Success stories

New entrepreneur:
Anamaria Papastieva (North Macedonia)
Age: 25
Company name: Pixels Studio (Start-up)
Sector of activity: IT, office and communication equipment, services and supplies

Host entrepreneur:
Ottavio Sgrosso (Italy)
Age: 34
Company name: Pushapp Srl (7 years of experience)
Sector of activity: IT, office and communication equipment, services and supplies

Anamaria has always dreamed of creating her own web design studio. With her Master degree in e-business, some competencies in marketing but almost no experience in web design, she knew that establishing herself as an expert in the field would be challenging.

She thus applied for the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme, and got in touch with Ottavio Sgrosso from Italy. Ottavio is a passionate about digital entrepreneurship and the founder Pushapp, a company that supports startups in the business idea validation phase.

She flew to Italy in June 2016 for a six-months exchange. She had a lot to learn and little time to develop skills in web design and entrepreneurship. "I was very lucky to have had a team of amazing people who went out of their way to teach me the craft and make me feel as part of them right away” said Anamaria.

The collaboration between the two entrepreneurs went very well. Anamaria got involved in a start-up accelerator programme called "Pushapp Lab”. In the beginning, she was only sharing her advises on promotional materials design, website development and social media marketing.

Yet, as the project evolved and her experience grew, she got further involved in the startup’s development. Observing their set up and getting familiar with their operations during the first months, she got an overview of the difficulties in relation to management, teamwork, advertising and promotion.

The exchange was thus very useful for Anamaria, who learned how to manage and implement a project starting from the design of a product to its final delivery. Working independently also helped her become more self-critical.

For Ottavio, Anamaria’s contribution was invaluable with the know-how she brought in front end development, a field which was yet to be mastered by the company. This is how she was offered the job of web designer and front-end developer, in the end of the collaboration period.

During her time at Pushapp, Anamaria gained further experience as she worked on projects for big Italian companies such as BNL Bank, Automar Logistics, Grimaldi Lines and some other promising startups.

Thanks to this experience, Anamaria grow both professionally and personally. Professionally because she quit her job few years after to establish her own design studio and personally, because the co-founder is her husband, who was her colleague at Pushapp.

"It was a bold move, but I must say that I managed to achieve my goal and I have been managing my own business for two months now” said Anamaria.

For more information, please contact the local contact points involved in the exchange:

New entrepreneur's contact point:
Asset Technology (Athens, Greece)

Host entrepreneur's contact point:
Eduforma S.r.l. (Padova, Italy)

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