Career Booster

A learning web platform where senior undergrad students/young professionals can learn supplementary skills (e.g. leadership, finance, data analytics, entrepreneurship, disruptive technologies such as blockchain) or technology related subjects (programming, big data science, artificial intelligence) not covered in their undergraduate programs or not at their disposal in the region they reside.

In South America, specially in Brazil, the absence of alternatives for high-quality, affordable education in modern business practices results in challenges for young professionals to start and accelerate their professional careers. Added to this fact, even those who seek ways to learn or improve these practices are not guaranteed to find what they're looking for: business schools are not always available in the region they reside or the prices are just out of these students' budgets.

Our solution will help these disadvantaged students who want to improve their knowledge and skills and who want to be ready to face the challenges imposed by the 21st century by offering a high-quality, business focused course (e.g. leadership, general business, data analytics, entrepreneurship, disruptive technologies like blockchain). Besides this core content, we will offer professional coaching sessions, career support, resume reviews and access to job postings. We seek to reach as many scholar communities as possible, so this course will take place entirely online.

In our pilot course, MBA100, which is already running its first class, selected young-professionals and college seniors undergo a fast-paced program (100 days), learning the nuts and bolts of a business, how to communicate effectively and how to lead and work in teams.

The lack of alternatives for high-quality, affordable education in modern business practices in South America results in challenges for young professionals to get into the marketplace and accelerate their careers. Brazilian Universities are famously too academic/theoretical, recent graduates must learn even the most basic business practices on-the-job. In addition, university career resources for students seeking managerial positions or entrepreneurship are barely inexistent. Finally, students outside the main metro centers (e.g. Sao Paulo) may not even find in-person alternatives, regardless of how much they are willing to pay.

Our courses will follow the model implemented on our pilot course, MBA100. This solution is an online professional education platform, offering “microDegrees” to accelerate people’s career. Selected young-professionals and college seniors undergo a fast-paced program (100 days), learning the nuts and bolts of a business, how to communicate effectively and how to lead and work in teams. Participants will be provided with personalized career support, including coaching sessions, resume reviews and access to job postings. We will partner with companies to match most-promising students to relevant opportunities. It was made to prepare the professional to thrive in the 21st century.

Our solution will help undergrad students and young professionals who want to improve their knowledge and skills and who want to be ready to face the challenges 21st century workforce deals today.

Number of people enrolled on our application process and on our courses. - Student's interest in taking this kind of course

Monthly satisfaction followup with enrolled students - Accordance of the course with student's expectations

Keep contact with students who finished the course to understand the course's contents impact - Work situation of alumna students

Custom tailored by founders who studied at top level universities in Brazil and later at MIT (therefore knowing the lack of business oriented skills developed in some Universities in Brazil) and also professionally experienced in leadership positions at global companies. We seek to deliver a high quality education, coupled with coaching sessions along the course, networking growth access, all at accessible prices (besides the possibility of scholarships through a selection process).

Being an online business school, our courses will be available across all Brazilian territory (and later Latin America/Worldwide) through the internet, helping those graduation students who are willing to learn new skills but don't have an option in the region they reside. At the same time, one of our main objectives is to keep the enrollment fees accessible to all, so it is not an obstacle for disadvantaged youth.

We will advertise our school through partnerships with colleges and universities known for being excellent education centers but that lack business focused courses. Those willing to enroll on one of our courses that find themselves restrained by financial factors will have the option to undergo a selection process to determine if they're eligible for a scholarship. All the course content will be available through the internet.

We were part of MIT's Sandbox Innovation Fund and we used the grant we received to put the pilot together. The pilot itself generated revenue, that we are now using to continue growing the venture. We plan to use the cashflow we are generating to keep growing, but we might consider raising money to accelerate our growth.

- marketing: our limited budget prevents us from extensively using marketing campaigns to reach our target audience. We are mostly using growth hacking marketing techniques that doesn't require a lot of expenses.

- credibility: this might improve now that we have testimonials from the students that undertook the program (pilot class).

- professors/instructors: to scale, we will need more professors to partner with us -- it has been hard to find these people and understand what motivates them.

https://www.facebook.com/MBA-100-1166377236791932/

Just as the Solve community, we believe that thanks to nowadays' technology people have more ways to implement solutions and make an impact on lots of human lives. It is also well known that there is a gigantic gap in education between upper and middle/low classes in Brazil, and we think we can help the disadvantaged youth who desire to improve their skills and become top class workforce to achieve these goals. We're sure that with Solve's community help we will be able to improve our efforts and wherewithal to help address this problem.

We currently partnered with a few academic institutions across different universities in Brazil (we have partners in 3 universities, but we are talking to more than 50 different institutions now). 

We also partnered with a professional coach, a professional development company and a professional (MBA Chicago Booth).

Online players such as Udemy, Edx and Coursera.