Mesa: Creating Startup Leaders of Tomorrow | Day One | Elevation Capital

We are excited to bring you an insightful conversation between Manish Advani (Vice President, Elevation Capital) and Ankit Agarwal & Varun Limaye (Co-founders, Mesa School of Business), who are building India’s first startup-focused B-school to create entrepreneurial leaders of tomorrow.
Ankit and Varun observed that companies across India’s startup and tech ecosystem were finding it difficult to hire talent with market-relevant skills and hands-on experience in business building, especially for business and leadership roles.
Having worked in business functions across leading tech companies like Urban Company and Amazon, they understood the future needs of this growing sector and set out to deliver industry-relevant outcome-focused business education for professionals aiming to build a career in the tech ecosystem.
The Harvard and Kellogg alumni discuss their first principles approach to reimagining every aspect of a higher education institution bottom-up and how they constructed a unique curriculum by involving the startup ecosystem.
1. In this episode, you will gain insights on:
2. Why Ankit and Varun zeroed in on higher-ed
3. Closing the skills gap for business roles
4. Offline, full-time program as a design choice
5. Immersive startup-focused program structure and faculty
6. How they built the founding batch
Mesa’s first 12-month in-person program with 60 handpicked students is currently underway, and applications for its 2025 cohort are now open. Apply here: mesaschool.c
_______________________________________________________________________
Chapters:
00:00 Coming Up.
01:02 Intro.
02:42 What led to the founding of Mesa?
12:36 Early startup phase at Mesa
20:05 Vision behind starting Mesa
27:56 Idea behind focusing on business roles
37:40 Student daily life at Mesa
40:52 Build Your Own Business (BYOB)
42:10 BYOB - Tote bag case study
45:20 Manish's experience at Mesa
51:08 How can startup leaders contribute at Mesa?
55:04 First batch of 60+ students at Mesa
1:05:24 What's the future of Mesa?
_______________________________________________________________________
Check out the latest videos from the Day One series:
🔵 • AppsForBharat: Buildin...
🔵 • Wakefit - Scaling to ₹...
🔵 • Atlys - Making Interna...
🔵 • Wishlink - Building An...
_______________________________________________________________________
Our Socials
LinkedIn: / elevationcap
Instagram: / elevationcap
Twitter: / elevcap
_______________________________________________________________________
About Us
Early-stage venture capital firm. Proud partners of visionary founders. Never too early to get in touch with us.
Above. Beyond. Together.

[@vinayakkapoor24]

Great Initiative, providing high-quality education that is relevant to the needs of the startup ecosystem.

[@mayurpanchal7680]

Mesa: Creating Startup Leaders of Tomorrow | Day One | Elevation Capital

[@user-yx6ho6tx4b]

Both are amazing

[@rajpritsinghsaluja8359]

What’s the course content ?