The Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), at the weekend, graduated the third batch of 14 students, after they had undergone a two year program in software entrepreneurship.
The program was aimed at providing students with the needed skills to become successful software entrepreneurs in the global marketplace and to help create jobs and wealth locally.
Mr Jorn Lyseggen, Chief Executive Officer of MEST, congratulated the new graduates and charged them to use their talents and the knowledge gained to develop their economic prospects in the global market.
Mr Lyseggen urged the students to strife for success, develop their business plans and have a critical thinking ability, as well as, being positive minded.
Mr Lyseggen challenged them to be assertive and not to be afraid of failing since failure represented a learning process, adding that, “success takes one step to complacency”.
He said the students received a two year, fully sponsored training, in software development, business fundamentals and entrepreneurship, funded by the Meltwater Foundation.
Mr Lyseggen said the Meltwater Foundation is the non-profit arm of the meltwater Group, which started operations in Ghana, in February 2008, to provide students with skills in software entrepreneurship.
He said trainees accepted into the MEST program receive hands-on training in software development, basic business fundamentals and entrepreneurship in a fast-paced, challenging and start-up environment.
“During the two years at MEST, the Entrepreneurs in Training (EITs) work with world-class executives from around the world to create their own software prototypes and ultimately start their own companies” he added.
Mr Lyseggen said Meltwater Group is one of the world's leading Software manufacturers, founded in Norway in 2001 and committed to challenging existing business models by introducing new technologies.
He said the Meltwater group deliver B2B solutions; based on search engine technology, cloud computing and talent management software.
Mr Peter Djik, a Senior lecturer at MEST, said their outfit train students to face global challenges in software entrepreneurship.
Mr Djik said, to succeed as a professional entrepreneur, involved persistent drive, reliability, determination, efficiency and the urge to deal with critical situations.
He said the entrepreneurial training programme is in three phases-MEST, Incubator and Mentoring.
Mr Djik said the MEST program provided rigorous entrepreneurial training, extensive hands-on project work and mastery of industry-proven methodologies for software development.
He however explained that the purpose of the Meltwater incubator is to help “MEST graduates to validate their business ideas and to get their ideas off the ground”.
Mr Djik said enrollment into the incubator programme is based on an approved business plan and that participants would be awarded initial seed funding by Meltwater, in addition to an office space located in Accra, London and San Francisco.
He noted that, with the mentoring aspect, each company would be offered a set of international mentors, who will serve as board members or company advisers, to optimize the chances for international commercial breakthrough.
Mr Kwame Anane, one of the grandaunts, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency said, the training acquired would help him to establish his company to match international standards and appealed to government to invest in Information Communication Technology.