Stéphanie

Programme: BSc Biology 
Honours Challenge: Entrepreneurship: the first steps to starting your own business
Business idea: “Myosotis Grows”: tours about edible plants, to help people discover the wonders of nature. 

Stéphanie: “My Challenge was about starting a business: how an idea becomes reality, and everything that comes in-between.” A key step was putting yourself into the shoes of potential customers. How do they define a problem? “I reached out to not only friends, but also people with experience in the business world. This was fun and taught me a lot.” 

'The lecturers helped me set up my own ways of connecting to customers'

“Throughout the Challenge, the lecturers played an important role”, says Stéphanie. Their tools, tricks and first-hand experiences helped her get concrete results. “I was able to set-up my own ways of connecting to customers, such as a landing page. This led to a fully booked activity from my business!” 

“Describing the lessons in one word? Do! Take steps. I encountered no big obstacles, but the decision-making took some effort.” That’s where the setting of a course proved helpful. “I knew I had to take a step to continue the journey. With a little push out of my comfort zone, I was able to. I ended up with a small business, ready to be developed further.”

Ka Lee

Programme: Msc Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences
Honours Challenge: Entrepreneurship: the first steps to starting your own business
Business idea: "Evida": online counselling platform aimed at evaluating skincare and beauty products

Ka Lee: 'I have always been interested in doing extracurricular activities alongside my studies. While exploring the opportunities, I was also thinking about becoming an entrepreneur in the future. Throughout the Honours Challenge, I realised how motivating it was to combine my personal interests with my expertise, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed turning this combination into a concrete business idea.'

'I realised how motivating it was to combine my personal interests with my expertise'

'I gained much more from the Honours Challenge than I initially expected. In addition to learning hard skills, such as building a website and improving my presentation skills through pitching, I also learned many valuable life lessons from the guest lecturers who are or were entrepreneurs themselves.'

'I consider the Challenge to be a very valuable learning experience that has helped me better understand entrepreneurship and the steps required to start a business. I would highly recommend this challenge to anyone, regardless of whether they already have entrepreneurial ambitions or not.'