Jeroen Audenaert and Vincent Scheltjens won the Voka Award 2017, the price for the most promising student-enterprise. This is the second year in a row that 3D trophy factory made this award. And this time, we got the unique opportunity to interview Jeroen Audenaert, one of the co-founders of Yellowleaf.
- Hey Jeroen, let’s start with telling a little bit more about yourself.
I’m co-founder of Yellowleaf and currently studying Commercial Sciences. I’m very passionate about the digital and business world. My passion for the digital world started when I was following the course CS50X at HarvardX. The following summers I spent at Harvard University for a Summer School Program, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business for the Summer Business Scholar Program and I’ve spent four months at the Lappeenranta University of Technology. In my spare time you can find me on a surfboard or a sailing boat.
2. What does Yellowleaf do?
The mission of Yellowleaf is to make organizations grow digitally. Yellowleaf offers organizations a total package for all their digital communications. Our activities are build around three points: webdevelopment and design, e-commerce and online marketing and digital strategy.
3. What distinguishes Yellowleaf from its competitors?
The unique aspect about Yellowleaf is that we think together with your organization. As young student-entrepreneurs we can easily adapt ourselves to the mindset of your organization. We are digital natives with fresh ideas and possess all the capacities needed to build your online identity and digitalization processes or to blow new life into it.
4. Why did you give your company the name Yellowleaf?
Yellowleaf comes from the Flemish word ‘geel blad’. The yellow leaves represent autumn. When you’re walking in the woods during this season, you get to see magnificent sceneries. This is exactly what we want to do: create magnificent websites, designs and solutions for our clients. In our logo the leaf actually has the color blue, with this we want to emphasize the digital aspect and our out-of-the-box thinking.
5. How do you combine this with your studies?
It’s important to have a good planning, so you won’t run out of time for your studies. We try to plan our appointments in a way that we can go to our classes. For us, it’s an interesting way to combine the theoretical side of university with the practical side of doing business.
6. Do you have any tips for students that want to become an entrepreneur?
My first tip is to use all the resources that are available. Universities help students a lot, for example TakeOff in Antwerp and LCIE in Leuven. There are also many other initiatives such as Bryo from Voka. It’s also very important to talk with the right experts so they can give you input and validate your ideas. An important step in this process is to pitch your idea as much as possible to other people. That way, you hear many other opinions and you can adjust your idea.
7. How do you see the future of your organization?
We want to become a player that knows all the different aspects of the digital world. We’re currently building strategic partnerships with important players in the e-commerce and design world. At the moment, we have 2 part-time employees, but over time we would like to change this to full-time employees.
8. Does the award have a nice place in your office?
Yes of course, we are extremely proud about the award! We were very surprised for winning it, but it would have never been possible without the advice and support of Melanie Nolens, Sven de Vocht en Nathalie De Schepper from Bryo Antwerpen and we would like to thank them once again!
