This week I read an interesting article about incubators which helped me a lot regarding the way I have to write my second article. The article was about the way incubators should cope with their clients and how they should manage the expactations of participants. While I am a frequent visitor of the ACE-Venturelab location startupvillage I thought it would be nice to share my thoughts with you from this beautiful location. Have fun!

I recorded my vlog during the first time I was ice skating in the open. This week I worked on my thesis by reading a couple of articles for inspiration and thinking about the definition of my contribution to the literature of the development of social networks.
– I came to the conclusion that the combination of studying and starting a business isn’t ideal as long as the student doesn’t choose for the development of his business. Weak ties won’t commit themselves to student entrepreneurs who haven’t put their company on the first place.
– Student entrepreneurs who sticked to their launching costumer and couldn’t find another customer were bound to fail and in some cases became employees of their first client because of their skills.
– Students that were able to build a diverse clientbase convinced weak ties to commit themselves to their startup and gained legitimacy by doing so. Winning awards and taking care of free publicity helped them further.
– An important difference compared to non student entrepreneurs is the goodwill factor. The student entrepreneurs that were able to consolidate contacts won over by goodwill in the first instance were able to survive on the long term. Lees verder →

This week on monday I received feedback on my second article from my promotors and we made appointments about how I should work on my third and fourth article.
I read an article about the Gioia method of qualitative research and I also read a very interesting article about incubators with a very clear methodology and presentation. I also interviewed an entrepreneur who started his company 8 years ago during the minor: Maurits Meester.

In 2007 Noelle was one of our students at the minor entrepreneurship. She was doing her bachelor pedagogy and was interested in starting her own child daycare center. In 2007 she wrote her business plan as her thesis and after graduating she started searching for the right location. In 2009 she found the right spot in Utrecht and was able to finance the start of her company kdv de melkfabriek  In 2013 she started her second child daycare center and now in 2016 her third center was launched. In this interview she tells about her ambition: