PopUp Business School

PopUp Business School runs with an ethos to help entrepreneurs start their own businesses without the burden of debts and without business plans. Founded in 2012 by Alan Donegan and Simon Paine, PopUp has gone on to help over 7000 entrepreneurs in 4 continents to do more of what they love. Pop-Up Business School has run courses in Namibia, Colorado, New Zealand and hundreds of events all across the UK. They are an alternative business start-up services that deliver workshops with huge energy and care that helps people make progress in their lives.

Simon Paine met Alan for coffee in Winchester in the September of 2008 for a casual meeting, that turned out to become the beginning of a movement to democratise entrepreneurship. What Simon had predicted would be the worst meeting of the year, turned out to be the best meeting of the decade as they swapped ideas, knowledge and opportunities. Alan shared his experience of business and entrepreneurship and infected Winchester Starbucks with energy and positivity, Simon told him to read Tim Ferriss’ first novel ‘The 4-Hour Work Week’ and shared his experience of Danish business school ‘Kaos Pilot’ and the journey began. Simon had been coaching grassroots start-ups in disadvantaged communities across the south-east and knew that business plans didn’t help anyone. Alan knew that the only way to know if a business idea was going to work was to sell. They wanted to set up an alternative business school that was the complete opposite of traditional business schools. To become the only one in the world where you could earn back the cost of tuition in the first few months of attending and instead of paying £25K+ for a piece of paper, you actually make money and leave the school experience with a trading business. Since 2012, Alan, Simon and their team have been travelling the UK and other parts of the world delivering the ideology of PopUp Business School, which consist of 5 or 10 full-day sessions supporting people in to self-employment and teaching them how to set up a business for free. Over the past decade, the School has been able to support over 8000 people via courses that are delivered live and in communities supported by local housing associations and councils.

Their mission is “to make business achievable for anyone and everyone”. They help people make money while doing what they love, and build a business ecosystem out of it. The business school empowers the communities of entrepreneurs across the country to get going, help each other and change the face of the UK through business.

The co-founders established the course with a vision to smash the belief that it takes money to make money. The course is designed to empower their clients to build a business and make money doing something they love, without debt.