Dynamo North East Member Spotlight – Roadmap MBA

Give us a brief overview of your organisation.

For most of the world’s population traditional business education has been out of reach, largely due to cost, but also time and 11 other factors which are barriers to learning.

Roadmap MBA is helping people from under-represented and under-privileged backgrounds learn the business and career skills, empowering social mobility and career potential for millions.

We believe that it shouldn’t matter where you grow up or what your financial background is on deciding if you can access information to help you build a better life for yourself.

A good education can help almost everyone. We’re building something which gives the complete roadmap to grow your business or career, as an alternative to a traditional MBA.

We are on a mission to help people around the world build a better life for themselves, creating an accessible platform for all communities to thrive and celebrate together.

Since launch Roadmap MBA has users in over 50 countries.

What are the benefits of basing your business in the North East?

There are several factors which impact where a business needs to be based.

For a business like ours which is based on credibility and trust, although the UK does have its problems, it is almost universally trusted. UK businesses and the UK ‘brand’ have a prestige – especially in developing nations which plays well in education.

We have a skilled (relatively low cost) workforce and affordable products and services, but the other key item for us is our GMT time zone …

After a visit to San Francisco in 2022, commonly touted as the “go to” location for tech businesses, it was clear that for an organisation like ours which relies a lot on LIVE broadcasts, Silicon Valley was no good and the UK could not be better located.

With our 7am LIVE classroom sessions we can still hit the end of the workday in Australia and New Zealand but also, without doing anything drastic, we can also hit the west coast of America as our 8pm evening class is 12pm in the Bay Area, so it’s perfect.

If we were based in California, large swathes of the world would be out of reach, so time zone is an often underappreciated asset the UK has to it’s advantage.

How does your organisation strive to make a positive impact on the local community, and why is this important to your overall mission?

We’re a mission based organisation with the mission to “make business education accessible to 5 billion people” and this is the driving force behind everything we do.

We’re partnering with charities and NGOs to give FREE business education and training to millions of people who otherwise could not access this, who now can learn the skills to build a better life for themselves and access things which were previously only open to some.

This includes in the UK, supporting hard working people who may be impacted by the cost of living. Many people are already worrying about how to make ends meet, so combined with a lot of businesses struggling with inflation, these people can learn completely for FREE via our platform and help give them confidence they’re doing the right things, also helping more of their businesses survive in the process.

It is our belief that a large amount of business education is not fit-for-purpose, particular for SME’s, so we created an entire business curriculum based on the world’s best concepts but stripped out all of the fluff and jargon, built on the foundations of real world skills which businesses can use to train up their team.

As a price point, by design a business can receive a full year of support and training for their team for the price of an average half-day course (£400). We’re structured so that the organisations who choose to pay, cover the costs of supporting people in the community who can’t. We also believe that this is the best broad business education available for the price point in the world, covering everything from strategy, sales, marketing, management, finance and more. Everything future (and current) leaders need to be successful.

What are your hopes for the future of the North East’s tech and digital industry?

Having lived in the North East for 12 years now it’s an incredibly vibrant place to live and work. We have incredible people, but also inspirational networks, hard work and a desire for something better.

We also have some areas of challenge and desperation, with communities that are struggling, but it’s my belief that through tech we can help improve the lives for millions of people – including in access to education – and where better to start than at home.

What are your business objectives for the next 12 months?

We’re still learning and developing. We speak to customers every day, looking for areas we can improve and better support people’s lives. For the next 12 months there will be a lot going on behind the scenes, including our developments for VR / AR, but publicly my hope is that you’ll see more partnerships with good organisations and deliverable measurable outcomes in society.

With 86% of the world’s population having a smartphone, we are working to ensure that these people have the potential to access business and careers information from Roadmap MBA should they choose. Many won’t, but we want it to be an option that they could.

Anyone, anywhere in the world that wants to work hard and create something, hopefully now can.

We will also keep refining the course materials too. We genuinely believe that this is the best business course in the world, particularly for SMEs, to give practical skills and help improve businesses and careers. Although we’re just a small start-up based in Gateshead, we want to go head-to-head with the biggest names in the world.

Why did you join Dynamo North East?

With ambitions as big as ours, you can’t do it alone. There will be bottlenecks and barriers which come up in the next 12-24 months which nobody will see coming, including us. We know that working with partners we can better tackle and overcome these challenges and help build something which makes a genuine change in the world, but does so very proudly from the North East.