6-week training by experienced entrepreneurs and top experts for an international group of ambitious innovators. The exact dates will be announced in Q1-Q2 2023.

Futurepreneurs Dutch Open is an online experience for empowering young, motivated and talented students and young professionals with entrepreneurial ambition. It provides them with all the tools and skills to start their journey. They can test their fresh skills and knowledge by embracing one of the challenges provided by our industry partners or introducing their idea of the concept.

The programme helps them to answer several important questions:

• What does it take to be an entrepreneur?
• Am I the right person to lead a startup or join a team?
• How do I start?
• Do I already have the right idea or concept?

Who is it for?

There are many ways to join this experience, whether you are a teacher, a student, an experienced entrepreneur or a challenge owner.

Schools & Universities

As an educator you can improve your curriculum by offering your students to solve real challenges and give them the opportunity to expand their network. Use Futurepreneurs to offer your motivated students real-life challenges from real companies to make your course more relevant, engaging and fun.

Main benefits:

• Real-world examples of entrepreneurship
• Focus on the problem
• Support motivated students
• Grow your network

Challenge owners

Many organisations can use this programme as an opportunity to explore the potential of talent for future solutions. Whether it is a short-term problem or long-term, young brains can bring unexpected interventions to your company that you could not have conceived alone.

Main benefits:

• Access to international talent
• Get fast and applicable solutions for free
• Expand the network of potential partners

Students & Young Professionals

If you want to validate your idea and learn about setting up your team, making the first steps in concept development and pitching for a jury. Futurepreneurs is a great opportunity to gain relevant experience, boost your skills and grow your network by solving real-life company challenges.

Main benefits:

• Learn by doing
• Become a part of a diverse team
• Practice solving real-life challenges
• Expand your network

Mentors & Experts

As a mentor, you will support one or several young energetic entrepreneurs in their business development. From the start, you will make a close connection with talented students/ entrepreneurs. With your expertise, you will guide them and move towards a better, more thoughtful idea. It is very inspiring what you will be able to do together with international talent.

Main benefits:

• Opportunity to support future entrepreneurs in their business development and design
• Promotion on social media channels
• International connections with the possibility to gain new potential partners

Programme & Timeline

Futurepreneurs is a year-round programme that consists of several main activities.

The programme is divided into two phases.

In the first phase, we involve all the educators and important stakeholders to run the execution phase.

The execution phase is the part where we facilitate educational weekly workshops for students that are interested in becoming future entrepreneurs. We start with the kickoff, followed by the workshops and end with the pitch event.

The workshops

The core of the programme is a series of 6 masterclasses and workshops, all online, open to teams and young professionals. The programme ends with a pitch event where we involve our stakeholders and a jury. The best teams will get a scholarship that enables them to develop their idea into a viable business with support from WorldStartup. Application is open for students/young professionals and teams and participation is free of charge.

Workshop structure

• 45 mins inspiring speaker
• 5 mins break
• 30 mins workshop
• 10 mins Q&A
• Extra: Open hour every Friday for questions and support.

What will futurepreneurs learn from this programme?

• Analysing your personal skills and building a team;
• Defining your mission, vision and values;
• How to ideate, pick the best ideas and transform them into a concept;
• Validating the problem you want to solve;
• Understanding the impact your concept can make;
• Analysing trends;
• Set up a prototype and test to validate your concept;
• Creating a roadmap with short-term and long-term goals;
• Learn how to pitch your story.