PKU-UCL MBA students, in London for a two-week entrepreneurship and innovation module, joined members of the UCL MBA community for an evening of entrepreneurial insight and experience. The panel featured MBA Alumna Wren Loucks, founder of interior design studio Be-kin, and current MBA student Shiran Jayawardena, who is building Selebrates - a personalised travel and celebration platform. They,shared how they started and grew their own businesses, and what it took to navigate the challenges along the way. The panel, part of the ongoing partnership between UCL School of Management and Peking University, brought together students and alumni from both programmes to talk through funding, testing new ideas, the role of AI and the value of building a supportive network, offering the room a well-rounded and genuinely useful look at what entrepreneurship involves in practice.
Backing a good idea early
Although they operate in very different industries, both founders built their businesses around problems they understood firsthand.
After studying oil painting and interior design and working in creative studios, Wren was drawn to entrepreneurship by the opportunity to shape her own business and gain a broader understanding of how organisations operate. Nine months into her MBA, she launched Be-kin, which now delivers high-end residential design projects across the UK and internationally.
Shiran’s idea for Selebrates stemmed from his own frustrations with planning travel and celebrations. Recognising the challenges of time-consuming planning, inconsistent experiences and limited personalisation, he created a platform that makes organising memorable events simpler and less stressful.
For both founders, entrepreneurship began with identifying a need and having the confidence to act on it.
Testing, learning and building a team
A recurring theme throughout the evening was the importance of testing ideas early.
Shiran encouraged aspiring entrepreneurs to validate concepts by speaking to potential customers, gathering feedback and building simple prototypes before investing significant resources. Learning quickly, he argued, is one of the most effective ways to reduce risk and refine an idea.
Wren reflected on a different stage of the entrepreneurial journey. Six years into running Be-kin, her focus has shifted from launching a business to managing growth. Alongside delivering projects, she now navigates cash flow, tax cycles, team development and the operational demands that come with an expanding client base.
Both speakers agreed that entrepreneurship is as much about personal growth as business growth. Developing confidence, resilience and leadership skills becomes increasingly important as a company evolves. Building the right team, they noted, is just as important as having the right idea.
How the MBA shaped their approach
Both founders credited the MBA directly with strengthening how they run their businesses. Wren said studying part time while running Be-kinmeant she could apply what she learned in operations management, data analyticsand finance straight into her practice, turning a creative background into a genuinely commercial one. Shiran pointed to the leadership and team management modules as directly useful for managing hisown distributed team, and to the MBA network itself, describing the chance to learn alongside other entrepreneurs and like-minded students as one of the most valuable parts of the programme. Wren agreed, noting how much it helped to have peers on the course who understood the highs and lows of running a business, rather than just seeing the polished outside view.
Using AI with intention
AI sparked one of the evening’s most thought-provoking discussions.
Shiran uses AI extensively behind the scenes to reduce development costs and accelerate testing. However, research with potential users revealed that many customers preferred a more personal experience rather than an overtly AI-driven one. As a result, AI supports the platform in the background while human expertise remains central to the customer journey.
Wren’s perspective was shaped by her MBA capstone project, which explored the impact of AI on the interior design industry. Her research led her to question the assumption that AI will replace designers. While she sees value in AI for generating early concepts and supporting administrative tasks, she believes interior design remains fundamentally human.
Rather than relying heavily on AI-generated outputs, she encourages inspiration drawn from architecture, exhibitions, music and real-world experiences. For bespoke interior design projects, she argues that precision, contextand spatial understanding continue to require human expertise.
Despite their different approaches, both founders agreed that AI is most effective when used intentionally and where it creates genuine value.
A global network in action
The evening was itself an example of what the panellists described as entrepreneurship’s biggest asset: genuine connection. Wren’s own team spans New Zealand, Sweden and Australia, a mix she credits with shaping Be-kin’s creative direction, while Shiran spoke about the confidence that comes from being around others who understand the realities of building something new. Bringing PKU-UCL MBA students together with the UCL MBA and Flex MBA community gave both groups a chance to compare notes across two very different markets and build exactly those kinds of connections.
What’s next
Students keen to take that exchange further can do so through the next UCL Global Immersion in Hong Kong, which places MBA students directly within the PKU network to explore entrepreneurship and innovation on the ground, continuing the conversation this panel started.
