Summer 2017: Social inclusive entrepreneurship in Amsterdam

After finishing an academic year abroad in Amsterdam, Clara couldn’t help it and stayed for the summer.

In the process of trying to find some meaningful project where I could contribute to, I found DELITELABS, a social inclusive pre-startup school where participants can develop their ideas and transform them into businesses.

DELITIELABS is “a pre-startup school that promotes entrepreneurship among refugees, locals and recent migrants through trainings, education, mentoring and incubating promising startups.”

This is done by providing participants with market research, branding, social media or ideation sessions, among others. Sessions are directed by professionals in innovative companies in Amsterdam. Once the lesson has finished, participants work on further developing their projects. While doing this, they are assisted by both the professional from the company, and the DELITELABS team.

In this way, participants learn how to create a business out of scratch, how to adapt to a new business environment, and how to establish the contacts to allow them continue growing, if needed.

The co-working space where individuals work on their project while making use of synergies allows participants to strengthen their concepts. Apart from this, the constant flow of creative ideas and the multicultural atmosphere make the experience even better.

The one thing I liked the most during my time at DELITELABS was working on ideas. Thinking, designing, analyzing, or prototyping are processes that allow participants to achieve effective outcomes. I collaborated with the team by helping participants to carry out market research, competitive analysis, customer centric strategies, branding or to create a business model.

Projects being developed at DELITELABS during this summer include a high quality and personalised photography souvenir from the city of Amsterdam, a fashion platform where users can gather inspiration and shop online, fish spas located in cafés around the city (as crazy and awesome as this sounds) or a pair of minimalistic shoes for babies through which mums in different parts of the world can establish bonds. These are only some of the innovative concepts, stay tuned for more info on these amazing projects!