryu (MBA ’15) and Connor Jacobs (BS Systems Eng.), worked with startup !444! (http://444.hu), an edgy Hungarian language media site.  !444! asked us to investigate alternative strategies that !444! could implement to increase its revenue and profitability in the challenging world of online media.

We worked in Oriens’s offices and in Budapest cafes throughout the week and have often been busy late into the evening. We met with the !444!’s CEO and its founder to learn about !444!’s business and then met again to present an initial hypotheses and plan of action.

Additionally, we have received interesting and lively presentations from Krisztian Orban on Hungarian history, culture and entrepreneurial spirit.  Prof. Orban (he’s an adjunct at Olin), explained how Hungary has emerged from world wars and the fall of the Iron Curtain, how those periods destroyed an entire generation of wealth, and left Hungary without the equity to spur its own economic redevelopment.  Oriens has endeavored to raise the necessary international capital that Central and Eastern Europe need to guide it to a brighter economic future.

The real-world experience of solving entrepreneurial problems and our immersion into the Budapest culture has been an unequaled learning experience.

submitted by Nelson Nolte, PMBA 34

After overcoming a series of travel misadventures, twelve weary Olin Business School students were finally united in Budapest on Sunday afternoon.

Tim Liebe, MBA’14, sent this update from the Venture Advising Course currently visiting Budapest, Hungary.

Upon arrival at Oriens HQ, our gracious host, Krisztian Orban, welcomed the troupe with a thorough and spirited narration of the prominent role Hungary played as the landscape of Europe changed through the centuries.

Devastated by tyrannical regimes spanning the majority of the last century, Hungary lost an entire generation of wealth and is currently left without an equity class to spur economic development.  Given this rich history and bounded by a common past, Oriens has emerged to guide Hungary towards a common European future.

An independent, privately-owned boutique investment management firm, Oriens conducts business throughout Central Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia with activities in private equity and corporate finance advisory.  Our team, consisting of Anton Gimmel, Kris Klinkerman, Tim Liebe, and Kyle Tabor, were incredibly fortunate to be given the opportunity to assist in the analysis of a potential addition to the portfolio of Oriens.

Working closely with project director Akos Vermes, our team provided a collaborative effort and performed a tremendous amount of due diligence in analyzing the metrics of the acquisition.

Buoyed by the confidence of successfully navigating the rigorous first year at Olin, our team felt secure in our abilities to provide Oriens with a critical evaluation of the project.  However, despite our collectively exhaustive work experience, our initial research efforts fell somewhat short of expectations and consequently, reaffirmed the demanding nature of the private equity world.

Provided sharper focus, our team is eager to implement the suggestions proffered by the Oriens team and deliver a more robust investment recommendation.

Clifford Holekamp (at right), senior lecturer in entrepreneurship, created the Danube Venture Advising Course five years ago. It offers students a unique global experience by pairing them with startup ventures in Budapest to work on specific marketing and strategy projects.

The complete immersion into Hungarian culture has challenged us all to push past our previously held beliefs of best business practices and appraise decisions from a much broader global perspective.  To that end, the venture advising class experience has truly imbued our team with knowledge that cannot easily be gleaned within the confines of a traditional classroom setting.

Although begrudgingly, we must leave Budapest, we embrace all of the knowledge imparted to us by the wonderful people of this city, and are hopeful that we may someday return to this European cultural jewel.

This just in from Budapest: Ashley Ross, MBA’14, tells us how her team is doing on their consulting project with a Hungarian startup that wants to expand  to the U.S. Ashley’s team mates include: Mark Gillis, MBA’14, Shannon Howell and Thomas Kearney, both BSBA’14.

After a hectic week of finals, numerous flight delays, and multiple lost bags we finally arrived on Sunday, May 12th in Budapest, Hungary for an exciting week working for GPS Tuner as part of the Venture Advising Course offered through Olin’s Entrepreneurship Program.

GPS Tuner is a software company focused on developing outdoor navigation software. The company currently has a strong presence in Eastern Europe and has experienced exponential growth in recent years. The company would like to continue this trend by entering the US navigation market and has requested our assistance in developing a strategy.

We have been asked to provide a detailed analysis of the potential US market for GPS Tuner and a marketing plan for gaining share in the attractive market segments.

This unique program has provided us with the fun opportunity to deliver real business value while being able to learn about various emerging businesses in the Hungarian economy.

We had a great time getting to know the CEO of GPS Tuner and have been able to work on-site at the company’s office all week.

As an introduction to our week we also got to meet the managing partner of Oriens, the merchant bank we are working through. He provided us with detailed information on Hungarian history as well as how businesses operate in Hungary. It has been an invaluable experience to learn about the economic climate here in Hungary, which we can compare with our experience in the US and approach new business problems with a broader perspective.

Thanks to Marcus Theodore, MBA’14, for the great group photo on the Chain Bridge with the Buda Castle in the background on the banks of the Danube.