A little background Part 1: The GradULoop story (thus far)

To those that are just getting in the Loop with us,

Welcome and thanks for reading. Tony, my co-founder, has been doing the lion's share of blogging thus far into our startup journey, and I (Glen) think that it’s time to tell the story of where we have come from (Part 1) and where we are and where we are going (Part 2). I hope you enjoy our different styles, as Tony tends to take us into the future and philosophical realm (he is a Heart-based entrepreneur) and I will keep us looking towards the next step for the company (I am a Brain-based entrepreneur).

Not me, I don't drink Tea while studying

Part 1: GradULoop, powered by Educate360, LLC is the brainchild of two military pilot types, Glen and Tony, who met at the Kelley business school in Bloomington, Indiana back in 2010.

How we got there to meet in the first place speaks to one of the core values of GradULoop: alleviating the sometimes lonely process of getting into graduate school. While we have bigger plans than MBA admissions consulting, in the short run as we attempt to figure out the pains of our customers, on the advice of one of our mentors, Roshan (check him out on our Mentor team page!), we both figured this was a great place to start.

The path to grad school was lonely for both Tony and me. Being in the active duty military, Tony in the Air Force and Glen in the Navy, we had to teach ourselves much of the process of getting into a good business school as at the time there wasn’t much of an on or offline network to help us along. In that sense, nobody we knew in our career path was pursuing a top 25 b-school given the arduous job and deployment commitments as well as needing to complete the degree in nights and weekends.

Tony and I bonded quickly when we met in Bloomington as we asked the other who had helped them along the way and if they had found difficulties in navigating the lonely path towards being accepted at the Kelley School. To fast forward to just several months ago, we each remembered this shared frustration of a non-traditional business student (e.g. military, government, non-profit, international, entrepreneur) attempting to get coherent advice that others in the “traditional business fast-track” had readily available around them. Further, from meeting the other military and non-traditional students that had enrolled at Kelley, we also found they shared the same sense of frustration in navigating the process blindly, as well as a shared relief that their almost entrepreneurial application efforts had ended successfully. Tony and I thought there might be a good business model in improving the admissions process to those without the built in coaching network. Luckily, on my end I had a friend named Olivia who eventually went to Cornell’s Johnson school (check her out on our Mentor team page!) to help me along but I’ll never forget how behind I was in the application cycle compared to her, though somehow through her advice and brute force I was able to get everything done and turned in just barely in time. That was a stressful 3 months for sure since I learned most people spend a year or more on studying and taking the GMAT, writing essays, getting letters of recommendation, and transcripts.

Once enrolled, Tony and I quickly realized that we were among the few students who had neither formal business education nor experience. Again we bonded over the sharp learning curve we faced to get on the same plane as the other students who had on average almost a decade of financial, marketing, operations, or strategy business experience for Fortune 500 companies. However, Tony and I quickly realized that the somewhat rare skill of leadership honed from our military backgrounds was our strong suit and we assimilated well with our other new Kelley b-school students. While important, we realized that leadership experience will only take one so far when returning to student mode, so in our first year, we set about learning the other 90% of business skills that ranged from quantitative analysis (spreadsheet modeling), macro/micro economics, operations management, finance, marketing, strategy, accounting.

From getting a world-class foundation in these areas from the #1 business-school professors (as measured from the 2013 Bloomberg Businessweek), Tony and I began to get a sense for the areas we enjoyed and more importantly, the areas that we would rather not concentrate on. As we began our second year of the MBA, we both caught the entrepreneur bug and were led down the traditional b-school path for our Capstone of forming a team, coming up with an innovative idea, and authoring a fully articulated business plan. Every Kelley MBA is required to participate in this important entrepreneurial exercise before they can graduate. For Tony and I, it opened our eyes not only to the wide world of startups but also it spoke volumes of the depth and breadth of the educational experience received at Kelley when measured against other top schools that do not have the business plan and venture requirement.

Stay tuned for Part 2 that brings us up to speed on our respective second Master’s degree experiences and how we came together for GradULoop. Thank you for reading and please pass on our service to anyone in your network that might be able to benefit.

Regards,

Glen