Tips and tops of the past 3 years

Mercator Launch has recently turned three (yay!). In the past three years we have experienced absolute highlights and valuable learning moments. Everything brought us to where we are now. But not without providing ourselves with continuous constructive feedback along the way. So why stop now? We asked our own team: what have we learned in the past 3 years and what are our successes? Read all about our tips and tops below!

Tips: the important lessons we have learned

  • Do not limit your success; once you set a goal, you start working to achieve that goal. Ask yourself, “Am I ambitious enough in setting my goals?” What we have experienced at Mercator Launch in recent years is that we could never have imagined that we would be where we are right now after 3 years. The lesson we want entrepreneurs to take home with them is to adjust goals upwards when possible or even set them absurdly high when the opportunity arises.
  • It is better to have a strong team with a bad idea than a bad team with a strong idea. Your founding team is crucial. A strong team can get from an idea to the execution. This applies to our startups as well as our own team, and any network in which we participate.
  • Entrepreneurial researchers, students and employees visibly benefit from our IMPROVE programme. We have noticed that entrepreneurs who already have some experience can still learn and grow a lot by participating in the programme.

Tops: the milestones we have achieved

  • Our continuous streak of 8+ evaluations. Every time the IMPROVE programme is finished, our participants rate us very highly, an important signal that we do our job well. And if we do our job to the best of our capabilities, we will give our startups the most optimal boost, which will hopefully help them achieve success.
  • Mercator Launch has become a unmissable in the region. We just started, have continuously improved and are now everyone is aware of the importance of having a pre-incubator in the area.
  • Developing and executing the IMPROVE programme. We have created a full-fledged, professional and hugely meaningful programme for our target audience. Last year, we worked really hard on improving the quality of the programme and made the decision to split the programme into multiple tracks. This way, the different tracks are a better fit with where the entrepreneurs are at that time.
  • From idea to business plan to voucher and eventually even to a loan from business angels. A couple of our startups have already achieved this level of success and we could not be more proud!

So, there you have it: the road to success is always paved with a little trial and error and lots of room to fail. Even ours! We look forward to every lesson and success story, big and small, we are sure to experience in the next three years. Cheers to the future!