✅ Key features of the challenge

• Students per team: 5-6 students
• Programme: Amsterdam MBA Programme (UvA)
• Course: Scaling-up Businesses
• No. of hours spent per team: 120 hours
• Duration: April – May, 2026
• Deliverables: Presentation and report (in the form of slides) with recommendations and an implementation plan.
• Company time investment: 8-12 hours total (some emails, short meetings, interviews, final presentation, etc.]
• Matching fee: None

📑 Challenge Examples

The student teams can work on challenges related to: 

1. Strategy development & execution
2. People & organization
3. Cash & capital 
4. Marketing, sales, and go-to-market strategy

Challenges can be like, but not limited to, the following examples and teams can potentially engage more than one challenge at a time (note on expectation management: there is only so much a team of students, capable as they are, can do within a few weeks - keep it real please!):

• Select and implement a suitable organizational structure to facilitate role definition and decision-making rights during rapid growth
• Build a scalable talent acquisition strategy
• Investigate company culture and advise how to determine the cultural attributes that matter most for scaling
• Analyze market category to decide on which category positioning strategy to deploy
• Analyze sources of cash to fuel growth and identify the key financial levers to improve cashflow
• Advise on valuation-increasing milestones that would improve chances of raising growth capital from VCs
• Come up with or improve scaleup growth strategy
• Establish a continuous due diligence system (e.g., OKR) through which leadership can get timely pulse checks on progress towards strategic objectives

🏢 Requirement for participating companies

• Demonstrated clear understanding of product/market fit 
• Generated revenue of about €3M+
• Headcount of at least 15 employees
• Strong revenue or employee growth (or at the very least strong ambitions for such growth) 
• Very recently raised, currently raising, or preparing to raise a major funding round (5M+; series A+)

Companies would especially stand to benefit from participation if they are willing to collaborate with our students at the executive team level. 

Some of the companies we successfully collaborated with in the past: Brenger, ValueBlue, Sitly, Boldking, Brandt & Levie, GrowthTribe, Silverflow, Delft Circuits, Franka Emika, Tiqets, Biller, ParkBee, and Valyuu.

📨 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

• March 25: Deadline for submitting your challenge
• March 25 (or sooner): Receiving message if your challenge is approved by the Course Coordinator
• April 3-7: Matching phase
• April 8: Matches are communicated
• April 9-17: Kick-off meeting with your team
• May 20, 18:30 – 22:00: Final presentations in time slots of 20 minutes (after you are matched to a team, we will schedule your slot)