The latest episode of Business Casual invites listeners to explore the impressive rise of European business schools in the realm of startup success. Hosted by John Byrne, alongside Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, the trio delves into Poets & Quants’ annual review of top MBA startups, noting that for the first time, the three highest-funded startups hail from European institutions. This marks a significant shift in a field traditionally dominated by US schools like Harvard and Stanford.

A standout revelation was the ascent of London Business School, INSEAD, and IE Business School, each boasting a startup in the top three for funding raised. Particularly noteworthy is Tameara, a fintech venture from London Business School, which secured a staggering $2.4 billion. Maria explains that Tameara’s success is partially attributed to its alignment with Sharia law, a creative niche that sets it apart from other “buy now, pay later” services.

The discussion underscores the evolving global landscape of MBA programs and how non-US schools are becoming formidable options for aspiring entrepreneurs. While US schools still have a strong presence, the European schools’ successes reflect their growing influence and the potential of diverse markets for launching impactful startups. For MBA hopefuls, this shift suggests broader opportunities and inspirations beyond traditional powerhouses in business education.

Episode Transcript

Note: This transcript was generated by AI and may contain minor inaccuracies.

[00:00:06] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets & Quants. Welcome to business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Maria Wendt-Villa and Caroline Diorke-Edwards. If you’re a long-time listener, you already know that Caroline is a co-founder of Fortuna Admissions and the former Managing Director of Admissions at NCI. Maria, of course, is the founder of Application Lab. Today, we want to talk about startups. There’s the cynics who say you should not go to business school to do a startup are those who argue that the tuition money you have to pay to a business school to get your MBA would be ideal seed money for you. Why not just use that money for your new company instead Instead of giving it over to a business school? But it turns out that business schools over the last quarter of a century have made major investments in entrepreneurship teaching and incubators. And business schools have become excellent places to launch a startup from. And the obvious benefits of launching a startup in a, I’ll call it a safe space, is you have the support of entrepreneurs, because most business schools have professors who are serial entrepreneurs. They’ve done it, they’ve been there, and they understand it.

[00:01:36] – John

You often have access to investors. Your idea can be helped shape by both the faculty, the investors, and your fellow students. Your fellow students can be your guinea pigs, depending on what product or service you launch. There’s a lot of money available in competitions for MBAs and other students who have startups. It does It will turn out that you will minimize your risk of doing a startup by going to a business school. Many people do it and do it well. Every year, one exercise that we do at Poets & Quants is to go to all the top schools in the world and ask them to identify for us the startups that have raised the most money from both VCs and angel investors. We publish a list of the MBA startups that have been most successful at raising money. The whole point of this is, if you’re able to raise significant amounts of money from investors, third-party people, we think that that’s a great indicator of the likelihood of success over the long term, because after all, you’re getting money from people who are very knowledgeable about startups, startup culture, failure rates, and what it takes to be successful.

[00:02:59] – John

It’s It’s an endorsement of an idea that may have a market consequence. And so we think our list of the 100 MBA startups is a terrific list to look at, both in terms of the variety of businesses that are being offered and which schools these MBAs come from. The big surprise this year is that the three best-funded MBA startups of the year do not come from US business schools. Typically, over all the years, Harvard and Stanford are usually way up there. Indeed, those two schools dominate in terms of having MBA founders with startups on their list. But the number one MBA startup is now from London Business School. The number two is NCI and the number three is IE Business School in Madrid. Caroline, what do you make Well, it’s a great sign of the ascendancy of the international schools on the global market.

[00:04:07] – Caroline

It shows that these programs are really serious contenders and a great option and a great alternative to the top US schools for entrepreneurs. The sums that they’ve raised are just extraordinary, right? So 2. 4 billion for tomorrow, which came out of London Business School. It’s quite extraordinary. Clearly, These organizations are growing incredibly quickly and becoming regional powerhouses and seeking global expansion. So it shows that these schools are a great springboard for entrepreneurs. It’s nevertheless true, however, that Stanford and Harvard still have the lion’s share of the number of startups on the list. So whilst it’s great to see the European schools making a big splash at the top of the list, I think it’s nevertheless the case that about 60 % of those startups are coming out of Stanford and Harvard.

[00:05:10] – John

Yeah, true. And the number one and number two startups are both fintech startup. So the one from London Business School, Tameara, as you point out, 2. 4 billion, which is mind boggling. But Maria, you looked into this and you figured out the little secret to that MBA’s ability to raise that money.

[00:05:34] – Maria

Yeah. So when I first read the brief description of the company, it seems like a buy now, pay later. And I was a little confused as to why they had raised so much money. After all, there’s Klarna, several other companies out there, many of them publicly traded, who are doing something very similar. And as I dug in, I realized that what they have done so well is they have established themselves within a niche of the fintech industry. So they are Sharia compliant. So usually under Sharia law, you are actually not allowed to charge interest on loans. And what this company has done is they have found a way around that. For example, they may charge the merchant. Let’s say I go and I want to buy something from your shop, but I don’t have all the cash up front. I need to split it into payments. I, as the merchant, might be willing to give tomorrow a little cut of that sale because after all, tomorrow is enabling that sale to happen. So I, as a merchant, might be willing to part with some of that, a little bit of that profit if it means that the sale is going to happen, that would not otherwise happen.

[00:06:34] – Maria

Or tomorrow itself may actually charge a small fee to the consumer who is making the purchase. A lot of the funding is actually It is a financing facility that has been provided by large global banks such as Goldman Sachs. So this is basically helping them both grow their business, but I would assume that a large part of it is also going to cover that working capital that they are going to have, basically making these microloans out to these individual consumers. So that’s what I would assume that most of that funding is going towards. But it’s amazing. It really is a sign that if you can identify a niche, an otherwise overlooked niche in a market, and you go after it, there could be real opportunity for you to grow.

[00:07:24] – John

Yeah, really true. And that’s fascinating. And of course, in Saudi Arabia, there’s a lot of There’s money going around, and a good idea can get a lot of money. And then the second biggest one also is a big number, 1. 1 billion in funding. It’s called CapChase from an MBA at NCI. It’s a fintech as well. It offers SaaS startups and alternative to venture funding with capital based on future recurring revenue. These are entrepreneurs who have found a way around things. It just fills a need, and that need is so great that investors are willing to put their money behind those ideas. The other cool thing about this is just the variety of ideas in biotech and AI, transportation, real estate, e-commerce, obviously at our fintech, productivity software. It’s amazing, really. Now, many of these MBAs have cofounders with students from other colleges or departments like engineering or computer science, which makes a lot of sense. And business schools have increasingly been able to allow these collisions of talent on their campuses to get together and make something happen. Caroline, what do you think about the variety of startups on the list?

[00:08:58] – Caroline

Yeah, there is a tremendous variety. There’s a case and themes coming through. There’s a lot of startups, not surprisingly in deep tech and AI. There’s a lot of FinTech showing up. I was also really pleased to see the number of startups involved in sustainability and impact, given that here in the US, that’s not flavor of the month, at least at a government level at the moment. But our efforts to address issues of climate change and so on continue, and business is still plowing ahead and taking the lead there, even if government is disengaging. So that’s fantastic to see. So for example, one of the top firms on your list is Hopper Therapeutics coming out of Haas, Vulted Deep coming out of Stanford. Vulted Deep is a dual solution for two major challenges, so organic waste disposal and durable carbon removal. Maria, I think that you were looking at Hopper.

[00:10:05] – Maria

Yeah, you mentioned them a second ago, and I was really excited to hear you talk about them because I think what they are doing, they’re a biotech company that is developing a solution that will remove heavy metal toxicity from the body. I think that that is such a smart idea because unfortunately, we are living in an increasingly toxic world. If we are living in an environment where increasingly, as people, we’re just going to start having more metals enter our body, I think that this is a really brilliant solution that they’ve created. And I think they’ve actually… Another thing they’ve done that’s super smart is that they’re actually targeting government entities for their first clients instead of trying to go perhaps a more traditional route of that more consumer-facing pharmaceuticals. They’ve closed a bunch of preliminary contracts with a variety of government agencies. So I think that that’s a really smart way to roll out their business development and to limit the downside risk in terms of revenue generation. It seems like they’re starting to get some of this funding in from the government, even though they’re only in phase one clinical trials. So I think that’s a really smart way to manage their cash flow in a way that I think a lot of other biotech and pharmaceutically focused startups, unfortunately, might not make it to the finish line.

[00:11:28] – Maria

So I really respected that.

[00:11:30] – John

Now, we’ve been doing this list for 10 years. We started back in 2015. Over that period of time, we do a couple of things. We calculate the total amount raised by the 100 top firms. This year’s total was about 7. 6 billion, which is the second largest ever. The single biggest total was in 2023 when the top 100 MBA startups raised $9. 2 billion. It looks like entrepreneurship on college campuses with MBAs is very much alive and well. Then if you look at the top funded startup. Stanford leads over the years with six, Harvard has one. Nci does really well with three, incidentally. Then obviously this year, it’s London business school. When you have an applicant, Caroline, who comes to you and says they want to use the MBA as an incubator for a business idea, what do you tell them?

[00:12:43] – Caroline

Yeah, it’s a great platform for entrepreneurs, and we’ve seen the growth in the number of students coming out of MBA programs, especially these top programs who are immediately launching their own business. So 10, 20 years ago, it was more the case that people might come to business school with entrepreneurial ambitions, but they would go and work for McKinsey, or they would go and work for Goldman for a few years first before starting their own company. Actually, there’s been a big change in the number of students who are able to launch straight out of business school. And of course, access to financing makes a dramatic difference in their ability to do that. So I think these schools have done an amazing job in building not just a curriculum that enables students to learn the skills. And as you said earlier, try things out in a safe environment and get feedback and build relationships. But much more than the curriculum, there’s a whole ecosystem. So It’s having the mentors. It’s having access to potential investors. It’s the access to, as you mentioned, the other parts of the university at some of these schools, where you get to work on projects with engineers.

[00:14:02] – Caroline

And then it’s the alumni network and all of the relationships with external companies that these schools have. So it’s not just the experience of what you will learn when you look at the incredible curricula that these schools offer, but it’s that entire ecosystem that supports you that’s so powerful.

[00:14:25] – John

Now, both my colleagues here on our podcast are MBAs unlike me, and both of them took their MBAs and went off into, I think, fairly typical or mainstream MBA jobs. I wonder if you graduated When you graduated today, would you be tempted to do a startup? Because ultimately, both of you are now entrepreneurs. Maria, what would you have done if you graduated today with your MBA from Harvard?

[00:14:56] – Maria

Yeah. So I mean, actually, my time at Harvard was convinced me for the first time ever that I should even consider entrepreneurship. In the required curriculum of all the classes that we were forced to take in that first year, the one that I was grumpiest about being forced to take was the entrepreneurial manager because I was like, I’m going to go back to big media after this. I will never become an entrepreneur. What a waste of my time. I was grumpy about it. And that’s the class that had the biggest impact on my life. So absolutely. Would I have started a company immediately out of business school if I were graduating today? I still wouldn’t have because having worked at a very, very large global media Corporation, I don’t think that I was fully ready to make the leap into entrepreneurship immediately out of business school. I did go work for some startups after business school, which allowed me to learn on the job before taking on that major financial risk on my own. So I personally would have still worked. But I do think that anyone who’s thinking of working for a startup, there is value in creating their own startup.

[00:16:02] – Maria

There’s value in working for someone else’s startup first, at the very least, so that way you can see some of the struggles that they go through and hopefully avoid some of them yourself. But I will also acknowledge that, as Caroline was just saying, I think the business schools in the past 20 years have started devoting so much more attention and so many more resources. Perhaps I would have been ready to make that jump had I had the current educational infrastructure around entrepreneurship. Had I had it back then, I might have been able make that leap.

[00:16:31] – John

Caroline, what about you?

[00:16:32] – Caroline

Yeah, I don’t know. I’m probably somewhat financially risk averse, and I took on a big loan to finance my MBA. So I think I was pretty focused from the outset on landing a salary that would ensure that I could pay that off fairly quickly. But nevertheless, I think it’s great that far more students are taking the plunge more quickly than I might otherwise do.

[00:17:01] – John

Right. Well, it’s definitely more people seem to be able to do this and do it well. I think the other thing about entrepreneurship with MBAs is it allows you to control your own fate. I think there’s a generation of young people who they’re more likely to have great ideas and more likely to get them funded and have the support through a business network to make that all happen. They don’t want to have to do the typical grind jobs that many MBAs get. Obviously, the rewards, if it works, are immense. I mean, you can really create true wealth by owning your own company, which is something you could be paid very well at many other companies. There is some safety in that, of course, but you’re not going to create wealth for yourself or your family by doing so generally. There you have it. If you want to check this story out, I think it’s really inspiring. We talk about the people behind these startups. It’s called the 100 Highest Funded MBA Startups of 2025. I also want to put in a good word for a conference that we’re holding in New York City at Rockefeller Center on October 29th.

[00:18:29] – John

That be this week. It’s an evening event, starts at 5: 30, ends at 10: 00. We’re calling this the European business school experience. We have a bunch of highly ranked European schools who are coming to talk to potential applicants about getting a business degree in Europe. We’ve said many times that the European schools are terrific, world-class institutions that are doing a great in the world of business. We’re going to explore with them what it is like to get a degree in England, in Spain, in France, in Switzerland, in other countries where there are great schools and great programs. We’re not only going to focus on the MBA, we’re also going to focus on some specialty master’s degrees that are being offered by these European schools. You’ll meet admission officials, you’ll meet alumni, you will meet me, I will talk to you about your interests and literally bring you over and personally introduce you to the people you need to meet to explore this option for you in the future. I also think that given what’s going on in the US these days, the European schools feel strongly, and so do I, that many young people may just want to get out of the country and to have a European experience.

[00:19:59] – John

This is your a chance to explore that safely and find out what’s all involved and what are the chances of getting in and making this happen. What will that experience be like for you? So check it out. It’s called the P&Q European Experience Live in New York City. It’s October 29th at Rockfell Center. You have to register for the event. It’s free. Come by, have a glass of wine with me, and we’ll explore your This is John Burn with Poets & Quants. Thanks for listening.