The Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences starts a course for founders of startups and scale-ups. Bert Bos, a business consultant with 35+ years of experience in helping businesses grow, will help founders get a hands-on impulse to make them grow their company in the Mastercourse Start-Up Scale-Up Business.
In Dutch
“The course will be taught in Dutch and is all about connecting theory and practice, offering useful advice that the participants can actually use to keep control of their business and focus on the success factors that makes their business grow”, Bos explains.
Making business grow
The course will focus on companies from all industries with a potential to grow. “For eighty percent, these companies face the same challenges, problems, and solutions – since they all are specialized in their own field of business and have a founder that wants to upgrade his or her business to a next level. Of course, we notice the growing interest in (fin-)tech companies and alike, but this course also focusses on the not-digital economy, which still accounts for a fair share of the employment in the Netherlands and Amsterdam.”
Support from MKB Amsterdam
MKB Amsterdam, the branch organization for Amsterdam’s SMEs, supports the course and warned in a recent interview that if Amsterdam companies do not live up to their potential, potential job opportunities and welfare will be lost. Bos: “And when companies grow to about 10 FTE’s, they tend to feel accomplished – which can be disastrous. That is why this course is so important: it is not hard to start a business, but to maintain it and make it grow is actually quite difficult. It is all about having an overview. Entrepreneurs tend to be creative. In this course, they will learn to take the next step by discovering how their positioning or organization can be distinctive and help them grow.”