BUPNET begleitet eine neue Jungunternehmerin bei ihrem Austausch mit Erasmus für Jungunternehmer. Melanie wird 3,5 Monate in den Niederlanden verbringen. Über ihren ersten Monat hat sie bereits einen Erfahrungsbericht verfasst.

The first month of my stay in Amsterdam is now over and up to now it has been an amazing and very exciting exchange. My host entrepreneur Gernot and his team from weGrow welcomed me very well and I felt like being part of the team since day one. Right in the first week of my exchange I could participate in a team session to prepare a culture map workshop for one of their clients and – later I also participated in the workshop at the client to see how it worked out. Furthermore, which was really the best start I could imagine, we had a team evening together, played laser tag, bowling and had some dinner. This was a great opportunity for me to get to know all team members better.

I am really thankful, that all team members spent a lot of time during my first month to help me to understand about the work and the services the weGrow company offers as well as their culture and internal organization. This helped me on the one hand to support the team during my time of the exchange and on the other hand gave me a lot of inspiration on how to structure the work for my company, e.g. using Slack as a communication tool for me and my co-founders, which I directly implemented for us. Every week I also have a meeting with my host entrepreneur Gernot to talk about his experiences as a founder, insights into the decision of founding the company etc. or questions I have regarding the current status of my company. This really helps me to focus on the next steps for my company and which aims I want to achieve.

After experiencing this great first weeks at weGrow, the situation for me and the team changed rapidly due to the corona virus. The prime minister of the Netherlands recommended to all companies – if possible – to work from home. We followed his advice and are working now since more than one week from home. Fortunately it was not a big effort, because all work can also be done remotely and the data is available for everyone. Now we have video call sessions, every day, to arrange our work. Up to now it works better than expected and even last Friday we had a full day team workshop via video call. For me, although the working situation has changed, it is even more interesting to see how a company like weGrow handles a situation like this. I really appreciate the openness of the founders regarding the crisis and the situations of the company. We’ll see how it will work out the upcoming weeks. Tomorrow I will have my first call with a potential client via video call – very exciting!