Overview
Eight per cent of our most recent graduating class started their own business straight out of the MBA. Cambridge Judge and the Cambridge MBA have always offered a diverse student body, bringing together a wide range of industries and sector backgrounds to foster innovation and entrepreneurial thinking in business.
As well as the access our MBAs have to the Cambridge Judge Business School Entrepreneurship Centre and other innovative research centres across the Business School, our students are offered access to a wide network of successful entrepreneurs operating in the Cambridge Cluster and Silcon Fen.
An MBA from Cambridge Judge Business School offers aspiring entrepreneurs a great platform for idea generation, development and venture launch. The curriculum offers tailored entrepreneurship courses, covering business planning, innovation management and funding.
of our recent graduates developed startups upon graduating
Statistics shown are from the most recent Cambridge MBA employment report.
The Cambridge MBA can progress your entrepreneurship career
Find out what you need to know, information on career outcomes, hear from alumni and sign up to an event to talk to us.
Everything entrepreneurs want to know about the Cambridge MBA
Can I start a new business during my MBA year? Can I still run my business and study for an MBA alongside? How do I develop my ideas before taking the leap? What resources are available to budding entrepreneurs in Cambridge itself?
Entrepreneurship career outcomes
From renewable energy to tech startups meet the founders and CEOs born out of the Cambridge MBA programme and the drive for innovation and impact in their careers.
Hear from Leo Jiang
My name is Leo Jiang and originally from China. And then I went to US for study, and after that, I joined JP Morgan in New York office. After spent about almost seven, eight years in JP Morgan, then another year in a FinTech unicorn in New York City. So I felt that it’s a good chance for me to explore something on sides of the traditional finance or even fintech industry.
Cambridge MBA is very unique because it sits in the overall Cambridge ecosystem. Majority of people here, they are scientists, they’re engineering. So by talking to them, it actually provide us the opportunity to understand actually what’s happening in the academia side, what’s happening in the industry side. So that creates a lot of synergy and that is something I feel I really appreciate during my time in the MBA. I still remember the first time we have the management practise class and Professor Keith told us Cambridge MBA, Judge Business School is a very safe place for everyone to try new things. So I do feel that’s a very supportive environment. So the professor encourage us, everyone please take a role that you have never tried before and take it as a opportunity to try something new, to step out the comfort room.
So entrepreneurship is something that I know I want to pursue even before the MBA. I really appreciate in the first term that we have a class called entrepreneurship class, but it’s provide opportunity for everyone to understand how that’s work and whether it’s something I want to pursue in the future. I choose the entrepreneurship as my concentration, and overall it’s very good value add to my experience because I’m working on it and at the same time, I have so many resource that provided by the professor, by the business school to help me to actually working on the things that I’m currently working on. I have to mention the college system of the Cambridge. The good thing about the college system is we don’t just have one networking circle within the business school, but also have another networking circle across all university.
I think many people don’t know about entrepreneurship. It’s not because they don’t want to do it, it’s because they don’t have the opportunity to do it. I think Judge provide this opportunity for me and I feel like it’s the right time to try new things. So we’re talking about ecosystem at Cambridge. It’s not just about all the invention or the research which are happen, it’s also the investment because I’m currently working on our fundraising and I’m searching the investor, all the VC, and found that I either have the first connection or the second connection because so many people here are Judge alumni or Cambridge alumni, working in VCLP investment. I have this one year to try the things that I have never done before, and I know that even though I fear. So people around me, they’re going to still support me. So that’s what I said. It’s a safe place, try new things.
Leo Jiang, China, was looking to explore the finance or fintech sector. He found Cambridge to be a safe place to try new ideas and to explore his ambitions in entrepreneurship, as well as get to know the start-up scene in Europe.
Hear from Brianna Goodlin
I have a job and then I also have a startup. So my job is in strategy consulting focused on purpose, so helping companies set a purpose and then wrap their strategy into it. And then, I also have a social enterprise startup that is focused on providing support to low-income University students.
So I did the entrepreneurship concentration and have been able to use that in a lot of different things. Trying to bring my startup to life and then our negotiation course that we took has been really critical as I do the role as I do work in consulting.
So in our negotiation course, a lot of that was figuring out how to evaluate information very quickly and respond to situations that, you know, helps you find the best situation for both people.
And so in consulting it’s a lot of working on the fly and doing things quickly. And that course has been equipped me quite well. When I chose to do an MBA, what I really was looking for was actually moving to a different country.
And I had different ideas around what I wanted to do. The MBA has allowed me to not only move country, but elevate within my career and in the industry and create a startup that I did not expect, going into the MBA that I would do.
So I did not come to the MBA thinking I was going to do a startup, but it was an idea I had had for many years. And part of being in the MBA, you just start thinking things are possible and things go from being an idea to being something that you’re trying out in the real world really quickly.
The MBA I think just puts you around people that are going to help you bring things to life in a space that you couldn’t find other ways.
I think Cambridge has an ecosystem where the people, the courses, the organisation and the environment that you’re in supports entrepreneurship at every level.
So you’re able to find people interested in the things you are, you’re able to learn from Professors and skills that you can utilise and you’re able to be around those that are interested in what you’re doing and that you can be learning from.
So much of my background is in Innovation and what I’ve been able to do is not only bring those skills into the MBA and infuse it into my interactions with classmates into thinking about things differently, but as I go forward into my career, the MBA elevated what I was doing so that I’m able to apply it into different areas and not just in the space I was in.
If someone was just starting their MBA, I think the first thing I would tell them is take time to try things out, try things new and step back or step forward depending on where you are, knowing that you can always go back and do more because there’s always someone to meet and something to do.
Brianna Goodlin, USA, works within the social enterprise space, alongside a role in strategy consulting, using the MBA skills, such as choosing the Entrepreneurship Concentration, to support her career and bring her start up to life.
This year’s employment report
Our MBA employment report captures employment data for the Cambridge MBA class of 2022/23 – our most recently graduated class.
These results confirm the variety of options available to Cambridge MBAs after their studies, and also the established appeal of the versatile Cambridge Master of Business Administration (MBA) graduates to a wide range of international employers.
We have provided pre-employment data to illustrate the transformative career pathways our students often take.
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