Prague - Closing Dinner

We finished our final business plan presentations this afternoon and have completed our credits to officially be done with our MBA's!! We are all extremely excited and genuinely proud of each other. We miss you today Jorge. Have a celebration tonight. We are thinking of you.

We are having dinner at the Palffy Palace this evening, celebrating the culmination of our program. To quote Toby Bell and summing it up perfectly.. "This...is pretty awesome."

Thanks to all our family, friends, and faculty that supported us through the past 17 months and made this all possible for us. We are so very appreciative of all of you!

Prague - The Last Site Visit!

Yesterday we capped off our site visits with a tour to Pivovar Klaster, an authentic Czech brewery dating back to the 1500's. It was originally built on a monastery, with laagering cellars deep underground (which were quite cold to trek through without a jacket!). We had a great meal in a restaurant carved in a rock cave by the monks hundreds of years ago. It was a great visit, with awesome food & beer and a lot of fun!

Prague Site Visit - Allen and Overy

Team met with Allen and Overy to discuss the up and down of conducting business in Czech. Host Jan Myska and his associates shared insight of the pleasures and the pitfalls of contract law, labor law and the culture of mergers and acquisitions in the wake of post-communist change and market liberalization.

Our hosts were gracious and engaging.

Prague Site Visit - Czech Television

Our visit in the Czech TV was like traveling back in time..the building, the people and the atmosphere all together gave us a taste as of the Czech Republic before the Velvet Revolution.

Czech TV is the public broadcasting company for the country and historically was the source for broadcasting for the state.

There was a stark contrast between the dated facilities and the current innovative and contemporary programming. Modeling after the BBC they have directed programming for the blind and gay communities providing very progressive content.

There is a full production facility at Czech TV including several sound stages, props and studios.

Prague Site Visit - Entrepreneur Panel

Yesterday, Education Angels arranged a panel discussion with a variety of entrepreneurs doing business in Czech. Adam Lutonsky, a friend of Todd's college roommate's brother, arranged the visit. Adam has recently started a Czech subsidiary of the American company Ahold (owner of Stop & Shop).

He also arranged for Brian Olsen, a Danish corporate banker who runs his own merger advisory firm to provide color on doing business as an ex-pat in Czech, and Steve Rappaport, a young Texas entrepreneur who began his first Czech distribution company nearly 17 years ago

Prague Site Visit #1 - Prague Hilton

We started our Prague site visits out great with an extensive tour of the Prague Hilton's operations from the Laundry Room to the Executive Suites; both equally impressive in their own right.

The hotel cleans more linen each day than any other hotel in Europe and the Executive Level definitely provides the level of service to accommodate the needs of top executive teams doing business in Prague.

We followed up our tour with a presentation from the entire Director level of the organization, providing insightful detail into the historical and current state of the organization.

The Prague Hilton has been significantly affected by the Global Credit crises, specifically related to the issues in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Italy. These countries provided a large source of conference revenue for the hotel. The hotel is now actively marketing and extended their sales model into other eastern Europe and Asian countries such as Russia, Japan and China in order to lesson their reliance on these affected countries.

It was very interesting to here from the General Manager that the hotel's revenue model is very akin to a parking lot. Revenue per available room is the critical factor for Hilton.

It was a great visit and we very much appreciated the level of access and detail provided by Hilton.

Prague Castle Entertainment

We visited the Prague Castle today and this musical Trio was playing outside the castle walls. Toby purchased bean-bears for his boys and has been photographing them at different sites throughout Prague.