Flash forward to 2014, and Alex strolls into TechStars’ London office in the City this morning as an accomplished entrepreneur. He launched and ran an online market research company for over a decade, raising €600,000 in seed-funding before selling it on to Bolloré Group, the French investment firm.
So when I speak with him in London and ask why he chose entrepreneurship over the corporate MBA lifestyle, he has a pretty simple answer. “When you get to be your own boss and make all the decisions, you think it’s the best job you will ever do,” says Alex. “I’ve known I wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was young. And I knew that long before I started an MBA.”
Alex is part of the old-guard of MBA entrepreneurs; after working for Capgemini, the leading French consultancy, he joined a business school to launch a business, rather than take a start-up to the next level – as is commonplace nowadays.
But when he graduated from ESSEC Business School, it wasn’t with the MBA cohort he had enjoyed 12-months with. At the ceremony, he had no idea who his fellow graduates were.
“I entered ESSEC’s entrepreneurship program, which helps you develop a business plan and approach investors,” he explains. “A group of investors told me they wanted to invest now. And I couldn’t just say wait, could I? They don’t care if you graduate or not.
“I left the program and raised some finance, but after a while I realized that I should still get my diploma – you never know what will happen. So I went back to ESSEC. I was supposed to graduate in 2000 but didn’t complete the MBA until 2002. I didn’t even know anybody on graduation day.”
There are those that will say you don’t need an MBA to launch a successful business. And Alex’s case gives weight to that argument. But the context of business school has changed since then too. More and more professionals are enrolling on MBA programs to get an edge in the jobs market – there are bigger program intakes each year and therefore more competition post-graduation.
It might have been something of a rarity to have those three magic letters on your CV ten years ago. But if Alex already had a business, backed by investors and a serious amount of capital, why did he go back to ESSEC?
“An MBA helps because you need the background, the additional edge,” he says. “In entrepreneurship, it’s sometimes hard to connect the dots between education [and start-ups]. Everything you learn on an MBA is very useful but there’s no one single thing that was really instrumental to the success of my business.
“But I don’t think people would have invested in me if I wasn’t an ESSEC graduate; it gives you credibility. But it’s more than a label too; it’s a whole concept. You will learn how to create a business plan, manage finance and build a network. It’s always easier with an alumni network.”
So it’s not a condition for start-up success – but it certainly helps. Many graduates are shunning traditional MBA jobs in favour of launching their own ventures, and if they can achieve as much success as Alex, the tuition fees will be a risk worth reward.
He was inspired to launch his business, Directpanel Research, while on the MBA program after he identified a gap in the market. The company carried out market research, helping other corporations connect with their customers and to test new products and services with target demographics.
Alex may have sheltered from the dotcom storm, but this type of Internet research was creating a few waves of its own. Now, online focus groups are a regular feature for many big-name brands. Directpanel Research was one of the first.
It wasn’t all plain-sailing in those storms, though. It took Alex 18 months to get his product out – much longer than first intended. He says the market wasn’t ready. They held off for a while, but came back with attitude. They started working directly with brands, instead of just doing general market research, as was first planned.
Alex’s biggest challenge came when his co-founder, whom he met on ESSEC’s entrepreneurship program, decided to leave the company. “In hind-sight, it was a bad decision to not spend more time with her before launching something together,” he says.
“It was tough when she left, it wasn’t the plan to be the only co-founder and it changes a lot. But you have to learn from your past. Today, I make sure I have a strong team of at least three for any venture.”
It didn’t seem to hamper the company’s progress, however. Directpanel Research was in business for almost 11 years. If Alex could pin his start-up success down to one factor, it would be teamwork. “Business is about people more than anything else. If you can’t trust your co-founders and employees, there is no way you’re going to make it work,” he says.
“Entrepreneurs are smart but the smartest are the ones that get the right people on board. We shouldn’t forget that in the start-up world – 80 per cent of success is dependent on your team.”
Finding finance is a key concern for today’s MBAs, and a strong team will give you confidence among investors, Alex says. And he should know – he’s a Director at Techstars, one of the best-known accelerators in the world. Alex also dabbles in angel investing, and helping other entrepreneurs is important to him.
“Entrepreneurs now-a-days need ten times less cash than when I started-up,” he says. “If you have a great team and a great product, you will never have trouble finding money. People will come to you.
“Focusing on your team is the best thing you can do. Make sure you all complement each other and that your interests are aligned. I believe you should find the team before the product, and that may be counter-intuitive, but even if your idea doesn’t work, you can tweak it.
“You can alter the business model, but what you cannot do is alter the team. You have to make investors have confidence in the team, and confidence that you will make the right business decisions.”
The dotcom bubble may have burst a decade ago, but Alex should look back on that moment with fond memories. For it was the motivation he needed to begin an MBA – and that was where his entrepreneurial flair truly took flight.
He has a few more ideas up his sleeve, as any MBA does, and you can be sure Alex is not done with start-ups yet. Far from it. This is just the beginning.
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