Alumni Stories: Glyn Estebanez, Imperial College Business School

It’s a well-known fact that many potential MBA students don’t want to give up their career for the sake of their studies, which is why part-time MBA programs are so popular.

Imperial College Business School’s Global Online MBA is a two-year, part-time course which gives students the flexibility to work alongside their job, allowing students to apply their learnings to their workplace. Glyn Estebanez of the 2018 graduating class is one of those people.

The benefits

Estebanez was able to apply his learnings from the Global Online MBA to his medical education business, Nexus Labs.

The connections he made during his MBA him successfully obtain seed investment for his company, and this year, Nexus Labs launched its first product SurgicalTeaching.com.

Starting his career as a surgeon – and teaching students – Estebanez saw a gap in the market for a practical online-training tool to complement medical students' studies and better prepare them for exams, and life as a doctor.

He says, “A lot of medical students will come out of their studies with superficial knowledge. They’ll know how to repeat answers, but if you scratch below the surface, you’ll find that the theoretical knowledge doesn’t necessarily translate to real life.”

Nexus Labs was born in response and with the aspiration of creating online learning platforms that provide video and multimedia content to seamlessly complement what medical students learn at university.

“By using real-life footage of patients, surgeries and procedures and combining it with CGI animations, students can better prepare themselves for their practical lessons. It can also be used by doctors to revise before seeing a patient to ensure that they are adequately prepared for the common problems that doctors encounter.”

Learning on the go

With flexibility at its ethos, the part-time Global Online MBA program allowed Estebanez to learn from the program developers on how to operate an online education business, applying insights in real-time.

He says, “We were the second cohort doing the Global Online MBA, so it was still evolving.

“The Edtech Lab – the people behind the program platform – were constantly working on enhancing the learning experience. They were going beyond the lecture theatre and using technology to support the learning experience.

“It gave me excellent insight into running my own online education business and also the vast potential that digital technology has to enhance students’ learning. I could cherry pick the concepts that really resonated and come into work and apply the learnings instantaneously.”

Education for the real-world

The curriculum focuses on innovative thinking and insight, combined with new technology and practical solutions to benefit business – ensuring that knowledge can be taken from the course to be applied in a business environment.

Estebanez says, “The Imperial MBA helped to understand how a startup should work – the first-year modules focused on leadership, management and the culture of an organization.

“In the second year, the Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship modules helped tailor your mind – you might have a business concept, but how do you get that idea to the point of launching it and beyond? The modules were brilliant and helped you realize that although you have a good business idea, you need to be able to convey that to potential investors.”

Attracting investors

To get a new business off the ground, founders will need a lot of financial backing. Estebanez says, “I graduated from the Global Online MBA in April and had my first meetings with investors at the end of July. Both investors, Catapult Ventures and BioCity, had a history of backing innovative digital health startups, and within six weeks, both companies gave us financial backing.

“Through the MBA you’re taught to be pragmatic and realistic about getting investment and that there will be a lot of challenges. It prepared me to have the right mindset going into this and to prepare myself for the questions that investors would ask of me and the company. Instead of telling investors what I thought they should know, I told them what they wanted to know, and I knew the answers to all of their questions.

“When we spoke to the investors afterwards, they commented on how well we’d prepared and how it had helped. They said people would come in without knowing the information investors were looking for and they wouldn’t know how to demonstrate the value of their company. The MBA’s Venture Capital Finance elective gets you to describe your business and its offering in a sentence, and if you can’t do that then you have issues.”

Building worldwide connections

Estebanez and his team have set their sights on becoming one of the major players in online medical education within the next two years and are keen to collaborate with current students and alumni who are equally passionate about technology and online education.

He says, “We have experts working with us from around the world and we’re always looking to collaborate with talented doctors, educators and students. If there are any people within Imperial’s alumni network or current students who would like to learn more about the exciting work we’re doing and help us on the journey, then we’d love to hear from them.”