How These Entrepreneurs Used Their MBAs to Launch Startups

Getting your hands dirty with practical experience during an EMBA can be the perfect path to creating your own company, even during the program itself. The Global Team Project (GTP) - part of the 

Global Executive MBA (GEMBA) at WU Executive Academy -  is a cross-border experience where teams of up to six students work on business projects virtually, across different time zones, continents, and cultures. Students from Vienna’s WU Executive Academy work alongside colleagues from Lingnan College in Guangzhou, China, and the Carlson School of Management in Minnesota, USA.

In the final week of the project, students meet in-person at Carlson to perfect their projects, ready for presentation. If they take the initiative and make the most out of the experience, a real startup can even be born.

The Global EMBA alumna, Elena Solomatina, had established a small IT company in Russia before joining WU. This team project coincided perfectly with her plans to diversify her business. Her team of executives from the American and Chinese EMBA programs chose to work on her idea and created a startup providing holiday apartments in European cultural capitals.

Fellow alumn, Harald Trautsch, who graduated from WU’s GEMBA in 2012, was already the founder of a multinational insurance tech company, when he started at the school. Out of his GTP experience, he co-founded his second startup, iVoting, an interactive, real-time polling tool still used around the world by businesses and universities today.

When Harald was considering EMBA programs, the GEMBA’s 3 international residencies worldwide, stood out. Through them, he met with senior executives from firms like Estée Lauder and Thomson Reuters. Yet perhaps the most international and demanding aspect of the program for him was the Global Team Project.

Although the project is structured with milestones and regular feedback from faculty, time zones are understandably a big challenge. Harald’s team included two from the US, one from China and another in Poland. This left a very narrow window to communicate, which had to be balanced with busy working lives.

For Harald, the biggest eye-opener was the cultural diversity of the group and the different approach each student took to solving problems. “The US model is very much trial and error whilst the Chinese are far more cautious,” he explains.

Because the team’s goal was to build a real entrepreneurial venture this only added to the pressure. Compromise, patience, diplomacy, and the ability to choose your battles wisely were some of Harald’s major takeaways. “Sometimes being nice is more important than being right,” he smiles.

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