Success Stories 2017

© JADE -­‐ European Confederation of Junior Enterprises

SUCCESS STORIES BOOKLET 2017

Inspiring the next generation of business leaders

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JADE

The European Confederation of JE JADE is the European Confederation of Junior Enterprises. Our mission is to encourage entrepreneurship in Europe by fostering a unique concept: the Junior Enterprise, a non profit business managed solely by students, that invests its earnings into its own development.

By integrating a network of 300 Junior Enterprises in 14 European countries and supporting the growth of its 22,000 members, JADE is one of the most powerful European student organizations that fights skills mismatch and creates great potential for a more entrepreneurial society and active citizenship.

We see the future as an opportunity to further develop JADE in all the universities around Europe, in order to give build a strong network and to give students the opportunity to discover Europe in a different way.

What is a Junior Enterprise?

A Junior Enterprise is a non-‐profit civil social organization, formed and managed exclusively by undergraduate and postgraduate students of higher education, which provides services for companies, institutions and society, under the guidance of teachers and professionals with the goal to consolidate and enhance the learning or their members. Junior Enterprises are similar to real companies, counting with the principles of corporate governance like management council and executive board, and own regulation.

Outside Europe, Junior Enterprises are present in around 40 countries, with over 40,000 Junior Entrepreneurs in the world.

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EDITORIAL

Students fostering entrepreneurship since 1992 Olivia ver Hulst Project Manager

Mona Herter Secretary General

This booklet aims to showcase successful Alumni of the Junior Enterprise network so they can share their experience and the lessons they learned from their JE experience.

They all had the opportunity to develop their entrepreneurial skills and mindset through our concept and this helped to advance in their career, either as an entrepreneur or as an intrapreneur.

We believe entrepreneurship to be not only a set of skills but also a spirit that enables you to turn ideas into actions. It is with those skills and this spirit that our Junior Entrepreneurs can truly have an impact on society and co-‐create the future.

The following success stories will inspire you and provide you with life lessons, it is a gift back to the network from our Alumni.

Learn every day to improve yourself and then go on and contribute to the world.

Check out the digital version for more stories and web exclusives.

Go to www.jadenet.org and look for Success Stories.

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SUMMARY

Understanding entrepreneurship Introduction: Tibor Navracsis on Junior Enterprises

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Success Stories Boris VALET – EY

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Susanne MITSCHKE – mindmate

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Bastian BURGER – Blik

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Julia ESCHELBECK – CISCO

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Marcello SCHERMER – Seedstars World

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Carolina MONTEIRO – Vodafone

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Pedro FERREIRA – Google

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Moritz STUMPF – Sales Academy

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Sylvain FORTE – SESAMm

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Pascal WATTIAUX – Freelance Consultant

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Jacob SASS – Advocado

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Robert GMEINER – Medici Living Group

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Michal LEGOWSKI – TrainBrain Polska

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Contacts

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FOREWORD

Tibor Navracsics Dear European Confederation of Junior Enterprises, Dear JADE, Youth employment is still at unacceptable levels in Europe, while thousands of enterprises in Europe are ready to recruit but do not find people with the right skills. Bridging the gap between education and the labour market and fostering an entrepreneurial mind-‐set is therefore vital – for policy-‐makers as well as for business and civil society.

The work of organisations like the European Confederation of Junior Enterprises (﴾JADE)﴿ has an important part to play in this. As Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, I would like to express my strong support to them and all the Junior Enterprises across Europe; through their daily activities, they support young people in developing valuable skills, boosting their entrepreneurial spirit and ensuring a smooth transition to the job market. This is an excellent way to help ensure that Europe fully taps its most precious resource: the talent of its people.

I would like to congratulate the Junior Enterprise movement for its actions in Europe and around the world and the impact it has on young people‘s lives – and the future of our societies.

Thanks a lot for your commitment and keep up with the good work.

TIBOR Navracsis, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport

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ABOUT Boris VALET Boris Valet works as Senior Consultant in the Transaction Services department of EY. He is 25 years old and graduated from Ecole Centrale de Lille with specializations in Data Sciences & Management/Audit/Consulting.

What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? I was Treasurer of Centrale Lille Projets. The JE aims at providing professionals with consulting projects in a wide range of engineering fields as well as business fields since 1973. In addition to treasurer (﴾budget, cash management, wage payments, invoicing process as well as compliance with social and tax French laws)﴿, I was also involved in the business development of my JE like most of my team members because I deeply believe in the importance for a team to be jointly committed towards common goals.

As Head of Advisory and Training department of CNJE, I aimed at helping JEs with their issues (﴾legal, knowledge and business matters)﴿ and providing them with a diversified and useful training program which gathered more than 6k Junior-‐Entrepreneurs per year. I was also responsible for the follow-‐ up of URSSAF controls on JEs and supporting JEs with customers litigations.

Have you faced any difficulties? Of what kind where they?

In my opinion one of the hardest steps to overcome is to make our clients/prospects considering us like professional rather than students. In this aim one of our main team projects was to be certified ISO 9001 by the end of our mandate. www.jadenet.org

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Boris VALET Senior Consultant in Transaction Services at EY

This was successfully fulfilled in Nov13, enabling us to go one step further in our structure improvement initiative.

Did you build strong links with your team?

Step by step since the beginning of our commitment within the JE our relationships with each other became ever stronger, hence resulting in a true team spirit. Even now, some years later, we are still meeting each other as the JE was a key experience in our respective professional and personal paths. facebook.com/JADE.network

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What skills did it help you acquire? Have you used these skills in your present career?

The JE experience helped me at skills, know-‐how as well as know-‐how-‐to-‐be level.

Indeed, as Treasurer of my JE as well as Head of training and advisory department of the CNJE I have first acquired knowledge in corporate finance, tax and social legal framework and accounting. Then it has enabled me to be more self-‐confident, to overcome my shyness and to develop a professional behavior. Last but not least, it has learned me how to be resourceful since in a small structure there are neither walls nor ways marking off the path to take.

These competences are very appreciated by companies and clearly helped me to stand out from other candidates for the job and internships I was looking for. As my ISO 9001 auditor said to my team when we get certificated: “You have got the same hindsight as 5-‐years experienced workers”.

Boris’ advice

Your JEs are like sandboxes where whatever risk or action you might take you will never get hurt. In one word : dare taking new actions, dare being creative, you would only emerge greater at both personal and professional level.

Have you ever wanted to become an entrepreneur?

I did not strive to become an entrepreneur so far, preferring a more stable environment to start my career. However I am still interested in intrapreneurship as I am responsive to the changes that a company need to achieve to stay attractive and competitive.

So I do not hesitate to participate in some internal initiatives when my operational planning allows me to. For instance I recently participated in some HR actions EY engaged towards French JEs in order to train them and sustain their development.

What do you think is next for your company?

As for most consulting firms one of our big challenges for the upcoming years will be to embed big data analytics within our professional diligences to complete our approach and strengthen our added-‐value delivered to our clients. This initiative has already started at EY and will be further advanced by the end of the year as first analytical tools have been released.

http://www.ey.com/fr/fr/services/transactions

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ABOUT Susanne

MITSCHKE

What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? Within Uniforce she was responsible for HR and in this position, she learned a lot about how to motivate team colleagues and how to organize efficient meetings. In fact, in her startup she is applying a methodology that allows only absolutely necessary meetings only with the people who are concerned. In order to ensure the efficiency, the meetings are held while walking around the block. She has also been working in Sales: cold-‐calling of potential clients or market analyses, which she is now actually doing for her Start-‐up as well.

Susanne MITSCHKE CEO at mindmate Susanne is CEO and Co-‐Founder of mindmate. She studied in Vienna, Milan and Glasgow and was a member of Uniforce. She founded her Start-‐up together with class mates in Glasgow but it is now based in St. Monica, California. The company developed an app to fight the development of cognitive decline like alzheimer’s and dementia.

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Have you faced any difficulties? Of what kind were they?

Many. It is probably the most difficult thing to start your own business. If you want to build a big business, you are facing a hard truth: being unknown, targeting completely new clients, especially in the B2B market, are hard to convince if you do not have prior contacts or expertise in the market. Their solution was to hire people with the required network and knowledge and doing a strong content marketing.

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Did you build strong links with your team?

Yes, Very strong ones. My best friend is a former Uniforce -‐ colleague. I almost do not have contact with my other mates from University, only with my JE friends.

What skills did it help you acquire? Have you used these skills in your present career?

Besides the skills of motivating others and organizational skills, assertiveness is a very important skill needed both in a JE and in a Start-‐up. You need to be able to convince others about your ideas and in order to implement them. Also, political skills -‐ to follow the „chain of command“ in an existing structure is something I learned in my JE. Have you always wanted to become an entrepreneur? And how did your project evolve over university?

I actually got inspired by the Start-‐up & entrepreneurship world by doing an internship at the Start-‐up of a Uniforce Alumnus. During my Masters in Glasgow, I developed the business idea together with my University mates and in March 2015, we decided to co-‐found our enterprise.

What do you think is next for your company?

We are currently the three co-‐founders and three employees in our office in Santa Monica, close to L.A., California. The next big step for mindmate is to increase our user number even more and thereby increasing our revenue significantly.

Susanne’s advice „Just do it!“ -‐ even if people say, it will not work or there is no market for your product or the market is not big enough -‐ don’t give up but try it yourself! We had many critical voices at the beginning but we believed in our product, tried it ourselves and succeeded. http://www.mindmate-‐app.com/

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ABOUT Bastian BURGER What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? During my time at Academy Consult, I focused working on process management.

Especially I was interested in knowledge management and process automation. Of course I also enjoyed networking at meetings of BDSU and JADE which fortunately also laid in my responsibilities.

Bastian BURGER CEO at Blik Bastian is the CEO of Blik, which is a Munich-‐ based startup in the field of active item tracking technology.

Bastian is the former president of Academy Consult Munich. He studied Physics, Computer Science and Management in Munich, London and the US (﴾Stanford)﴿.

Have you faced any difficulties? Of what kind where they?

As presidents we all face(﴾d)﴿ very steep learning curves. This manifested itself in new challenges almost every day. A great team of managers and foremost highly motivated students in the club were the great support I needed for turning these hard challenges into great learning experiences.

Did you build strong links with your team?

Strong links are paramount for a successful teamwork. I was fortunate both that my coworking students where very patient with me and that the other board members and I got along well. If you can rely on your team working together becomes a breeze.

Bastian’s advice It may sound a little rusty, but try to get out of your comfort zone as much as possible. Do internal and external projects.

Take responsibility as project manager or president. It may be stressful but the learnings you will get will pay of immediately and endure. www.jadenet.org

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What skills did it help you acquire? Have you used these skills in your present career?

A great thing about AC is its vivid feedback culture. Hence I could reflect a lot about leadership in general and my behaviour in stressful situations in particular. This is why I believe the time at Academy Consult made me a better leader in the long run.

Have you ever wanted to become an entrepreneur?

It is evident to me that entrepreneurship is one important way to create sustainable social change. The majority of student consultants have the drive to make the world a better place in one way or another.

As a result ideas get passed around very openly and entrepreneurship is promoted openly. This definitely helped to shape the idea behind Blik. Moreover, student consultants have a really unique understanding of a variety of markets that even industry veterans struggle to achieve.

The business understanding makes any student consultant a great potential entrepreneur.

What do you think is next for your company?

We are currently expanding and building up our teams. Blik is on the track of setting a new standard for logistics data globally. Hence, we are looking for talent both in tech and operations. We will work with industry leaders in order to develop our service in close conjunction with the market and are happy for any partner and supporter who shares our vision of a globally transparent logistics.

https://www.blik.io/

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ABOUT

Julia ESCHELBECK While I was born in Austria, I spent most of my life in California's Silicon Valley surrounded by the passion and risk that inspires entrepreneurship. Deciding to set out on a journey of my own, I completed my studies in Europe and Singapore to gain a better understanding of international perspectives. Upon graduation, I joined Cisco taking on the topic and team for co-‐ innovation in Europe. Aiming to bridge the gap between the two places I call home, I work with startups and strategic partners in a cross-‐functional way to drive growth and enter new digital arenas. For me, it is key to not only drive innovation, but also to develop those ideas to facilitate business growth.

What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? Icons -‐ consulting by students focuses on offering students the opportunity to gain experience in the field of consulting while completing their studies. During my time at icons, I worked on several different projects with international corporations. Furthermore, I helped pioneer the student activities fair at my university as well as build a new icons location.

Have you faced any difficulties? Of what kind were they?

Difficulties are part of life. When I came to Europe, I didn't quite realize how different life, opinions and studying are. It was a rough start, with many things not going the way that I had planned. But it taught me to be resilient and to never give up. Resilience is a skill that I take with me and use every day. www.jadenet.org

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Julia Eschelbeck Co-‐innovation Manager at CISCO in Europe Did you build strong links with your team?

I like to say that your life is defined by the people you spend it with. I love to get things moving and done, and icons gave me a network of like-‐minded individuals who reminded me to reach for the stars and take on new challenges every day. The network I gained through the organization has been unimaginably valuable and allowed me to successfully navigate my career. facebook.com/JADE.network

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What skills did it help you acquire? Have you used these skills in your present career?

I credit a huge part of my success to my time at icons. Icons gave me the opportunity to build a network in a new country and now across the globe, to work with and learn from inspiring people and to gain my first experiences leading a team.

Have you ever wanted to become an entrepreneur?

I have a unique perspective to this, as I grew up in the world's Startup hub. Therefore, I would say that the topic is in my blood.

Cisco gave me a great opportunity to drive entrepreneurship and work, mentor and partner with Startups from within a large company.

What do you think is next for your company?

That’s a good question -‐ you'll have to stay tuned. All I can say is watch out, because I know I want to do my part to change the world :-‐)﴿

Julia’s advice There are two things that I advise all those I talk to…First off, don't be afraid to take the road less travelled.

Many people thought I was crazy to walk away from many top American universities and consulting jobs, but it's good to be different! Looking back, I knew at the time that something didn't feel quite right and you need to be daring enough to do what others won't. Those decisions turned out to be some of the best I have made so far. And secondly, whatever you do, take that shot, aim high and give it hundred percent. You will only ever get out what you put into something.

http://www.cisco.com/

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ABOUT Marcello SCHERMER Marcello Schermer works as Managing Director at Seedstars World, which is a company focused on finding investments for entrepreneurs and startup companies in emerging markets.

What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? I was the president of icons, Austria’s largest student consulting organization.

My main role was in building up and connecting our multiple locations such as Innsbruck, Vienna, Salzburg etc.

Have you faced any difficulties? Of what kind were they?

The main challenge back then was how to build an organization that can work across different locations and how to build a proper transition and knowledge management structure that allows us to grow despite the frequent changes in teams that are innate to a JE.

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Marcello SCHERMER Managing Director at Seedstars World

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Did you build strong links with your team?

I became close friends with most of my team members and we are still friends today. Building something like a JE together creates incredibly strong bonds that you’ll have with you for the rest of your life.

Marcello’s advice Get involved, do as much as you can and don’t forget to attend all the international JADE meetings that you can. Only that will show you how massive and amazing this network of amazing people really is.

What skills did it help you acquire?

Have you used these skills in your present career?

Everything I’ve learned that was useful in my professional life, I learned at icons.

I learned how to work in a team, how to have an impact on an organization and how to work, structure and think in a professional context.

Have you ever wanted to become an entrepreneur?

Building platforms for other people to succeed has always been a passion of mine. It was what drove me to help build the best JE that I could and what is driving me today to build the biggest network for entrepreneurs in emerging markets

https://www.seedstarsworld.com/

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What do you think is next for your company?

We’ll see :)﴿

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ABOUT Carolina MONTEIRO I’m Carolina Monteiro, 26 years old, from Lisbon, currently working for Vodafone Portugal in the Digital Marketing team.

I’ve studied Management and Industrial Engineering at ISCTE Business School and worked in Logistics and Operations for a while, just to find out later that my true love was Marketing.

What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? ISCTE Junior Consulting (﴾IJC)﴿ is a management consulting company, that provides innovative solutions in areas such as business strategy, marketing, operational management and human resources.

I’ve worked in the Strategy department, first as a member and then as director. In the two years I’ve been there, we were starting to affirm our competence with recurrent clients, while exploring new areas such as market research and employer branding projects.

Have you faced any difficulties? Of what kind were they?

I would say that the main challenge was related to people and motivation management. As a junior enterprise, there are no obligation or contractual relationships with the members of the organizations, which means that these bonds must be sustained by motivation and sense of responsibility.

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Carolina Monteiro Digital Marketing Specialist at Vodafone, best Master student in Portugal At the time, we were around 60 members and it was a challenge to keep everybody busy on external projects – the most attractive ones.

All the team leaders/directors have grown their skills of leadership to keep their members active in the junior enterprise.

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Did you build strong links with your team?

Every project team at IJC is multi-‐functional, with members of different departments. This strategy of working is not only a way to bring more competences to the “table” but also a way to increase the bond between the several members from the different departments.

Besides, we privileged a lot of team building activities and frequent team meetings (﴾within the department and the work teams)﴿.

I believe that the link with the team and the junior enterprise itself was strong, since we still have a connection nowadays, as alumni of the organization but especially as friends.

What skills did it help you acquire? Have you used these skills in your present career?

My journey at IJC was quite rewarding. I’ve grown up in many ways and boosted my confidence, while putting myself to test with real life business challenges.

Among others, I’ve evolved my communications skills, team spirit and cooperation, contextual intelligence and ability to adapt to the working environment.

Working at IJC allowed me to be more professional and to have a wider vision of the business reality. One of the most important skills that I’ve developed is, definitely, the curiosity. Being constantly asking “why” is a great driver for the business development and reinvention. The experience at IJC has definitely helped me get a job, since many employers consider it as a professional experience and value our will to have an earlier start in our professional career.

Have you ever wanted to become an entrepreneur and how did this project evolve over high school/university?

Being part of a junior enterprise is being an entrepreneur every day. It’s a real company continuously growing with so much potential.

Every member has the chance to identify and build their own “project” to expand the organization to a larger and more competent structure.

I guess that many people that passes through a junior enterprise gets the hunger to create their own project and I would like to do someday.

I’m still getting the skills and the experience to be able to accomplish that dream.

What do you think is next for you?

I usually like to think somewhat ahead in my future and have it slightly planned. My next steps include doing a MBA abroad for a year, maybe working abroad as well, and then return to Portugal.

Carolina’s advice

My advice is to take the most of those years within the junior enterprise -‐ take the opportunities, the projects, the work that are presented. You should get engaged and committed to the teams and never be shy to question and to suggest different ideas, without ignoring the feedback that is given to you.

Take the opportunity to have fun and to meet new friends, while growing up our skills and learning new competences of the business reality.

If possible, experience different functional areas and different industries that will help you to realize what future you would like to have next.

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ABOUT Pedro FERREIRA Pedro is working as Account Strategist at Google. He works with Portuguese companies towards their growth and marketing objectives and their successful business development.

He accomplishes this by providing them strategic and consultative support and by improving Google’s customer experience. Pedro is 24 and Portuguese.

What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? My JE (﴾ISCTE Junior Consulting, Portugal)﴿ was mainly focused on 3 strategic vertices: Consulting (﴾core area)﴿, Training and Research. As Marketing Director, my main responsibilities were managing all the marketing and communication operations, branding strategies, online & offline presence and our JE’s marketing consultancy external services (﴾such as marketing plans or market research)﴿.

Have you faced any difficulties?

Yes and I’m thankful for having faced them.

Difficulties allow us to challenge and improve ourselves and achieve greater targets.

Pedro FERREIRA Account Strategist at Google

Pedro’s advice I would like to share 2 of my favorite insights: (﴾1)﴿ Be willing to hear a “No” as an answer and never give up trying. Some things take time, so never settle. (﴾2)﴿ If you work really hard and are kind, amazing things will happen. It’s true, I challenge you to try it! www.jadenet.org

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During my JE experience, one of the major difficulties was being able to successfully manage a 18-‐members’ team and respect everyone’s motivations and agendas.

This allowed me to understand how to be a better people’s manager and how to foster team spirit and cross-‐team collaborative work.

Did you build strong links with your team? How was working together like?

I do have some very strong links with people who I met on the JE and who I worked with on different perspectives (﴾JE’s management, projects, marketing team, among others)﴿, and I’m glad those links remain very alive today. Having the chance of working with people with different backgrounds and profiles is a truly enriching experience, allowing us to acquire diverse knowledge and also reach further success as a team.

What skills did it help you acquire? Have you used these skills in your present career? Did the JE help you get a job or climb the ladder?

The main skills I’ve acquired while working on the JE were, on one hand, people and team management skills and, on the other hand, business management and marketing knowledge. Both have been always present during my path so far and it surely helped kickstarting my career.

During my first job, I was also managing the marketing and communication operations of a small company, where I was able to apply and develop the majority of the technical expertise I had acquired on the JE.

Have you ever wanted to become an entrepreneur and how did this project evolve over high school/university?

Yes, I always aspired to become an entrepreneur and having the chance of working and managing such a project like this was an exciting and enriching experience. I might create my own project or business venture in the future, which I believe will remind me a lot of my JE time and for sure I might use methods and processes similar to those I discovered there.

What do you think is next for you?

My current position has been very gratifying and my future plans are to continue enjoying it as much as possible, which will allow me to keep discovering different business areas, digital tools and online strategies. I don’t have a clear envisioned next step but I believe I will continue working on the Technology Industry (﴾either on a startup, on a global company or by creating my own project)﴿.

https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/

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ABOUT Moritz STUMPF Moritz founded a Sales Academy at a BDSU congress with two other former JE members.

They are now supporting other start-‐ups in the field of sales training, coaching, process structuring and operations to grow their businesses.

Moritz supports them in planning and operating their sales. Besides that, he is working as Business Development Manager to develop different products which they can offer to start-‐ups.

What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? The focus of my JE is consulting in the fields of HR, marketing, strategy and processes. My focus during my time was in the departments customer development and networks.

Have you faced any difficulties? Of what kind were they?

In the beginning, it was difficult for me to work in teams which actually work (﴾I was used through the university that they usually do not work)﴿, because everyone was eager to learn and to develop themselves. We developed and executed many good ideas to grow our JE.

Moritz Stumpf Co-‐Founder at SalesAcademy

During my time, we faced different internal and team challenges and some financial issues, where we needed to find a solution as a team. In retrospection, these have been great experiences to grow.

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Did you build strong links with your team?

Yes, I did. Working together was and is very good and for me, it is definitely the best output of my JE-‐time, apart from my personal development. I still have good connections with my project teammates. One of them is my co-‐founder, with some others I am working on projects. I am still connected to my JE, now from the customer side, because I know, that I can count on these people.

What skills did it help you acquire? Have you used these skills in your present career?

I think the skills I acquired were the competence to work in teams, a lot of personal development through self-‐challenged situations. Besides, a lot of communication and some hard skills like project management and how to behave right with customers, strategic thinking, … too many to mention actually. During my Train-‐the-‐Trainer, I have grown a lot. I think my JE experience was the enabler for having the self-‐confidence and the necessary basic skills to build our own business. I really think without this experience beforehand I would firstly not have had the idea to found my own business and secondly would not have felt good enough prepared for this journey.

Moritz’ advice

Challenge yourself. Learn by reflection. Repeat.

Since when did you want to work for entrepreneurs and how did this project evolve over high school/university?

During 2013, our JE connected to the founder-‐development-‐ service of my university. Since then my interests, knowledge and connections developed into the direction of entrepreneurship. We went to different founder-‐workshops, did workshops on our own and met inspiring founders and people with great visions. Besides, I always wanted to develop something great with an excellent team (﴾I think and hope we are on a good way)﴿. To be honest, the university and the knowledge I gained there hasn’t helped me that much regarding entrepreneurship.

What do you think is next for your company?

I think the next thing for me and our start-‐up is to get deeper into the start-‐up scene in Germany and to develop different beneficial products for the entrepreneurs based on their needs. With the existing sales knowledge and the existing technology, we are currently working out different services to enable the entrepreneurs to do more efficient and more convenient sales. I am excited about what the future will bring. https://thesalesacademy.de/

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ABOUT Sylvain FORTE Sylvain works as President of SESAMm, which is an innovative FinTech startup specialized in developing Asset Management and Trading Analytics based on text mining of social media, news, blogs and forums. They focus on Big Data, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Quantitative Analysis algorithms to create innovative trading solutions. They are a team of 12 people working with companies all over the world and raised €1M in 2016 to scale the team.

He is an engineer from INSA Strasbourg.

What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? I lead “Alsace Etudes Projets” which was not a JE at the time! My team actually led the transformation: we changed the whole working of the organization and joined the CNJE. We were focusing on the different fields of study of our engineering school, from architecture to mechatronics. I was in charge of management and planning.

Have you faced any difficulties?

We faced many difficulties as we had to completely rethink the organization.

We knew absolutely nothing about JEs and had to gather information, adapt our processes, cut loose projects that could not be accepted by the CNJE etc… We also underwent our first audits, with good results overall but a lot of stress!

I feel this really encouraged us to create a strong JE. The challenge was so big that we implemented strong processes, recruitment methods etc.

Sylvain’s advice Sylvain FORTE CEO of SESAMm

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Work hard, bond with your team and take a look at what’s happening in the startup ecosystem, it’s not that different from JEs!

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The JE continues to grow and is now stronger than ever! This would not have been possible without my team at the time, but also without the next management teams that continued to rethink the organization. I’m really impressed by what they achieved in the last few years.

Did you build strong links with your team? How was working together like?

We came with a very strong group already formed to some extent. As we had to ”rebuild” the organization, the core of the management team was composed of a group of friends.

This helped us work quickly as we knew each other really well. After the first phases, new members added up to the team and we bonded strongly. It was very exciting to build this great team in the school. I always personally felt that managing a group of volunteers is the soundest type of management. You have to always motivate and make everyone see the goal, not force work. I try to apply this every day at SESAMm.

What skills did it help you acquire?

Have you used these skills in your present career? Did the JE help you get a job or climb the ladder?

I would most probably not even have thought about building a startup without the JE. I came in contact with the entrepreneurial scene of Strasbourg thanks to the JE and at the end of this experience, I had only one idea in mind: creating a company! It also helped me with financial aspects of leading a startup and with management.

Since when did you want to work for entrepreneurs and how did this project evolve over high school/university?

I started thinking about entrepreneurship after two years at the JE. My co-‐founders (﴾one of them being from the same JE!)﴿ and I created the company during our Master.

What do you think is next for You/your Company?

So many things! We already have offices in Paris, Metz (﴾France)﴿ and Luxembourg and plan on opening in London and the US in the next two years. We will also continue to scale the team: we’re always looking for high profiles in computer science, natural language processing, machine learning and quantitative analysis. By the way, any former or current JE member should feel free to join us! Take a look at our website.

http://www.sesamm.com/

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ABOUT Pascal WATTIAUX Pascal is working as a freelance consultant and interim manager essentially in the world of sport and non-‐sport event. He works in parallel with technology startups, in which he invests from time to time.

He has worked in consulting firms, large international companies, startups, and sport governing bodies.

What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? The JE was focused on providing technology related services. I was the President for one term and as such was focusing on bringing contracts to the then new JE

Pascal WATTIAUX Freelance Consultant Have you faced any difficulties? Of what kind were they?

On one side at the time the concept of JE was not really known on the market, also, possibly also because the market was then much easier than now, few students were really interested in engaging and building complementary professional skills Did you build strong links with your team?

It was a bit of a startup effort in the world of JE, hence yes the core team had very strong ties

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What skills did it help you acquire? Have you used these skills in your present career? Did the JE help you build your enterprise?

The JE gave me the opportunity to build and nurture some key skills which at the time were not necessarily very pregnant in an engineering curriculum: business development, writing proposals, closing contracts, selecting a team, getting payments on time. All useful skills in almost any circumstances!

Since when did you want to work for entrepreneurs and how did this project evolve over high school/university?

My years at university were years of change.

The first change was in what I was looking at doing professionally. Apart from the JE, I had some other first-‐hand experience with some startups during those years, but then I really turned into entrepreneurship and activities with entrepreneurs only years later after a number of experiences in various (﴾often international)﴿ large companies.

Pascal’s advice Consider options to propose joint work with other JE more systematically. Most interesting projects require a variety of skills which are rarely found in only 1 environment and in any case working in a startup or an enterprise mean mixing talents / mixing with other talents.

Collaboration between JEs would help to build the related skill set and experience.

What do you think is next for your company?

For me, I will probably keep balancing consulting / interim management activities with investing and advising or more directly engaging with startups. For the startups with which I currently work, there are continuous efforts to be made to establish them more firmly on the market .. or to sell them ... or to close them. For the consulting / interim management activities, I look more and more actively at selecting transformative opportunities ... hence entrepreneur like opportunities but in / with large companies. The 2 nurture each other, as for example regularly working with large companies helps me to get startups to better approach them whether as client, partner, or buyer.

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ABOUT Jacob SASS Jacob is co-‐founder of Advocado, one of the fastest growing Legal-‐Tech-‐Startups in Germany.

He studied Business Administration in Greifswald (﴾Baltic Sea)﴿. During his studies, he was always hungry for practical experience and wanted to do something meaningful, but the weak region did not allow it. He met people alike at Capufaktur and they decided to take their fortune in their own hands.

What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? Our JE is mainly active in the fields of process optimisation, marketing and market research. As a result of our outstanding knowledge management, we are able to offer a broad range of high-‐end trainings, that are needed by SMEs which would like to improve their businesses.

Most of the time I was working as a Project Manager in our JE. My job was to acquire projects, build efficient teams and to make sure that we always exceed the expectations of our clients.

Jacob SASS CEO of Advocado

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Have you faced any difficulties?

As I said the region is structurally weak, so our target group was relatively small and as a solution we took great effort to transform first time clients into steady customers. Also we tried to build a strong a network to feed our sales funnel with already convinced leads.

Because the philosophy behind the idea of JE is so venerable and the chances for both sides are huge, it’s easy to convince businessman from the offered services.

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What skills did it help you acquire? Have you used these skills in your present career?

Did the JE help you build your enterprise?

Selling complex services has a lot to do with trust. Today, as I am selling services too, I benefit a lot from the skills I gained during my JE time. Also a lot of my management and soft skills are a result of the project work I did.

I would say that if I wouldn’t have had the chance to participate in a JE, I wouldn't be able to build a successful Start-‐up to disrupt a huge market. It’s really awesome how much you can learn when you are working as a student consultant.

Did you build strong links with your team? How was working together like?

Teamplay is one of the main success factors for projects and a huge competitive advantage to many incumbent companies I have seen. Every project team member was highly motivated to solve the problems of our clients on a very professional level.

This is only possible when you trust the other team members. Besides the learning effect of a membership in a JE, the fun we’ve had is one of the main advantages I really like to look back to. I’m still very good friends with many people I’ve worked with during our projects.

Since when did you want to work for entrepreneurs and how did this project evolve over high school/university?

I think that many JE members have a strong entrepreneurial mindset. We visited a lot of Start-‐Up events together and build a strong network with already successful entrepreneurs.

It was just a matter of time when one of the many ideas we had and we talked about so often turned into reality.

Jacob’s advice You get what you give. So get out of the comfort zone and do something meaningful and connect with people you can grow with.

What do you think is next for You/your Company?

We, Advocado, want to expand our service to other European countries to create there a fair and transparent legal market, too. The challenge is to expand team and product to fulfill our clients needs in the new markets.

https://www.advocado.de/

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ABOUT Robert GMEINER Robert is Managing Director of the Medici Living Group, which he co-‐founded. It is the first professional flat share provider in Germany and is expanding internationally. He studied Business Administration and Economics at the University of Passau.

What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? At INSTEAD e.V. in Passau our focus areas were Marketing, IT and Human Resource Management.

I was chairman of INSTEAD for 10 months and I supported the JE as a member of the advisory board.

Have you faced any difficulties? Of what kind were they?

At the time I joined INSTEAD, the association was in a bad situation overall. Therefore, we had to turn around the whole company, that is rearranging and optimizing a lot of processes and structures. For example, we managed to reorganize the recruiting process to get access to the high potentials of the University of Passau and stop the high fluctuation of members in our JE. Also, we had to put lots of effort into the acquisition of new projects.

Due to all these changes our economic situation improved very well, so that we gathered lots of new customers and increased our consultant days up to 200 per year.

Overall, a lot of hard work, less bureaucracy and simpler processes brought back team spirit and fun for all members of INSTEAD e.V. www.jadenet.org

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Did you build strong links with your team?

I built very strong ties with my team at INSTEAD. I think the reason for that is that our time at INSTEAD was really intense.

When I was considering becoming chairman of the association, I wanted to have a great team of people with me and behind me. The lesson I learned and later on used with Medici Living is: your team is the most important.

Robert GMEINER Managing Director at Medici Living Group

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Robert’s advice Found your own company. Go for it and become self-‐employed.

Entrepreneurship is more than just business-‐related. It’s a mindset challenging and changing yourself and others. It’s a quality of life.

What skills did it help you acquire? Did the JE help you build your enterprise?

The experiences I gained at the JE definitely helped me a lot -‐ without the JE I wouldn’t be where I am today. You could see a JE as a corporate group at a micro level where you can learn and practice by yourself. For example, you learn to think in structures. Another example is the board meetings we held regularly. But I learned so much more: from working in a JE I could improve my leadership skills and gathered an autonomous way of working, I learned how to market things and oneself that is for example the acquisition of projects and demonstrating a professional attitude to clients. It is important to motivate your team and to manage crises. When hiring new staff, I usually want to make sure they have a JE background or something similar. They always bring about a mindset valuable to every endeavour. And they are always welcome at Medici Living!

Since when did you want to become an entrepreneur and how did this project evolve over your studies?

Coming from a medium-‐sized corporate family, my aim has always been to become an entrepreneur.

After four semesters of studying in Passau, I went to Berlin to build up the Medici Living Group. It was a once in a life-‐time chance and I knew I had to seize it. This is one thing, I learned at INSTEAD as well as at Medici Living Group: the world offers you every imaginable possibility to be successful -‐ but you have to grab it! I think that’s also one of the qualities you need to have as an entrepreneur: a can-‐do-‐attitude. Work hard. Everything is possible if you just try hard enough.

What do you think is next for your company?

Our next goal is to successfully step into the US and European market, launching buildings globally. We are on a good way with our new QUARTERS product. But as they say: the sky is the limit :)﴿

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ABOUT Michal LEGOWSKI Michal is the CEO of TrainBrain Polska, which conquers confidently training market in Poland.

They open and close custom workshops for companies.

Michal is specialized in Social skills. He is an accredited ICF coach and business mentor. He graduated from the University of Economics and has many certifications.

Michal LEGOWSKI CEO of TrainBrain Polska

What was the focus of your JE and your work within the JE? In PBDA Consulting as the name implies, we have focused on all sorts of consulting projects, I do not know how it is now. Thanks to my achievements I was offered very fast to lead the sales team, and one year later I became a coordinator of the project office.

My job was to get more projects but I was rarely involved personally in them.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that I quickly started my professional career, I had to leave before I graduated, but it was a very important period in my life. In the second year of my studies, I already had 5 job offers, but I rejected all of them until I decided to work first for a training company. Then I started my own business.

Michal’s advice Think unconventional and adopt a proactive attitude. Test, rethink the strategy and specialise in something. Practice thinking differently than everyone else. Take as much as you can from your JE, but do not stop at what your colleagues do. Do more for yourself and first focus on the development. The rest will come by itself. Good luck! www.jadenet.org

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Have you faced any difficulties?

It was not that easy because the companies did not take us seriously. In addition, we had a few fails when we simply lacked "knowledge" in the project team and had to adjust everything multiple times. There were students having exams... It was not easy, but we always managed.

Everything is possible! Overcoming the difficulties is a large space for personal development. I really had the opportunity to learn a lot especially when things required nonconventional thinking.

Did you build strong links with your team? How was working together like?

People are always the most important. There were hard-‐workers and lazier people, but I usually worked with ambitious ones. A good thing is that our JE was selective. Working with people at PBDA has allowed me to make mistakes that I was able to eliminate when running my company.

I learned to manage the team, communicate with people, and gained good contacts for the future that continue to bring profits.

What skills did it help you acquire? Have you used these skills in your present career? Did the JE help you build your enterprise?

It's hard to say, a little of everything -‐ from people management to communication, all kinds of soft skills in which I'm an expert today, and I am training others. I have also developed project management skills, but the most I appreciate most the opportunity to make mistakes. Today, committing them would cost me money, then I have tested different ways of thinking and have experienced firsthand what worked and what did not work.

Did PBDA Consulting help me to build my own business? It certainly taught me to think unconventional and encouraged to take the initiative. So, I think that it did help.

Since when did you want to work for entrepreneurs and how did this project evolve over high school/university?

I always wanted to have my own company, but did not have the idea yet. When starting university, I knew I wanted to change the world and implement new, effective solutions for business and found out I was good at training others. I immediately found my way and stopped wasting time. Always being part in various kinds of social initiatives developed my strong passion for hard-‐work and self-‐ improvement.

What do you think is next for You/your Company?

We are currently hiring another person. We have a lot of requests from big companies that we try to manage while maintaining the highest quality. All the time, practically there is always something to do for everyone in the whole team. My next step for 2017/2018 is to educate two good project managers who will take over my responsibilities.

Good business works on itself and allows you to rest. Unfortunately, we are still in a fast-‐ growing phase and I'm working even on holiday.

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Remarkable JE Projects MARKET RESEARCH

INNOVATION JE: ConQuest [Warsaw, Poland] Client: Charlie Food & Friends The JE implemented a Business Intelligence solution for a food chain. The software automatizes cost alerts, ensures data correctness, offers tracking of employee’s results and the export of periodical results

JE: ConQuest [Warsaw, Poland] Client: BKZ Group The JE did a large scale market research project on natural oils among suppliers, competitors and potential clients on the Polish, European and global scale. The project was the basis for decision making about an investment project worth 20 Mio€.

SOCIAL JE: CCT [Berlin, Germany] Client: Bosch / Siemens The JE developed a solution to increase the attractiveness of large electro-‐domestic products in retail via artificial reality.

Contributions to client: 1)﴿ Way of Thinking 2)﴿ Agile Approach 3)﴿ Remarkable Results

JE: LisbonPH Client: L’Oréal A project was done in order to increase awareness on skin cancer prevention and diagnosis, evolutionize the counselling techniques and making future pharmacists health ambassadors. Besides a SkinCare Academy & Pharma Tour were organized – with overall 300 participants and a social media reach of 1 Mio people.

GLOBAL JE: JE2S [Paris/ Rennes/ Metz, France] Client: GRDF The JE realized a machine learning project in a large firm. The project helped to make the supply chain of the company way more efficient – 100.000 working hours can be saved each year at their 2500 sites all over France.

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JE: ESCADRILLE [Toulouse, France] The JE created a Satellite in Spain and has sent promoters to different parts of the world in order to create Junior Enterprises in new countries and continents.

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