Alumnies talk: most valuable skills and knowlegdes from STARTER program

What benefits do STARTER alumnis see from the program themselves? We researched this in the fall semester of 2020 from STARTER graduates.

Among the respondents there were representatives of 21 nationalities. Slightly more than half (60%) of the respondents had previous contact with business. One third had the example of parents of entrepreneurs.

The most useful experience of the STARTER program 26 different aspects were brought out, but most popular answers were:

mentoring (34 respondents)
elevator call experience (19)
idea development (19)
teamwork (16)
Start Up Speed ​​Dating Night mentoring event (14)
workshops (13)
feedback (11)
new contacts (10)
new knowledge (9)
networking (7)

96 percent of respondents would recommend the program to a friend.

The highest rated topics were creating a business model, generating ideas, forming a team, teamwork and presentation skills.

Mentors gave a lot of useful advice to the participants – 30 ideas on different topics were presented. The most valuable advice topics from mentors were:

Focusing on the idea (16 respondents)
confirming the potential of the idea (15)
defining the target group (12)
helping with financial issues (11)
presentation skills (10)

More than half of the participants in the program are interested in further developing their idea now and 25 percent in the future. 28 percent of the respondents plan to continue in the incubation program, such as Prototron, Brain Hunt, Tehnopol, STARTER, Negawatt, Tallinn Creative Incubator, Silver Economy Hackathon, Plus and Play, Mektory, Garage 48 and CleanTec for EST. 26 percent received the courage and inspiration to move forward with some new ideas in the future after graduating.

 

Photo by UT Startup Lab – Team Pölt