2019 MBA Global Careers Report 2019 MBA Global Careers Report | Page 20

Free your inner
entrepreneur
STUDENT STORY
The entrepreneurial
leap of faith

Sabrina Palme
German
Co-founder & CEO,
Gartenzwerg
Technologies
Class of 2015
Just 14 months after Sabrina Palme and co-
founder Andre Quintanilha launched the world’s
first personal smart garden, they’d already raised
over £200,000 in investment funds.
What inspired your startup?
During one of our MBA classes in Shanghai, we
heard about hydroponics and how NASA uses it
to grow food in space. My future co-founder
Andre and I got chatting about how awesome it
would be to have easy-to-use hydroponic indoor
gardens for the home.
How did your MBA prepare you?
The learnings we took from our practical
challenges were invaluable in understanding our
concept. We’d already honed our decision-making
and team skills. We’d even pitched business
concepts to real-life investors—we were
already halfway there thanks to our MBA.
What was your biggest obstacle?
Balancing the startup with our day jobs was
completely exhausting. But a few months in,
everything changed when we found an angel
investor through the Hult alumni network.
He invested in Gartenzwerg, which meant we
could focus full-time on the startup. It was then
I realized that it wasn’t just the Hult MBA that
was valuable, but also the international exposure
of where we did it.
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GLOBAL CAREERS REPORT 2019
“The Hult MBA exceeded
my expectations in the way it
created a collaborative, innovative
environment that fostered the
entrepreneurial spirit.”
Eric Chast
COO, Liberty Square Group
Class of 2016