Expat Community Building-A 22-Year-Old Girl Can Make Real Changes

Community building has become a sexy topic recently. We are living in a world where there is an ever-greater hunger for offline, real-life communities, although we cannot ignore the fact that what you cannot find with Google or Facebook does not exist. Ágnes Kecskés D is one of the young entrepreneurs who recognised the opportunity to use online solutions for offline presence.

Ágnes is an entrepreneur from Hungary and co-founder a digital agency focusing on website performance and conversion optimisation, social media marketing and data analysis. She is also founder and co-founder of numerous other startups and communities in Budapest.

The Expat Community Builder

Ágnes’ story began as an 8-year-old girl who wanted to make extra money by playing the violin at touristic places. The feeling of pride and success when she saw people enjoying her playing, and successfully achieving her goal, gave her huge motivation and self-belief. From that moment on she knew that one day she wanted to run her own business.

In her teenage years Ágnes saw this drive and determination in another woman she now considers a huge role model. Hungarian swimmer and influencer, Katinka Hosszú, has proven that with hard work, dedication and the confidence to put yourself out there, you can achieve new levels of success. This message of hard work always paying off that she sends to her fans is exactly the motto that she now works by.

She is a self-confessed workaholic. She loves the work she does. Whenever she is not working, she loves running in the morning, doing yoga, and travelling to new places and experiencing new cultures.

Her Community Focus:

Just like her role model Katinka Hosszú, Ágnes tries to give something back to her areas of passion in both her personal and professional life.

Budapest Hikers

This was Ágnes’ first passion project and community that she successfully built from the ground up. The idea for the community was simple; she loved hiking, but none of her friends shared that interest. She founded the Budapest Hikers community and just over one year later she had transformed this idea into a business that provides its community of over 2500 members a way to enjoy nature and meet new people without depending on friends for company.

She is also co-founder of a startup called HikerNations. This team has been selected to participate in the mentor program at Design Terminal, and they aim to build an app which helps people around the world connect with other hikers in their local community and find the right hiking routes. This idea builds on the success of Budapest Hikers and aims to solve the same problem for people around the world, without having to rely on a community builder in their local area to create a hiking group.

Marketing Magicians

As an online marketing expert, Ágnes believes in learning from and giving back to the local community. As such, she has started up an international community of marketers and holds a monthly meet-up to share knowledge via presentations and network with members in the community.

Digital Budapest

As a Digital Worker and a community builder, trying to connect Budapest’s digital scene is definitely part of her bucket list. The recently launched Digital Budapest slack community has more than 150 digital professionals from within the city and is a real hive of collaboration & opportunity with people regularly sharing and looking for job opportunities and ideas. Digital Budapest also organises offline events and connects the community offline via regular DigiDrinks events and a Christmas Party, where many of Budapest’s meetup groups combine as one to celebrate in style.

With so many different communities, projects and clients to please, Ágnes strongly believes that you need 3 things to achieve success and deliver quality:

goals that move you forward,
productivity & time management
team

The young entrepreneur realised the importance of surrounding yourself with the right team when she met her business partners Jamie, at a Budapest Hikers hike, and Anna, at a networking event in Budapest. Having a driven and successful team helps focus, motivation and constantly pushes for self-improvement. The right team can divide and conquer.