When I arrived at IESE, I already had my five-year plan mapped out. I wanted to build something, to one day be the CEO of my own firm. But somewhere between orientation and my first semester, I noticed something I hadn’t expected: the entrepreneurial energy I’d imagined buzzing through an MBA campus felt quieter than I’d hoped. Not absent, but not loud enough.
So, like any problem solver, I thought, surely we can do something about this.
The IESE Startup & Entrepreneurship Club had been steadily growing, and the first edition of Founders Day in 2025 proved there was real appetite for it. Hearing IESE alumni founders speak candidly about their journeys, the wrong turns as much as the wins, had left its mark. When Simon Spector, co-President of the Club, asked me at the end of my first year whether I wanted to lead the second edition, I already knew how much work it would be. I was co-VP of the Startup & Entrepreneurship Club, VP of Women in Business, and co-hosting the IESE Spotlight Podcast. I said yes anyway.
Getting the team ready for Founders Day 2026 meant starting from scratch in November and building toward March 17, one detail at a time. Paula Toledano and Devansh Shah, two first-year directors, became the backbone of everything: content, agenda, speaker outreach, marketing, and logistics. The day would not have been what it was without them.
The Sessions
We opened with a keynote from Timo Buetefisch, founder and CEO of Cooltra, a company he built from a simple observation about urban mobility into one of Europe’s leading shared mobility platforms, operating across 50+ cities. What made his talk so compelling wasn’t just the scale of what he built, but the honesty with which he took us back to the beginning, the uncertainty, the early bets, the things he’d do differently. It was a masterclass in what the Zero to One mindset actually looks like in practice: not a linear path, but a series of conviction-driven decisions made without a map.
The Founder Deep Dive panel was a personal favourite. Moderated by Mathieu Carenzo (IESE Entrepreneurship Professor, venture investor, and early Glovo backer), it brought together three IESE alumni founders for what turned out to be a genuinely candid conversation: Carlota Pi Amorós, co-founder of Holaluz; Iván Rodríguez, serial entrepreneur and founder of MODELIA; and Inés Ures, co-founder of Arpías and VC at Real Ventures. They got honest, about the moments when entrepreneurship felt right, the mistakes they made, and what they’d tell themselves at the start. There’s something powerful about hearing founders speak without the polish of a prepared talk. It felt less like a panel and more like a conversation you’d overhear and be grateful you caught.
Ramon Estrada led an interactive workshop that had nothing to do with tactics and everything to do with self-knowledge, what it actually takes to be an entrepreneur at the level of who you are, not just what you do. High-energy, thought-provoking, and exactly the kind of session that got people turning to strangers and interacting with them.
Alexandre Nucci Soncini (VTEX, Spain) closed the day by distilling 25 years of building into 25 minutes. The bottom line: empower the people around you to run the company like it’s theirs. Let them fail. Let them learn. That’s how you build something that lasts.
The Day Itself
March 17 was, objectively, a lot. Founders Day. Graduation photoshoot. Rehearsal. All at once. If I needed a metaphor for the MBA, making decisions, managing crises, and smiling through all of it, that day delivered one in real time.
The week before had been EXSIM, the most intensive simulation exercise of the programme. None of it felt impossible because I was never doing it alone. Federico E. Alatorre, co-President of the Club, jumped in wherever he could. As the day got closer, other students like Hanif Ramadhan, Patrick Oostdijk, Stuart Blackaby, and the whole leadership team rallied, making sure nothing fell through the cracks. And then there’s Sebastian Ross (Co-Founder and Director of IESE School of Founders), who not only helped us shape the vision for the day but opened up his network without hesitation. So much of what made this edition special traces back to him.
My biggest takeaway was this: the people within this community have a genuine desire to pay it forward. Founders, faculty, alumni, when you ask, they show up. That’s not something you can plan for, but it’s something worth knowing.
A Personal Reflection
I came to IESE two years ago not entirely sure where I fit in, or what I was becoming in the process. 17th March, I think I found out.
Leading Founders Day was, true to its theme, a zero-to-one experience. There’s a version of this event that stays as an idea, one that never quite makes it off the whiteboard. And then there’s the version where you actually build it. Where you learn, week by week, exactly how many invisible decisions go into making a day feel effortless for the people in the room. Where you discover that the MBA doesn’t just stretch your thinking, it stretches you.
If I were to do it all over again, I’d do one thing differently: plan to host it in the Aula Magna, the largest auditorium on campus. More people deserve to feel that energy in the room.
But I wouldn’t change anything else. Not the chaos, not the timing, not the team. Least of all Devansh and Paula, without whom none of this would have happened.
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Written by Devyangana Sagar, MBA Class of 2026
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