(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Roy Wellner and Ariel Renous have known each other since they were 10 years old. They graduated from the same high school in Brussels and then from the same university in London. In 2018 they each enrolled in the MBA program at HEC Paris. And both soon found it wanting. “Most of our teachers were academics or researchers, sometimes consultants,” Wellner says. “It was really great for my colleagues who wanted to go into consulting, into finance. But it is not the place if you want to launch your startup.” They could learn more about that, Wellner and Renous concluded, from podcasts and YouTube clips. So they decided to create their own version of business school.
Their startup, Augment.org, opened its virtual doors in March to students willing to pay $1,750 for an online curriculum that consists of six modules, or courses, on topics mostly related to opening a business. The courses comprise hundreds of 15-minute lessons meant to be completed over a few months. The centerpieces of the curriculum are presentations—they're definitely not lectures—by well-known founders, such as Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia and Chris Barton of the song identification app Shazam, lushly filmed in the style of MasterClass. Some 300 people have enrolled so far, and about 50 have earned their certificate of completion.
Paris-based Augment joins a small but growing list of companies such as AltMBA and ThePower Business School aiming to broaden the appeal of the MBA. For whatever reason, only 4% of students graduating from full-time US MBA programs in 2022 planned to start a company, according to data collected by the MBA Career Services & Employer Alliance, which tracks MBA outcomes. By contrast about half of Augment's students, Wellner says, are actively planning or have opened their own business. And even most of those with jobs, he says, are interested in one day starting a company.
Brad Harris, associate dean of the MBA programs at HEC Paris, said in an email that typically 20% of the school's MBA and EMBA classes start companies upon graduating “and many more” do so over the next decade. “We applaud Ariel and Roy,” he said. “Our aim is for students to change the world in positive ways, and these two students are doing it.”
Despite Wellner's complaints about HEC's curriculum, he started his first business while studying there during the pandemic, printing nose clips for face masks that prevented glasses from fogging up. He sold more than a million clips to pharmacies and supermarkets in northern Europe before joining forces with Renous in May 2022 to start what would become Augment. Renous had been working at a company called Jellysmack, which uses data analytics to disseminate videos for YouTube influencers. There he saw firsthand how celebrities imparted credibility to a product and powered sales. In that vein, Augment, Wellner says, would enlist “the best business leaders of our generation”—founders of companies students recognize who give the startup credibility.
Shazam's Barton, who now makes his living on the lecture circuit, was the first entrepreneur to respond to the duo's unsolicited email. “When you're a thought leader,” he says, “you should have an open mind toward any opportunity where you could monetize that thought leadership.” Wellner and Renous sealed the deal with Barton over dinner in San Francisco. “They present themselves as combining the world of MasterClass with the online MBA,” he says. “People want to watch video that grabs their attention. And that's what was missing in online education, until MasterClass.”
Renous and Wellner soon grasped that the brand-burnishing was mutual. “He needed to trust us to explain the Shazam story and make him look great on camera,” Wellner says. “And when we signed Chris Barton, it was much easier afterwards to convince the other top instructors.”
At that point, less than three months after starting Augment, the pair had already found funding, which they put to work developing content. After they've recruited a celebrity founder, Augment staff comb through everything that person has written or said, looking for material that speaks to concepts Augment has already outlined in its lesson plans. “We extract theory from the experience of what happened in real life when they were building their companies,” Wellner says. “Not the other way around.” (Adapting that story “is one of the things they did the best job on,” Barton says.) Augment then flies the instructor to Paris for a few hours of filming, where they present on a custom-built set reflecting their character and accomplishments. It placed Barton in a mock-up of a subdued study, flanked by giant speakers.
Wellner insists Augment is expanding the market for business education to people who don't have the time or money to spend on a traditional program. But one element it can't replicate, at least not yet, is networking. Indeed, Renous ultimately met Augment's funders through an internship at a venture capital firm facilitated by HEC. “It's true that it was a big advantage when we decided to launch the business,” Wellner says.
Although Augment promises instruction in “the fundamentals of an MBA,” the content isn't particularly sophisticated. The presentations gloss over complicated subjects, and case studies and quizzes accompanying the videos don't dive any deeper into the material. Even so, for at least some students, that's a feature, not a bug.
“Augment is exactly the institution suited for people like me,” says Catherine Boldeau, who manages communications for a nonprofit. After initially enrolling in a traditional MBA, she dropped out because of “the intensity of having to submit weekly assignments.” Also, she says, some textbooks were outdated.
As Augment grows, its curriculum will dig deeper, Wellner says, though he concedes it will never be as demanding as a traditional program. The company will soon add courses on sales and accounting. And it's raised more cash, which it will spend on developing more content and selling it to businesses looking for professional development. Augment's early adopters get lifetime access to the program to absorb these new lessons as they come online.
The sales course will be taught by prolific salesmanship author Jeffrey Gitomer, who pitched Augment on leading the course after seeing one of its Instagram ads. He admired Augment's fidelity to real-world experience: “They've taken out all the bullshit. No one says, ‘Turn to chapter one.' ”
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