Success stories

Martin Absenger, a data analyst from Austria, always knew that living abroad is the best way for personal and professional development. Growing up in the hospitality industry, he developed a love of travel and a desire to get to know new places and people. His background also covers the automotive consulting and IT industries. For him, lifelong learning is the best way to enhance his knowledge and learn new skills. He has been working with data since 2017. In 2022, he was able to use this experience and start his own company, which has allowed him to independently master data analytics and consult companies on how to monetize insights from data.

Moving to a new country always has some challenges. Maxim and his business partner Brandon welcomed Martin to Calgary. Before the start of their journey, Martin and Maxim began the pre-onboarding in April to get ready and obtain maximum value from the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs peer-to-peer exchange. Everyone learned more about each other’s business and the business culture in the different countries and regions. The daily activities with the global team offered a routine for everyone. and allowed the team to be flexible, stay connected and always work on the items of the highest priority. Thanks to this, the entrepreneurs also had the chance to exchange ideas and opinions on a range of different topics. From time to time, they went for coffee, lunch, or dinner, which strengthened their connection. In addition, Martin received detailed feedback and coaching on his business plan pitch and case studies.

From a professional perspective, Martin also got to work with the CTO Brandon Kaster. They connected several data sources in order to build a data lake. Martin used his skills to develop an array of interactive dashboards, which are now used for demos and customer acquisition. Maxim got good feedback from the participants at a wine forum for the added value of the dashboards. Moreover, other wine industry experts liked the result as well and loved the platform idea. Martin had the chance to use his native language for the platform content and translated it from English to German. At the end of their exchange, both entrepreneurs said their farewell and spent a day together outside to celebrate the successful experience.