School of Founders
Our Why: supporting entrepreneurs in building significant, purpose-driven companies.
IESE was founded in 1958 by and for entrepreneurs. The School of Founders (SoF) connects with this history, with a mission to support entrepreneurs in building significant businesses that make a positive impact in their fields. We are on this mission for three reasons:
Reason 1. Helping entrepreneurs to solve meaningful problems
We need the entrepreneurial spirit to tackle today’s most pressing issues, including inequality, poverty and climate change. Unfortunately, over ninety percent of new businesses fail to scale, which means they fail to make a significant impact on the problem that they set out to solve. We created the SoF to increase these odds. Our educational programs help entrepreneurs build large and financially solid companies that achieve the large-scale impact they aspire to.
Reason 2. Lightening the load and lifting the spirit of entrepreneurs
The entrepreneurial journey is exceptionally challenging. Anxiety, stress, and insecurities are commonplace among founders. The SoF wants to ease this burden by providing a supportive space to connect with other founders, clarify goals and priorities, discover tools and frameworks, and find the inspiration to dream big.
Reason 3. Converting founders into effective leaders
IESE’s mission is to develop leaders who have a deep, positive, and lasting impact on people, companies, and society. The SoF was created in this same spirit. We help entrepreneurs become better, more conscious leaders and position them to achieve great things. Effective leadership is requisite for scaling.
Focus on the scaling phase and leadership development
- Focus on scaleups – At the School of Founders, we focus on scaleups. We help founders scale their organizations from a few dozen to hundreds – and hopefully thousands of employees. Not because size matters, but because impact matters. Startups can never fulfill their ambitious dreams of changing the world, unless they scale.
- Scale yourself – To scale your business, you must first scale yourself. The self-awareness and leadership skills of the entrepreneur are critical factors in successful scaling. And leadership development can only happen in a community like the SoF. It is individual work that you cannot do alone. We connect scaleup founders from Europe and beyond in a powerful, highly diverse community that builds bridges and fosters understanding.
- Highly practical – The SoF’s educational offering consists of highly interactive lectures, case discussions, workshops and confidential peer groups, all with ample time to apply frameworks and critical lessons to each business’s unique situation. When our entrepreneurs are back in the office on Monday, they’ll know what to do.
From Startup to Scaleup: Transformative Programs for Visionary Founders
Other activities
- Peer Councils – We offer facilitated and fully confidential peer coaching groups to provide support and guidance for founders with their most relevant challenges and opportunities.
- Coaching – The IESE Coaching Unit offers an exceptional network of executive coaches, who bring the breadth of their experience and the diversity of their nationalities and cultures to the process of coaching entrepreneurs. The SoF also works in tight collaboration with Jerry Colonna’s coaching firm Reboot.
- Partner to venture capital firms – We collaborate with venture capital firms that provide professional development programs from the SoF to their portfolio companies. IESE’s venture capital fund, FINAVES, is one of our partners.
- Mentoring – WeGrow, an initiative of IESE’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center, is a community of high-potential entrepreneurs and prestigious mentors dedicated to supporting businesses who believe in having a positive impact on business and society.
- Focused programs – IESE offers many focused programs that provide a deep-dive into the specific competencies and sectors that relate to common scaling challenges.
- Research and publications – The SoF, in collaboration with IESE’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center, conducts research on the foundations of scaling, the latest frameworks and tools, and the most effective methodologies for teaching entrepreneurs.
Our Team
Our Team
Executive Director
Dr. Sebastian Ross
School of Founders Director
Oriol Vila
Entrepreneur in ResidenceHead of Advisory
Timo Buetefisch
Advisor
Patricia Gil de Sola
Program Manager
Stephen Stynes
Keep Scaling Program DirectorCoach & Facilitator
Tony Anagor
Head of Peer CouncilsCoach & Facilitator
Ramon Estrada
Head of MarketingCoach & Facilitator
Enrique Escauriaza
Coach & Facilitator
Emilia Domenech
Coach & Facilitator
Aline Badr
Coach & Facilitator
Eliana García Alonso-Lamberti
Coach & Facilitator
Maria Olival
Program & Communications Manager
Foundations of Scaling.
People like you
"The impact of each sprint is brutal. Back in the office on Monday, you can implement many of the ideas raised during the sessions. In addition, there is the more introspective part that I consider indispensable to develop ourselves as conscious and effective leaders."
"The unique thing about this program is that it goes deep into our minds and personalities. I clearly saw that if I don’t scale, my company doesn’t scale."
"For me the emphasis on the inner work, essential for becoming a better human, and in turn a better leader, made it a truly transformative experience!"
"Sharing with great minds with similar experiences adds so much value. It´s moving to see the visible results of our conversations."
Partners
For more information
Foundations of Scaling
Patricia Gil de Sola
Program Manager, School of Founders
pgildesola@iese.edu
+34 93 253 42 00