Putting theory into practice

Click on a name to read the full interview

Peter Albers, MBA2008

Managing Director, North America, viagogo Online ticket exchange

Ishani Chattopadhyay, MBA2005

Founder and CEO, Arctic Holdings Global carbon management company

Carlo Del Mistro, MBA2009

Managing Director, Gelato Mio Italian ice cream company

Vinay Gupta, MBA2007

Co-Founder, WhipCar Peer to peer car rental

Dominic Lake, Executive MBA2003

Founding Director, Canteen High quality British cuisine

Chantelle Ludski, MBA2000

Founder and CEO, fresh! naturally organic Supplier of organic sandwiches and snacks

Jim Shaikh, Executive MBA2002

Founder and Managing Director, Yoomi The self-heating baby bottle

Peter Albers, MBA2008

American Managing Director, North America, viagogo www.viagogo.com
viagogo is an online ticket exchange that provides a safe and guaranteed way for people to buy and sell event tickets live. Did you apply for your MBA with the idea that you would start your own business? The main reason I pursued my MBA was to broaden my future career opportunities. I wanted to avoid being pigeon-holed in my current industry (infrastructure software), and to give myself a skill-set that could potentially be used to start my own venture. While I didnt enter London Business School with a plan to launch a business directly after graduation, I can certainly say the baseline skills I hoped to, and did, develop were with an eye towards entrepreneurship. In what ways has your MBA at London Business School contributed to your entrepreneurial success? Discovering Entrepreneurial Opportunities stands out, especially in the way it helped me focus on exploring/defining a market need prior to worrying about a business plan. The Entrepreneurship Summer School also made an impact, as it was a fantastic education to explore my own business idea alongside other colleagues doing the same. The Entrepreneurship Summer School helped me realise that, regardless of the focus of a new venture, there are baseline factors that need to be evaluated (market need, customer propensity to buy). Especially given my background in software and Silicon Valley, it was useful to consider how someone launching a fruit import business, an African leadership consortium, an online social network, or a new fashion line all struggle with similar issues. Lastly, although not an entrepreneurship class, Ive found what I learned in both Financial Accounting and Management Accounting useful in my current role leading a growing business. How do you feel the Discovering Entrepreneurial Opportunities course on the MBA helped you to develop your new business ideas? Discovering Entrepreneurial Opportunities really hammered home for me the importance of understanding market need. It doesnt matter how great you think your idea is; it only matters how great your target consumer thinks your product or service is. Seems simple, but so many ventures overlook this important premise. How did the Entrepreneurship Summer School help you to establish and implement your business idea? The Entrepreneurship Summer School helped me realise that the business idea I was pursuing was misdirected. But that business has now turned into two separate businesses that have potential, and Im on the advisory board of both and helping build another start-up. Im living the dream. Did the networking opportunities at London Business School have a positive impact on your entrepreneurial interests? Absolutely. I met Eric Baker, the founder of viagogo, at the Entrepreneurship Conference at London Business School. The rest is history Ive been working with Eric and viagogo ever since. Also, my Entrepreneurship Summer School mentor, Timothy Barnes, was a great sounding board for the business I was considering launching and for considering an entrepreneurial career path.

Do you feel that there are particular personal qualities that make a successful entrepreneur? Most entrepreneurs share some similar personality traits, specifically a willingness to disregard the fact that most new business ventures fail. Entrepreneurs enjoy battling against those odds, so you could call entrepreneurs overly confident, or simply foolish. Speaking from experience, Id suggest its a bit of both, but Ive found the chase can be just as fun (if not more fun) than the end result. Do you think entrepreneurship can be taught? While entrepreneurs may share some similar traits, I do think that most entrepreneurs benefit tremendously from support, both technical and personal. Its hard to go it alone. Having a network of friends and mentors to provide specific advice and a sounding board is key for success (and the maintenance of sanity), and having the baseline set of skills an MBA provides is useful, especially as a business grows beyond the idea stage. What business advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs? Go for it, but, develop a plan. With a plan, youll realise when youre taking a detour. Without a plan, youll simply be wandering.

Back to top

Ishani Chattopadhyay, MBA2005

Australian Founder and CEO, Arctic Holdings www.arcticholdings.com
Arctic Holdings is a global carbon management company that works with clients and companies to explore opportunities emerging in the carbon constrained economy. Did you apply for your MBA with the idea that you would start your own business? Not really. My intention for doing an MBA was to diversify my skills and look at a completely different sector like social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility. I certainly did not think I would start my own business so soon in my career. It was the exposure at business school, and in particular, the people that I met which helped me to achieve it. In what ways has your MBA at London Business School contributed to your entrepreneurial success? My MBA contributed a lot. I did almost all of the entrepreneurship classes offered and also did an exchange at Columbia, where again, I studied entrepreneurship. Electives with John Mullins and John Bates were particularly significant. In addition my then classmate, now husband, Pranav has made a huge contribution to my entrepreneurial journey. Hes been an entrepreneur since he was 19 and his entrepreneurial spirit rubbed off on me throughout the MBA. I was also involved with the Global Social Venture Competition as co-chair, which was a great experience because I was in a position to see ideas transform. How did you come up with the idea for Arctic Holdings? Immediately after the MBA, Pranav and I took a UK-based company to India and set it up from scratch. The company was in the field of emissions trading and the learning opportunity was phenomenal. I then joined a huge US power major and my role was to set up a new division. In essence, all of my positions post business school have been entrepreneurial in nature. The idea of running a business in the field of eco-sustainability, climate change mitigation and social venture was a culmination of my values and experiences. Once I had the idea, I didnt spend too much time doing the analysis which might be contrary to what a lot of people believe in. I essentially plunged into it with some guiding principles in mind and thats always been the core of the business. I approached my core group of mentors and supporters and started building the business from there. My business is essentially my network and relationships that I have developed over time. Did the networking opportunities at London Business School have a positive impact on your business venture? Yes indeed. I constantly use London Business School alumni for everything! I have also had the opportunity of running my business in Australia and India and have always reached out to alumni for various things from promoting events Im doing to more specific needs like finding a lawyer or an accountant! Do you feel that there are particular personal qualities that make a successful entrepreneur? I think the basic quality of an entrepreneur is being able to follow your convictions. Conviction in my opinion is a combination of your values and something you are passionate about. We all have convictions but more often than not, we dont trust or listen to them. A successful entrepreneur is someone who is able to trust their conviction and follow through. To the rest of the world it may seem like a risk, but to the entrepreneur, it seems like the only path available. I also dont think being an entrepreneur necessarily means owning your own business; you can be an entrepreneur within the structure of an organisation as well.

Do you think entrepreneurship can be taught? I dont know if entrepreneurship can be taught. I think the technicalities of running a business can be taught but becoming an entrepreneur is really a path of self-awareness. I took an elective whilst on exchange at Columbia called Creativity and Personal Mastery, which can now be studied at London Business School. Courses like this facilitate the thought process and should be combined more with the business subjects to give a complete picture. What do you plan to be doing in 5 & 10 years time? Where do you see your business at these points in time? In 5 years I would like to see my current business grow internationally. I would like to work with multiple entrepreneurial ventures in the field of clean energy and social entrepreneurship in Africa and other Asian countries. I have already started an initiative called The Brightest Young Climate Leaders which I ran in India this year. The aim is to find young entrepreneurs and leaders working on ideas or businesses in the field of clean energy, climate change mitigation, eco-rural projects, and I am now working with the winners to scale up their businesses. I would like to do this on a bigger scale and be an active investor and mentor in these businesses, taking them to the next stage of growth.

Back to top

Carlo Del Mistro, MBA2009

Italian Managing Director, Gelato Mio www.gelatomio.co.uk
Gelato Mio is the home of Italian ice cream in London. There are three Gelato Mio stores across London and another store opening soon. Did you apply for your MBA with the idea that you would start your own business? It was certainly one of my ideas. The main reason I did an MBA was to decide on which career path to take. It was towards the end of the first term that I made the decision to start a business. I did the research during the winter break and found the first contacts I needed to open Gelato Mio. In what ways has your MBA at London Business School contributed to your entrepreneurial success? It gave me a huge network to draw information from. I had never started a business before and neither had my friends or family so I didnt have anyone to ask questions to. Having such a great network of alumni and current students who had entrepreneurial experience helped me immensely. Additionally, my classmates were exceptionally supportive. When we started Gelato Mio in the first summer of my MBA, all of my peers asked their friends and family to come to the opening. I knew very few people myself in London, but thanks to the support of the MBA students, it was like opening a store in my hometown. We had hundreds of people at the opening thanks to the support of the MBA community. Which specific courses, people and experiences from your MBA stood out? The entrepreneurship classes were particularly helpful, especially for providing examples of scenarios and start-up stories and we heard from guest speakers who had experienced the process themselves. Hearing about their successes and failures was extremely helpful. I especially remember Managing the Growing Business, it was my favourite class and was the most inspirational. There are many classes that are very practical, from a business sense, they helped me immensely in getting the concept ready, however Managing the Growing Business helped me with the aspirational elements. It helped me to overcome my fear of starting a business. How did the Discovering Entrepreneurial Opportunities course on the MBA help you to develop your business ideas? It gave me the idea and it gave me lots of information. My study group spent half of the class developing one idea until we realised that it wasnt viable and then we used the rest of the class to develop my Gelato Mio idea. We did a lot of market research which helped me with my primary research. Every study group was invited to showcase their idea at the trade show, which was attended by lots of people from the alumni community, and it was incredibly helpful to have feedback from potential customers. How did you come up with the idea for Gelato Mio? Id been living in London for a couple of years and I knew that I wanted to do something related to my Italian heritage and something in retail. I realised that there was a distinct lack of good ice-cream parlours so I said, why not? I started talking to a couple of people and I went along to a few trade shows and that is how Gelato Mio began.

Has the research and experience of London Business Schools faculty been a useful resource? Entrepreneurial advice from London Business School is structured in such a way that you can take your idea from the first year, develop it in the second year and then launch it at the end of the programme. As I had already had an offer to go back to investment banking, it was critical for me to launch within the first year. I didnt go through the standard channels, although I was given advice and help from John Bates. Do you feel that there are particular personal qualities that make a successful entrepreneur? I think perseverance is important, particularly when you start up. Youll have lots of doubts and youll have to work in the face of lots of difficulties. For instance, my family was not entirely supportive of me starting Gelato Mio as I had quite a successful career in investment banking and starting a business was a shot in the dark. I also had to accept the fact that, in the short term, I would be worse off financially. It was a much riskier decision than staying in a big institution. Perseverance is essential and, of course, you have to be hard working. Do you think that entrepreneurship can be taught? I think entrepreneurship can be taught. A lot of the time entrepreneurs are a bit like lonely wolves. If you go to business school, you have the opportunity to talk to people who have started businesses and you have access to trade fairs. If you dont have the business school community, there are limited moments when you can talk and share with other entrepreneurs. Classes in entrepreneurship also give you inspiration. I certainly avoided many mistakes thanks to the classes and I wish Id spent more time in class before starting up because I would have avoided some of the pitfalls I fell into. My time at London Business School certainly helped. What business advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs? I would tell them to just do it. It will take more time and more money than you will expect, and you should plan for that. As they teach you in business school, 9 out of 10 new businesses will fail within the first 24 months because the time or the money was wrong. Dont give up. Its a great experience and if you have a good idea, you should pursue it.

Back to top

Vinay Gupta, MBA2007

American Co-Founder, WhipCar www.whipcar.com
WhipCar is the first neighbour-to-neighbour car rental service enabling private car owners to rent out their cars for money. Has your MBA at London Business School contributed to your entrepreneurial success? It has definitely opened up doors for me. The experiences I had on the MBA, both in the classroom and the School clubs, allowed me to meet lots of great people. I was very active in the media club and was involved with co-ordinating the media summit on campus. I made good friends and I also gained a lot of practical experience about various companies in the sector. Thanks to these kinds of activities and the class work, I discovered exactly what I wanted to do. How did you come up with the idea for WhipCar? I was working at a media-focused investment fund with my business partner Tom, looking at addressing the problem of excess capacity in a way that really impacts society. We saw cars parked on the road and we decided to find a way to decrease the wastage associated by putting safe car drivers together with spare car time and that was how WhipCar was born in February 2009. How did it progress from there? Tom and I continued in our current jobs and worked on the business outside of hours. We did a lot of market research at this stage. Its a new user behaviour, its not something that actually exists right now. We also knew that we had to raise investment in order to run the venture so we also arranged meetings with potential Venture Capitalists. The London Business School network turned out to be very useful during this stage as one of my classmates, Nick Conway, put me in contact with Rob Johnson at the venture capital firm that we receive investment from. Rob was a London Business School professor for 10 years and had been mentioned in various cases that we studied in the entrepreneurship classes, so I was keen to meet with him. Another classmate, Sumit Mehra, gave us a great connection to a senior managing director at Willis, one of the worlds largest insurance brokers and it was his team that helped us to develop and structure our innovative insurance product over the last few months. Has the research and experience of London Business Schools faculty been a useful resource? Weve set up something in our company that we call the Board of Mentors and one of our mentors is a London Business School professor, Bruce Hardie. I took Bruces Analysis for Marketing Planning and Decision Making class when I was a student and I enjoyed it immensely. He has met with us a number of times over the past 10 months and proved to be a really useful sounding board. Do you think there are any particular qualities that make a successful entrepreneur? I think that you need lots of tenacity and you cant take no for an answer. At the end of the day, you make business by doing things. An idea only takes you so far. You need to have a high tolerance for pain and a lot of motivation and belief in what youre doing.

Do you think that entrepreneurship can be taught? I definitely think that it can. There are lots of discussions about nature vs. nurture and I think there are certainly personality traits that enable people to succeed as entrepreneurs. The practical and academic lessons I learned at London Business School have helped me to deal with situations and interact with people. I think that has helped me to become a better entrepreneur. I disagree that you are either born an entrepreneur or not. Thanks to my time at London Business School, I knew that I wanted to be in a position where I could craft my own future and work on the things that were interesting to me. In that sense I felt that the MBA equipped me with the skills and the confidence to pursue what I wanted. What business advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs? I would tell them not to give up. If you have a good idea, opinions will be polarised. There are going to be people who support you and there are going to be people who think the idea is crazy. But there is a difference between having a bad idea and having a good idea and not being in a position to execute it. Never take no for an answer. Secondly, look for a great cofounder. I am incredibly lucky to work with someone like Tom and I think finding a partner is the most important thing you can do, more important than the idea itself. Because you will spend so much time with that person, you will need to have complimentary skill sets and be able to support one another. You will serve as each others sounding boards and if you find the right person it can be a potential partnership for life. The average business may last for around 5-10 years, but if you find the right business partner, that can last for a lifetime.

Back to top

Dominic Lake, Executive MBA2003

British Founding Director, Canteen www.canteen.co.uk
Canteen is an informal restaurant with an all-day menu serving high quality British cuisine at reasonable prices. How did your Executive MBA at London Business School contribute to your entrepreneurial success? Jonty Crossick, another student on the programme, who founded the English Teddy Bear Company, became a close friend and inspired me to make the step into the wonderful world of entrepreneurship. The electives I chose were very entrepreneur-focussed: Managing the Growing Business, Financing the Entrepreneurial Business and, of course the Entrepreneurship Summer School with John Mullins. In the final week of the course, we were reflecting and I remember the question 'where do you want to be in 5 years time?' specifically in regards to finite wealth, family, location and career. I took that on board and concluded that I wanted to be in a position where I was able to sell a business, or be part of a team selling a business, to allow financial independence. How did you come up with the idea for Canteen? How did you proceed once you had the idea? I wanted to do something that matched both my personal and professional goals. I have a great love of food, and along with a new buddy Patrick, I decided to raise the quality of food on the high street with great British food. Why? Because where do you go if you want to get some great food for under 20 which uses free-range additive-free meats, organic eggs and fresh fish from the day boats on the south coast? Also there was a trend for food programmes on TV in 2003/4 which raised awareness but offered no obvious solution or place to go for this type of food. Do you feel that there are particular personal qualities that make a successful entrepreneur? I think there are many personal qualities that help, confidence and conviction are key. The ability to inspire others is a trait that I see working well in my business and in others I am aware of. Do you think entrepreneurship can be taught? You can teach theory and offer the tools, environment and support which enable entrepreneurs to assess, navigate and assist in decision making. I have always wanted to work for myself but lacked some of the tools and contextual knowledge which the MBA at London Business School certainly provided. I believe its a combination of a personal desire to follow your dream and the tools to assess the likely risks ahead, but you cannot teach people to take the final step and take that risk. What business advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs? If after having read John Mullins book What to do before you write a business plan you still believe in your idea, you should have a go. Life is about learning from failure and not being afraid to fail again and again!

Back to top

Chantelle Ludski, MBA2000 South African Founder and CEO, fresh! naturally organic www.freshnaturallyorganic.co.uk
fresh! naturally organic supplies organic sandwiches and snacks to supermarkets, cafs and shops across the UK.

Did you apply for your MBA with the idea that you would start your own business? Absolutely not! Im an accidental entrepreneur. fresh! started on the back of a total lack of a decent cappuccino on campus. I decided to open a little coffee bar on campus to satisfy the demand. It became a coffee/juice/salad/soup/sandwich bar. In what way has your MBA at London Business School contributed to your entrepreneurial success? Which specific courses, people and experiences stood out? The energy at the school and the top class talent I was able to draw on whilst writing the business plan during the first phase of starting the business were invaluable, not to mention the fantastic network of people that you have access to. Operations Management and Marketing, along with the entrepreneurship courses were the best. Increasingly I find myself referring back to Growing the Entrepreneurial Business and finally understanding what the case studies were on about! Do you feel that there are particular personal qualities that make a successful entrepreneur? I think that determination, resilience and self-belief are essential character traits for starting a business. What business advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs? Research your concept, fine tune the original idea once youve had the benefit of some research, peer review, feedback and then step off the cliff and just do it. Dont be afraid to try and dont be afraid to make mistakes, but learn from your mistakes. What do you plan to be doing in 5 & 10 years time? Where do you see your business at these points in time? Selling loads more of our fabulous, fresh! naturally organic food and being a well established, well recognised and well loved brand in the UK, with aspirations to expand beyond the UK a 25m per annum business!

Back to top

Jim Shaikh, Executive MBA2002

British Founder and Managing Director, Yoomi www.yoomi.com
A bottle and warmer in one, Yoomi warms feed to the natural temperature of breast milk at the touch of a button. Did you apply for your Executive MBA with the idea that you would start your own business? No, I didnt. I was an academic in my early career and moved into mainstream engineering with BMW Rover. The aim of studying for an MBA was to try to change my skill set to make the move from a purely technical position to more of a managerial role. In what ways has your Executive MBA at London Business School contributed to your entrepreneurial success? Virtually 100%. My entrepreneurial career sort of happened by mistake. While doing the core topics, I hadnt really considered the entrepreneurial courses although I tended to enjoy the mixed discipline courses. When I chose electives in the second year it just so happened that every one of my choices were taught by the entrepreneurship faculty. I thoroughly enjoyed them, particularly Managing the Growing Business and Managing Corporate Turnarounds. Which specific courses, people and experiences stood out? A number of things stood out. One was the Entrepreneurship Summer School with John Mullins. The focus was what to do before you write your business plan, so we did a lot of research and followed Mullins 7 Domains framework from his book, which formed the basis of the business plan I put together later on. Ive started three businesses now and Ive used the 7 Domains framework for every one. The atmosphere around the School was vibrant when I was studying. It was 2002-2003 and people were running around with business plans and getting funding which made me realise that I could too. How did you come up with the idea for Yoomi? It was actually my wifes original concept. My son Daniel was born prematurely and was in hospital for some time. When he came home, he was a very low weight, so we were focused on feeding him regularly. It was my job in the middle of the night to warm the milk but unfortunately I was very bad at it as Id fall asleep and overheat it. Daniel would be screaming and my wife would be screaming and Id be frantically cooling milk under the tap. After about a month, she said, youre an engineer, do something useful, fix this. At the time, I had started an engineering business, which is still running, so I set it as a fun background project. When things were slack we would kick ideas around and approximately a year later, over lunch, a few of us hit upon the actual concept that were using now. How did you proceed once you had the idea? It was not until 2005 that I thought the concept had legs and could fit into a nice package, and it was then that I began the serious work of trying to understand the feasibility of the idea, which is where John Mullins framework came in again. I went back to London Business School for a project and some students helped to thrash out the idea from a business perspective. We realised that we definitely needed an Intellectual Property Patent for this business to work. I spent some time researching and once I found that there was space for the patent, I started the engineering in earnest. I got a small government grant to work with

Queen Mary University on the chemistry elements of the product and the focus was to do enough development to file a patent which we did in September 2005. The next step was to put the bare bones of the business plan together, which I finished in January 2006. I couldnt fund the project myself so I had to decide how I could make the business appealing to investors. I came back to London Business School, did lots of market research and data monitoring and managed to flesh out the business plan. Then I started to look for funding. I was fortunate enough to be able to come back to London Business School again and present at Enterprise 100 (E100), where 40-50 investors came to watch our presentations. After presenting at E100, I had around 20 people interested, which whittled itself down to four/five and I was able to secure investment and agreement. I had money in the bank in January 2007 and that was when we formed the business. Has the research and experience of London Business Schools faculty been a useful resource? Yes. Its been eight years since I left and I still come back. I keep in fairly close contact with the entrepreneurship faculty and I still have discussions with John Mullins and Keith Willey about what Im doing. Sometimes I go back for an update and other times I ask for their opinions or ask for contacts. Theyre willing to give me that free advice. What business advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs? Its a balancing act. Its all about balance and communication. Although people are precious about their ideas, entrepreneurs have to test their ideas and assumptions, because the best test is other people. When I started, I would speak to parents that I knew and Id accost mums in supermarkets, Id talk to investors and Id try to understand what they wanted. You have very little information and while you do have to be careful not to give the idea away, you need data that is not sat in a written environment, which means talking to your potential customers. I took prototype mock-ups to independent nursery shops and would say, Ive got this idea what do you think? They thought I was slightly mad initially but when I explained the idea, what it would look like, who I would look to sell to and asked them for their thoughts, they were really helpful. People are happy to give the benefit of their knowledge; you just have to ask for it!

Back to top