Let a team of experienced MBA students help you overcome scaling-up challenges.
✅ 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:
Strategy development & execution
People & organization
Cash & capital
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)
We're happy to have you on board 👋
This will happen next 👇
Once you registered your team, get together (offline or online) with your team asap, to discuss which challenges you want to work on and why, and submit this selection. Deadline is April 3.
Subsequently, the participating organizations will rank the teams that want to work on their challenge on April 7.
Finally, our platform will generate and share the team-challenge matches on April 8.
Once you're matched to a challenge, schedule a kick-off meeting with the company representative on January 9-17 (or sooner if you're feeling ambitious). (☝️Use this template). Make sure to prepare for this meeting (e.g. read about the company and the contact person, draft and share an agenda, formulate questions, etc.).
Good luck!