João Duarte

“Personally, I like the idea of being a person that stands out on a small boat rather than being unknown on a big ship.”

João comes from a software development background but decided to change his career and move to recruitment in 2008. He started working for a small recruitment company in Prague for about two and a half years and after acquiring knowledge of the industry, João and his business partner founded Hagen Human Capital in 2010. With the company successfully growing, João felt the need to acquire some formal business knowledge and was looking for inspiration, driving him to pursue an MBA with a concentration in entrepreneurship at UNYP.

João recognizes the highly experienced faculty as one of UNYP’s most valuable assets, particularly many of the professors’ extensive industry background, meaning they can bring not just theoretical knowledge but plenty of practical experience as well. João also notes that the students in the program were equally fascinating and diverse making the time at UNYP more valuable, he mentioned that in his cohort were an M&A director for a local investment bank and a former NHL professional hockey player.

João came to UNYP after having already founded Hagen Human Capital. Nevertheless, the MBA entrepreneurship courses solidified his interest in the idea of building high-growth, scalable companies. As part of his thesis, João developed the idea of a website called myjobs.io – a concierge service for job search. Around the same time, he came across the idea of an online marketplace for IT recruitment, which is how his second company, techloop.io, was started. João identified there was a great demand for software developers on the market and he used this opportunity to create a platform to bring the best job opportunities to the developers with Techloop.io; providing a marketplace where developers and companies can be in touch directly. The website went live in January 2016 and to date has around 1800 developers and 180 companies registered, is generating revenues, and is on the path toward securing investment. “To be frank, we wouldn’t be here doing it if I hadn’t gone to UNYP,” João states, “I was exposed to very concentrated knowledge that would take you a lot of time to get in the real world.”

João’s advice for UNYP graduates in terms of career choice is to go for places where they can make a difference rather than hide in the back. If someone wants to be a successful entrepreneur, taking risk is unavoidable and knowledge of the relevant industry is very valuable. João is now fully concentrated on Techloop.io. We are proud and certain that he will experience great success with his ventures and we look forward to witnessing this success.

Learn more about Joao’s program