Success stories

Iryna Kulynych, a 30-year-old aspiring entrepreneur from Ukraine, was working as a subscriber service manager for a mobile operator when the Covid 19 pandemic began. With the whole world "on hold", she realised it was time to make a change and embarked on a journey that changed her life. Iryna had the idea for her new business when the lockdown began and everyone could only dream of travelling. She started thinking about what travel would look like in the future and how to make the process easier. She wanted to help travel agencies and travellers find each other. And the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme helped her do that. Now Iryna only works with Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Dutch companies, but she wants to expand her business to all European countries. By chance, Ugnė Gajauskaite applied for the EYE programme as a young entrepreneur in 2017 and when she saw the benefits of the programme, she decided to become a host entrepreneur. She is the CEO of "Veri - meni", a company that specialises in identifying new business opportunities and adapting to market changes.

Iryna and Ugnė worked together for six months. Ugnė helped Iryna with business strategy. Iryna learned more about negotiating, the importance of business networks and building business partnerships. Iryna and Ugnė shared their knowledge in the field of marketing and benefited from exchanging information about their countries' markets and different business approaches. Iryna shares that thanks to the exchange she gained better business planning skills, a better understanding of the European market, new approaches to solving problems and developing contingency plans. According to Ugnė, participating as a host entrepreneur allowed her to look at her business from a different angle, develop her mentoring skills and gain interesting insights into marketing.

Iryna's company currently operates in the Lithuanian and Dutch markets. She has no plans to stop and would like to expand her activities further. Iryna and Ugnė keep in touch and might develop some joint projects in the future.