I’m a tech startup founder planning to gain better business understanding. Hence allowed to Imperial and Warwick, and got accepted at both.

In the next 2-3 years I’ll be moving between Berlin, Paris, London, only online programmers are on the table. Planning to settle in London after 3-5 years.

Imperial is obviously a stronger tech university and I have a feeling their Global Online MBA has a more modern/entrepreneurial/innovative angle.

Warwick has a better ranked business school though, as well as a long tradition for DL MBA.

There may be more alumni at UK tech companies from Imperial than Warwick so there may be a network advantage from that. But then Warwick has a better reputation as a business school in the UK (right?).

Any thoughts? I’m really 50/50 between these two.

Do you have any goals other than networking with UK tech firms? Are those the firms your company serves?

Are there any differences between the designs of the programmes that matter to you?

If you chose the Warwick DL MBA, would you consider the cohort that meets in London at The Shard?

The first and foremost is learning about strategy and scaling up tech consumer business internationally.

From my perspective networking wouldn’t be about serving UK tech companies. Rather about learning from others who already work at larger tech companies.

Eventually my company may get acquired in a few years. In such case I’d like to have a network in the UK that would help me with finding new opportunities.

Imperial offers a bit more flexibility as it allows to choose 5 of the 14 electives, while Warwick 4/11. So this might help slightly with tailoring the programme according to my needs.

Otherwise they’re not very different but Imperial indeed throws in more digital/innovation/entrepreneurship modules in there.

DL MBA at The Shard is 5k more (which would make the price similar to Imperial’s but I got offered a scholarship at Imperial). Also, it only starts in June 2020, while I’d prefer to start in January 2020.

Either way, you won't find much opportunity to learn from such people in a DL MBA. And while the courses will be great, academic programs give ideas which are tested in peer reviewed research, so that means insights which are not really fresh.

Did you consider the Stanford certificate? I'm not sure you really need a general management degree

Fair point, thanks.

Stanford would seem like a good choice for networking and meeting peers with similar background indeed.

It’s costly though and I think I would be missing the opportunity of broadening general business skills and acumen.

Maybe I’d go for Stanford courses after the MBA in the UK? In that scenario there’s still a question of Imperial vs Warwick. Is there anything you think that one would be better in than the other in my situation?

I’ll give it more thought.

[Edited by capmada on Oct 12, 2019]

Have you considered, instead of an MBA, doing some kind of bootcamp or another program in an accelerator? I think that Microsoft's accelerators offer some kind of options. There might be others as well.

If you explore some other options maybe it will turn out that something like that will be more appropriate than an MBA, or at least more in line with your goals.