✅ Key features of the challenge

• Students per team: 4-5 students
• Programme: Master Business Administration (UvA)
• Course: Rethinking Startup Scalability: People and Organisational Issues
• No. of hours spent per team: 120 hours
• Duration: April – May
• Deliverables: Presentation and report (in the form of slides) with recommendations and an implementation plan.
• Company time investment: 4-10 hours (short meetings, interviews, final presentation, etc.)
• Matching fee: None

📑 What kind of challenge fits this course?

We love working with ambitious startups and scale-ups that are growing fast and want to build an organization that can truly support that growth. The best-fit challenges are people and organizational questions that matter deeply as a company evolves: shaping a strong culture, improving hiring and onboarding, strengthening retention, clarifying roles and decision-making, designing a more effective structure, improving collaboration in hybrid teams, or building a more inclusive organization through better DEI practices.

This course is NOT the right fit for purely commercial or technical questions. If your main challenge is sales, marketing, internationalization, fundraising, product development, legal, finance, or operational or technical optimization without a clear people or organizational dimension, we are probably not the best match. We also do not act as a recruitment agency or take on purely executional HR work. What we do best is help companies think through the strategic people and organizational challenges behind growth.

If your question is essentially, “How can we scale our team, structure, leadership, hiring, or culture in a way that is thoughtful, sustainable, and true to who we are?” then this course is likely a very strong fit. We would be excited to hear your challenge!

Challenge Examples

The student teams can work on challenges like, but not limited to, the following:

• Help us select and implement a suitable organizational structure to facilitate role definition and decision-making rights during rapid growth.
• Advise us on how to build a scalable talent acquisition strategy.
• Investigate our company culture and advise us on how to determine the cultural attributes that matter most as we scale.
• Help us approach the topic of diversity, equity, and inclusion and develop an adaptive toolbox for more inclusive scaling.

🏢 Requirement for participating companies

• Startup/scale-up with a strong growth ambition.
• At least 5-8 people already employed at the company and plans to significantly scale the organization. 
• Growing or expected to start growing soon.

📨 How to apply

You can submit the challenge directly through the website. Provide a title that summarizes the challenge. Subsequently, briefly elaborate on your challenge (max. 150 words). Click here for a template you can use or use the AI Challenge Generator (see template).

🗓 Planning

• April 2: Deadline for submitting your challenge
• March 31 (or sooner): Receiving message if your challenge is approved by the Course Coordinator
• April 3-6: Matching phase
• April 7: Matches are communicated
• April 8-16: Kick-off meeting with your team
• May 19, 11:00 – 15:00: Final presentations in time slots of 20 minutes (after you are matched to a team, we will schedule your slot)