Nordea Business School closes its fifth training season
On May 13, the support programme “From Investor to Idea” of the Nordea Business School for new entrepreneurs closed its fifth training season. Sixty new and potential entrepreneurs participated in a six month long training. Twenty of the boldest new entrepreneurs successfully presented their business ideas to potential investors.
In a survey of over 100 participants of the last three seasons of the Nordea Business School who tried their hand at business with varying degrees of success, 66% indicated that they continued their business after mastering the programme. In turn, approximately 40% managed to attract funding — by receiving support from private investors (29%), participating in business incubator programmes (10%) or using other alternative sources of funding.
Entrepreneurs who ceased business named lack of funding (20% of respondents) or a possibility of resuming a paid job (17%) as the main reasons. One in ten named both the professional team and the attraction of strong business partners as keys to successful business performance. Over 90% of entrepreneurs mentioned that they would gladly resume their business, naming financial security (31%) and a competent team from the very beginning (26%) as the main motivators for resuming business.
Currently, business is the main source of income for over a half or 59% of surveyed Nordea Business School graduates.
For the fifth year in a row, new and potential entrepreneurs gained valuable knowledge, received practical advice and accumulated experience for six months free of charge to successfully start their business. In assessing over 200 business idea applications, the authors of 60 of the most viable ideas participated in training and one third of them presented their ideas to potential investors.
About the Nordea Business School
The philosophy of the programme “From Idea to Investor” of the Nordea Business School is to give new entrepreneurs “a fishing rod, rather than fish” in cooperation with the best Latvian experts in their fields and leading training and consulting companies to provide a full business training cycle — from developing a business plan, planning financial flow, and consulting on sales and export, to mentoring and coaching, marketing and brand management consultations, as well as a “rendezvous with investors” at the end of the programme.
Partners of the Nordea Business School: The Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, the Mentor Club of the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, the Business Support Association Līdere, the knowledge and innovation society ZINIS, the coaching service company Baltic Coaching Centre, personnel training companies Triviums Apmācība and Fontes Vadības Konsultācijas, sales and marketing lecturer Kārlis Apkalns, the Latvian Packaging Association, Latvian start-up company Fastr, Kwintet production, logistics specialist Ilzе Baumane, intellectual property protection consulting company TriaRobit, entrepreneur and cost-benefit analysis expert Normunds Čiževskis, export consulting and market research company GatewayBaltic, accountancy service company NUMERI, law firm Markvarte Lexchange and recruitment company CV-Online Latvia, the consulting company Demarsch, business information service LID, the Young Entrepreneurs Centre, the finance company Capitalia, the creative advertising agency DDB, logistics expert Uldis Piekuss and the Business Efficiency Association, as well as the Latvian Development Financial Institution Altum.
More information is available at www.nordea.lv/biznesaskola