Recent testimonies of successful business networking - Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme
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Maja Čuljak (Croatia)
Company name: (Start-up)
Sector of activity: Music, theater, events and related cultural and entertainment services
Polona Kuzman (Netherlands)
Company name:
Sector of activity: Music, theater, events and related cultural and entertainment services
Period of exchange: 04/2020 until 08/2020
Duration of exchange: 4 months
Results and benefits
Polona Kuzman is an experienced entrepreneur from the city of Nijmegen (the Netherlands), who has been working in the cinema industry as a technical specialist for the past 15 years. She started her company Green DCP, in 2012.
The business offers services in creation, film and video projection for festivals and events. She also offers more technical services such as inspection and repair of DCP screening copies as well as handles all types of video files and digital subtitling.
New entrepreneur, Maja Čuljak is from Croatia. She graduated in literature from the university of Zagreb. She has nine years’ experience working in film festivals.
Having learned about the opportunities the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme offers, she enrolled for the programme and got in touch with Polona, the entrepreneur she wanted to collaborate with. Thanks to this experience, Maja could open to new horizons and including entrepreneurship. She wants to start a business to offer technical services to festivals and cinemas.
Thrilled by this exciting new collaboration, the two women entrepreneurs undertook a four-month exchange in the Netherlands.
During this learning period, Maja could develop significant knowledge on handling digital and analogue film formats, a key technical skill that needed for the kind of business she wants to start. Linked to this, she also got insights on how to manage a micro-business and navigating the market. Thanks to her experience, Polona was able to give feedback on her business plan and, which could be improved in various aspects.
Experienced entrepreneur Polona helped Maja learn and gain skills about video file management, thanks to her sophisticated equipment, notably in editing and projection of different video formats and in DCP creation.
This collaboration was also focused on reflecting and exploring other options, such as adjusting film festivals for online screenings to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on Polona’s business. Maja has supported in this sense by offering Dutch language tutoring to Polona’s clients. Some research has also been done in their respective target markets, including in customer demands.
The entrepreneurs thus managed to carry out the collaboration, despite of the pandemic, which had a significant negative effect on their industry.
Helping each other overcome the
obstacles they had to face in their work was one of the main achievement of this collaboration.
Challenged by outbreak, the exchange was nonetheless, a pleasant and fruitful entrepreneurial project for both, which brought many positives
outcomes.
Maja feels now more self-confident and skilled to tap in the industry she is interested in. Polona was a great mentor for Maja, both hope for a future business collaboration.
For more information, please contact the local contact points involved in the exchange:
New entrepreneur's contact point:
Act Grupa (Cakovec, Croatia)
Host entrepreneur's contact point:
Quarter Mediation (Utrecht, Netherlands)
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