'There's more to entrepreneurship than just a good idea. The main thing is to know your customer and that's why I like to work with the lean start-up canvas and the business-model canvas.'

This month's alumnus in the spotlight is Roel Verlaan, he graduated in 2016 from the MSc Business Administration at the UvA and works as a Brand Manager at Heineken® & Desperados at HEINEKEN International in Croatia. We asked him how he got there and which steps he took.

This months' alumnus in the spotlight is Franz-Josef Schrepf, he finished his BSc Economics and Business at the UvA in 2016 and did a MSc in Marketing Management after. Now he is Co-founder & CEO of Tick Done., a venture-backed instant knowledge sharing platform. Check out how he got there in the following interview!

At age 12, Alon Ben Joseph sold Swatch watches in his parents’ jewellery business; at 19, he became Vice President of that same business. He reinvented the jewellery industry by being the first to set up an e-boutique for online sales. ‘Selling luxury products is the hardest thing of all - ultimately, it’s about people’s psychological motives’.

For Aart van Veller, a trip to the Arctic ignited the drive to do something about climate change. The key to solving this problem, he concluded, is our energy consumption. And so Van Veller started his own sustainable energy supplier: Vandebron.

'It’s a very creative job in which all aspects of marketing come together. The great thing about being the sole marketing specialist within an organisation is that you can do it all'

‘Earning your degree is the beginning of the lifelong learning process known as your career. You get a lot more accomplished with support from those around you, and an alumni network can help'