56 The Times Magazinerent Hoberman transformed the
travel industry with the website
Lastminute.com, letting people
book flights and reserve hotels
without going to an agent. Then he
turned interior design on its head
with Made.com, selling sofas and
sideboards directly to the public
online. Now the tech entrepreneur
is setting out to revolutionise
education with a new coding college.
01 Founders has no teachers, no classrooms,
no tuition fees and a guaranteed job for all its
graduates. “It’s democratisation,” Hoberman
says. “First it was democratisation of travel,
then democratisation of furniture and now
democratisation of education. It’s a wonderful
goal. Personalisation is key.”
Artificial intelligence has already disrupted
the way people shop, bank, holiday and work,
with algorithms influencing behaviour on
Amazon, Netflix, Facebook and Twitter. Now
technology is reshaping learning after the
pandemic, and Hoberman is again on the
front line with an innovative business model
for education that he hopes will turn into
another successful brand. His aim is to train
up 100,000 software programmers by 2030,
with a network of 20 schools around the
country, targeted at disadvantaged students.
“Tech is a great enabler of levelling up,” he
says. “Talent is everywhere but opportunity
is not, and I think this is a great way to
balance that equation.”
The first 01 Founders campus opened six
months ago in a converted office block just
off Euston Road in central London. So far
65 students have enrolled, 40 more are
being recruited by the end of the year and
the building has capacity for 1,000 once the
college is fully up and running.
There are no lectures, seminars or tutorials.
Instead students teach themselves – and each
other – to code by solving problems set by the
computer. Like in a video game, they have to
successfully complete each task in order to
move on to the next level.
The two-year course is entirely free, with
graduates guaranteed a job at the end with
one of the school’s corporate partners. Joysy
John, the chief executive officer, admits that
“it sounds too good to be true”, but there is
such demand for software engineers that
companies including Peloton, the chancellor’s
favourite fitness trainer, are lining up to hire
graduates before they have even started
their training. Bosch, Marks & Spencer and
Nominet, the tech infrastructure provider, are
among the other businesses that are keen to
sign up programmers.
Companies will be charged a recruitmentfee of £20,000 – less than the average London
headhunter’s charge of £30,000 for coders- meaning the college will be self-sufficient
despite not charging its students for tuition.
The application process for 01 Founders
is gruelling and unconventional. Candidates
do not need any coding experience or
academic qualifications, and the school takes
no notice of degree, A-level or GCSE results.
Instead, those wanting to join the programme
have to complete a two-hour computer game
to get accepted on to the selection panel.
They then have to take part in a three-week
programme of coding-based “quests”, which
require them to help each other to solve
challenges. Although competition is intense - 6,000 people applied for the first 65 places
- collaboration is encouraged and candidates
are not accepted unless they demonstrate they
are willing to work together. “It’s screening for
tenacity, logic, teamwork,” Hoberman says.
Most of the successful applicants are either
recent graduates or people looking for a
change of career. Some have lost their jobs
during the pandemic. With the tech sector
heavily male-dominated, the school’s aim is
for half its intake to be women and half to
be from disadvantaged backgrounds. Around
37 per cent of the current students are female - almost three times the average on computer
science degree courses – and 55 per cent are
receiving means-tested support. There are
grants for living costs and transport, for
those who cannot afford them.
As an employer, Hoberman, 53, is
motivated by the need to train up more
software programmers to fill the tens of
thousands of vacancies that currently exist.
That means shedding misconceptions about
digital skills and broadening the recruitment
pool. There is an impression, he says, “that
things like computer science are out of reach
for most people and you have to be a maths
genius to want to choose them in school.
I hope 01 can show people that you don’t
actually have to be a maths genius any more
and it’s much more approachable than that.”
Having been educated at Eton College,
then Oxford University, and made his millions
as an entrepreneur, Hoberman insists he
is also driven by the “fairness impact” of
investing in education. “Many of us have
been very lucky and you look at lots of people
who haven’t, so of course you want to bring
those opportunities to more people. London is
one of the best cities to do tech in the world,
but it’s also an unequal city.”
Once the first school is established, his plan
is to quickly expand around Britain, with an
emphasis on setting up campuses in deprived
parts of the country where there is little access
to high-quality training. “We’re not politicians.
We’re not deliberately saying it needs to be in
the ‘red wall’ [the former Labour constituencies
that were won by the Conservatives at the last
election]. We are aiming to have them where
we can do them effectively, where there is
most need, where there’s good talent and
good employers.”
The teacherless concept will, he suggests,
make it much easier to quickly scale up the
programme. “If you want to educate 100,000
young people, then to do it affordably this is
clearly a great model. I’m not yet suggesting
we teach English literature this way, but it’s
empowering for the students. Whether you
can be teacherless in every discipline is a
much bigger question, but we know this model
works. People come into this with very limited
computer science knowledge, and they come
out fully trained.”
Born in South Africa, Hoberman came to
Britain from New York when he was ten after
his parents divorced. His business inspiration
came from his grandfather, who built a Cape
Town clothing store into a 650-strong chain.
Although he prefers jeans and navy blazers
to the grey T-shirts favoured by some tech
entrepreneurs, he has always seen himself as
a disrupter who likes his ideas to go viral.
At Oxford he transformed the French Club,
a free social society with only 50 members,
into a party hub business sponsored by
L’Oréal with 500 fee-paying members. He
launched Lastminute.com with Martha LaneB
COMPANIES ARE LINING
UP TO HIRE GRADUATES
BEFORE THEY HAVE EVEN
STARTED THEIR TRAINING
SHUTTERSTOCK