“Accept that you win and lose” came first on the list of ten tips from Roel Pieper, followed by human factors like leadership, commitment and people quality or business factors like scalablity, multi-sourcing and the value stack. Pieper was the fifth VLT VentureClass speaker. The VLT VentureClasses are monthly, public evening sessions by internationally renowned speakers, on entrepreneurship-related themes. Pieper’s audience, well over 60 people, hung on his lips. Pieper also stressed the importance of networks, especially now when finance from banks for starting entrepreneurs is hard to come by. A lively discussion, that continued at the bar, ended the evening.

Fifteen participants from the “VLT summerschool 2009″ received their certificates from VLT’s training director, Jaap van Tilburg. Most summerschool students are international PhD students from the University of Twente. They were trained during 11 subsequent sessions in important topics such as managing people, principles of financial accounting and technology marketing & IP. Their ‘masterpiece’ is a business model, which they presented to VentureLab’s entrepreneurs during the final session of August 18.