S13E18: Reinventing education with love, with Alper Utku (CEO, Amsterdam Tech)

Alper Utku
The power of love exceeds the love of power, the world will be a better place. So that's the best advice I think we can get from anyone. that tells us the hierarchy we should choose between the 2. And so my choice of hierarchy is so it's like the impact on business. love first power sec. So I am for the power of love rather than love of power.

Richard Medcalf
Welcome to the Impact Multiplier CEO podcast. I'm Richard Medcalfe, founder of X Xquadrant, and my mission is to help the world's top CEOs and entrepreneurs shift from incremental to exponential progress and create a huge positive impact on our world. Now that requires you to reinvent yourself and to transform your business. So if you're ready to play a bigger game than ever before, I invite you to join us and become an impact multiplier, CEO.

Alper, hello, and welcome to the sew.

Alper Utku
Hi, Richard. Hello. Thank you for reminding me.

Richard Medcalf
You're welcome. So, Alper, what I know about you is that you look like you're on a mission to revolutionize education. I understand that one of your goals is to provide tuition free tech education with jobs to over a 100,000 young professionals. So how the hell do you go about doing that? Tell us your story. how did you, you know, what what what what is Amsterdam tech and And what made you found this?

Alper Utku
Yes. Okay. What brought me up here, I've been in skills developing last 30 years. I mean, ever since I graduated the 2 years after I graduated university, originally a mechanical engineer, and I went first job work was, like, working on physiologic the AI at our time. And I realized I wanted to do something more, and I found myself with, in the skills development area. Then I realized after some years, which was, like, midway, like, of this 15 years in in on the way, I said, how I've learned so much in the skills development domain, which made me a better person, which helped me to help others with my team then how can I make this at a scale work, you know, design and work make work at a scale that that we can I can see an impact where it can help others, but also as others grow, I can keep growing myself and we can keep growing as a team. So that was the kind of the first time, I I wanted to move further beyond the trading of skills development, which was the business of skills development towards providing that at scale. So if you help people to reach their goals, they are much more open to you know, grow from the personal side. So then I said, what if I do this at for young professionals? and what are their goals? And for young people, you know, it's like having an identity having, a place in the society, which starts with a job. So the job is the main goal for them. And then if you offered if you offered them the choices for having a job at profession, then they are interested into other things like personal development leadership development. That's that's been the kind of the core and the seeds of what we do, then as we progress, we realize the jobs were most available and skills were most needed in in the areas of tech. Then I said, what if we build a system against the skills gap. On one side, it allows companies to find colored people. On the other side, it gives the opportunities for young professionals to reskill upskill themselves and, you know, get really exciting jobs. So in a in a nutshell, it's an ecosystem that we built to help to help us grow and also to help us to help others to grow.

Richard Medcalf
Okay. So let me play that back. what I heard is you had a career in skill development, leadership development in corporate. And then you realized there was opportunity to do something quite different by matching, you know, the supply and demand around tech skills. It feels quite a jump. Right? So what was it that really got you going You know

what? I'm all in. We're gonna build this. It's gonna be a it's gonna be like a a university. It's gonna have really integrate with with companies on one hand, but it's gonna build curriculum. because that's part innovation, right, potentially from somebody who was doing, say, leadership development programs with within a business. So what kind of What lit your fire up to do this? Was it like a pure business opportunity that you saw? Was it a sense of purpose? was it just did it sound like just like fun? You know, what what kind of got got you going?

Alper Utku
This is an amazing question, Richard. I think when you when you work around things with impact, it's always you have this kind of paradox, not not dilemma, but paradox of is it impact or is it business? You know? And I think a paradox is a nice concept where you can have seemingly opposite things at the same time. You know? So I think my driving force, you know, it's been, as you said, it's a huge It's been a huge leap. I mean, to because we bootstrapped it. I personally mortgaged my house to finance the university. And university is a high investment, and I we did an IPO for our core business, the legacy business. We got used funds and everything. And we had so much hard times because it's a regulated environment. It it becoming a university. So at all these hard times, I think if it was only a business opportunity that I would have given up maybe a hundred times, the only times, you know, you know, there's this Japanese saying that you fall down seven times get up eight times, you know, every time I got up and I felt I was down, that this dream of making a difference for young people was the was the well, where I got my energy from. So in a nutshell, I think the approach, the impact opportunity supported with the business opportunity, but impact is in in the forefront. was actually the driving force for me. And I had this burning desire to share that with greater number of people and to, you know, and that was kind of my growth formula. So and that's that's what kept me up.

Richard Medcalf
So let's get into it. So so you you decided you wanted to do this, make a difference for young people. you decided to found university, and match up companies with people and build this whole curriculum. Where did you start Right? you know, how did you kinda get the thing going? It sounds like it's quite a huge undertaking.

Alper Utku
Yes. Yes. I think becoming a university, as I told you, is a highly regulated environment. So you get to have a license and accreditation for university. So I knew that. And one of the first things now, you go into higher education, one of the first things you realize if you open you really open your eyes. Higher education or universities are not really in the education sector and real estate sector. I'll tell you why. Because to get accredited as a university, the accreditors don't look at your education quality. They look at your resource they first look at your building facilities. It's a kind of hundred years old thinking. So I realized that. So the first thing I did is How can I build a university to hack into the system? I'm kind of disclosing it right now because I always wanted to do digital first University. But year 2013, I had just met with the founders of Zoom, and it was like, everything was so new. So talking about the digital university, was like a black sheep in the room. You know? So and nobody not even my family was taking me serious. Oh, you're gonna do an online university. is not a real university. You know? So I had to build a physical universe to get the license, and that's what what does the European University was built that time. So in 2017, we got the license with a campus in Cyprus, which gave us access to European education ecosystem with the accreditations. So that was our starting point. And I've chosen Cyprus because at that time, I was based in Istanbul. It was closed. I could travel. The real estate was reasonably priced. And that was it. And Cyprus is an amazing island. There are 100,000 students in an island in Northern Cyprus with a population of 300,000. Like, one third of the island is like with our worst students. So that was already an educational ecosystem. So it was the right place to start and same place to start with many challenges, of course. And and that was the first. And at the same time, I built the all the digital version, the online university in Amsterdam. So company started at the same time. So we we kept using the license, out of Cyprus. to exist in in the Netherlands. Now we are almost we are very close to be recognized as a local university in the Netherlands We are internationally accredited already. So, but we will be one of the newest universities in Netherlands, hopefully, by the end of this year.

Richard Medcalf
So I'm interrupting a second, but I I'm curious. Like, you've you've you built this thing out. You know, you're getting accreditation. You've hoping the second campus. And what's been your secret for making this happen? Right? I mean, I know you talked about relationships as being a key strength perhaps that you have. you know, what was it that? I'm just wondering as a leader as an entrepreneur, basically, in this space. What what was the skill set that has enabled you to do this? Right? Like, what what's your magic? What's your secret sauce?

Alper Utku
Well, I can tell you 2 things. One thing is, you know, I when we're chatting before the show, I told you, like, one of the amazing people, I met so many amazing who's been mentors for me, but one of the amazing people I'd met was a gentleman called Benjamin Zander, who was the conductor of Boston Flarmonic. And in a in a short period of time, I had spent with him. We've done certain programs together. He told me something I never forgot. He said, you know, I asked him, how can you manage like a flamonic orchestra, which is very difficult and, you know, lots of people and these things help you manage these, all these challenges of this complex environment and he said that I never take myself seriously. I said, I take my experience seriously. I always kept that And I kinda my version of that is that I never take myself seriously. I take my relationships, which is the experience as a part of my relationship seriously. for me, the relationships right now is this post cap podcast. So for me, this podcast is more important. The experience is than me myself and how I show up and everything. Or for the university, it's the university. This web of relationship in the university is more important either with my teams or with our students and their experience than myself. So that's been a guiding force.

Richard Medcalf
So let me ask you let me ask you about that. it's lofty. Yeah. It's beautiful. I love it. How do you manage to do that? Right? I'm thinking many leaders would be like, well, that sounds great. Right? But I know reality, I'm always kind of you know, focus on my own agendas deep down or, yeah, I don't I do get distracted when I'm with people, or I'm focusing about my lists or my tasks. Yeah. Do you have any tips for people who are always sure that they're connecting with others in that deep way?

Alper Utku
I can give 2 tips. I think one is, I think something is fired from Iran. When I hear people like me, I saying these kind of things, I become really irritated and warned because they are on a mission to save the world and everything. I find it very dangerous, so I don't wanna be in that league. So everything I do, even though I don't take myself seriously when I work or whatever, but everything I do is, like, you know, first, you know, how can I say that? I filter everything through my own experience. So rather than the experience of others, so It's kind of like in the airplane. When you get the oxygen mask, you put it on you and then few others. So it's not like I'm discounting everything about me and on a mission to save the world. This can so this is a paradoxical thing, you know, kind of can may seem contradictory, but still that's how I can really be real We understand. That's number 1. The number thing is I think the being in service of something greater than myself is always energizing. And so that gives me the resilience. And that gives me the energy not to give up you know, not to postpone, not to procrastinate, and it's always stayed focused. But on that mission, I I wanna say that is growing others and myself is I wanna make sure I'm growing as well as much as others in that same thing rather than, oh, I'm done that I'm I'm so perfect and evolved and I can help others No. I'm not there. I don't think I will ever be that. So that's the oxygen mask. You know, I wanna grow as well with together with with the learners and with the faculty, with the students as well. This is my opportunity as well as others. So --

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Yeah. I I love that. I think we've always have a next level, one of my mantras, right? We always have a next level to get to. And I think what you said around being on a mission that's bigger than you is also important because it then does the danger you say is it can become a mil stone that so serious and so heavy that we can kind of die under the weight of it. But if we take ourselves with that bit of humor, as you said, not take ourselves so seriously, This is an important game that we're playing, right, make a difference. But if we don't make a difference, that somebody else will as well. Right? So we don't have to necessarily feel the weight exclusively on our own shoulders. It's it's a tricky balance.

Alper Utku
Yes. I asked the question you asked to one of my mentors some years ago, and I use this advice. And, you know, how do you manage this kind of being on a mission? you know, how can I stay connected and all that? And he had told me that you give it you give until it works. And when you feel the pain, give it just a little bit more. So I think that's the point. And I think for us, in that world of trying to make a difference. I think having this ability to give until it hurts is I think the biggest ability, and that's the thing that keeps me alive.

Richard Medcalf
I hope you're enjoying this conversation. This is just a quick interlude to remind you that my book making time for strategy is now available. If you wanna be less busy, and more successful, I highly recommend that you check it out. Why not head over to making time for strategy .com to find out the details? now back to the conversation.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And that's really a deep thing. Right? And I think for many leaders that actually building that muscle in this area is quite important. And, yeah, I'm to be honest, there's times when I need to be there as well. Right? on my best day, I'm there. I'm serving. I'm completely focused on other people. Right? And then when I have my bad days, I'd, like, start to get, you know, focus inwards and that's never helpful. Right? It never actually works. The thing that we think is gonna help us notably focusing on ourselves tends not to be the thing. that brings us freedom and gets us to where we wanna go. but it's a constant reminder.

Alper Utku
Yes. I think so. You triggered something very interesting which should I think all my life, the driving value for me as a person has been freeing. I think So you and then I heard it from you. You know, that was amazing trigger. And for freedom, I learned on the way. Freedom comes together. It always goes hand in hand with another value, which is responsibility. Taking charge of your life and everything. So I think one of the pillars of our our community, AmsterdamTech, is that is the freedom which it requires accountable with responsibility at the same time. And this is how I how I kept going for myself to and Freedom is not like doing anything you want. It's like being choiceful at any moment. So we're trying to give that to all of us in our ecosystem in AmsterdamTech that Whether it's professional, whether it's relationships, we we are choiceful, and we grow in these choices, and we take responsibility of our choices and and go from there.

Richard Medcalf
While we're on these deeper topics, let's go to this question about power. I know you've said that dealing with power was one of the harder things that you've actually had to deal with, and part of your own leadership journey. Can you say a bit more about that?

Alper Utku
Yes. I think what, I didn't wanna take long and I didn't go there, but one of the other answers that I would give to your earlier question would be around power. And I I gave the simpler version, but I think one of our challenges as people in the leadership position is we have lots of power. We have access to lots of power. And how do I define power? It's this energy. that enables us to make things happen to get things done, you know, in the simplest sense. And sometimes we may have the tendency that we have that power but it is not. It we're best told, with this power rather than we have it. It's kinda given to us to get things done, but we don't really have it. We can we can see it with army generals who had, like, all this power and the moment they retire They don't have anything. You know, they it's it's it's a it's a it's an amazing example, but then what I learned, there's a great definition that helped me. Like, I think the word lives in 2 pillars, like, through all the universe, like, the other one is power which get things done. The other one is I learned is love and love not in the sense that erotic love or anything, but I I give. I aspire a different, meaning, which is the, again, the energy that connects things that are seemingly apart, So so I think, for example, speaking is to me an act of power, but listening is an act of love that sounds making and all these things. So what I learned is I think having a great life is kind of having a nice balance between these two dynamics, power, and love. You know, on one side, you get things done, but on the other side, you kind of focus on your connections, relationships, which love.

Richard Medcalf
Well, it's beautifully put. I, it's funny. I had a conversation. I think it was just yesterday by somebody saying, You know, it sounds a bit funny, but, like, I believe in love in the business world. Alright. And I just think there's so many people filter it. Like, we can't possibly use this word love in the business world. I remember my myself in what I was doing in coke being coached myself a couple of years ago. And I had to basically, I had to do this kind of rant at some point. You know, I was ranting on about, like, I wanted to create a love revolution, you know, in the tech sector or whatever. And the point is people can react against that. Actually, these days, I just use words like contribution and service. Right? But fundamentally, you know, compassion contribution service for others, it's love in action. And I realized that some of my deepest cravings, you know, are for creativity, for connection, you know, with myself, getting at my head and then connecting myself and also with other people. And so many other leaders actually think about it. We've got all our resume goals, the things we want to achieve, but actually connecting with our self and connecting with others, having fun and being creative, these are just so essential to being human. why why why take them out of the business world? They're essential.

Alper Utku
Yes. I'd love to put. I mean, I wanna give credit to Adam Kehoney. It's also one of the people, who wrote the book, power, and love. I didn't work, you know, in South Africa with, Mandela at the at the time. is now, I think, in Canada, but I would strongly recommend his book. And he he was inspired from Paul Tillich with that but that definition was so liberating for me. And ever since, which I also it saved my doctrine. It it gave me an opening and I'm very bold about this. I mean, I don't really, you know, use, like, action and connection. For example, I could have easily used power the power, but I really am bold about it. And I mean, people ask me, who are you? I say, I'm a lover. And what do you love? I say, I love love. I'm a lover of love. I mean, and for the sake of love, I can love anything else. So and, you know, when you put these two words together, and there's so much in the place for that in the business, especially in the impact. But then the hierarchy of these two 22 topics or 2 concepts is very important there. I'm we are reminded by Jimmy Hendres, actually. He told us when the power of love exceeds the love of power, the world will be a better place. So that's the best advice I think we can get from anyone that tells us the hierarchy we should choose between the two. And so my choice of hierarchy is so it's like the impact on business. Love 1st powersec. So I am for the power of love rather than love of power.

Richard Medcalf
Sorry. I'm just getting excited by you quoting Jimmy Hendrix at me. This is good. I wanna get my, you know, hi, my guitar. Am I I've I'm in the wrong room today. I'm not in my usual office, and I actually normally have my my electric guitar in the corner. So I'd be I'd have been, like, getting into the mood on this. I love it. So let let's go with the conversation forward because I I I think we this is a great conversation, but I really wanna as well look out this question of how you're multiplying our impact. So you've said that your goal is to provide tuition free tech education with jobs to the 100 k professionals. And he said before the show that you wanna then scale that to a 1,000,000 or or beyond. Yeah. What's it gonna take to make that happen? do you think? You know, what's what's gonna be next?

Alper Utku
Well, first of all, we're not there yet. I mean, that's the dream. We have we we are still we are right now very affordable. So our programs are top quality. And, like, we had we do bachelor of software engineering data science, artificial intelligence, We have, the also the masters in artificial intelligence data science. So the comparable against the comparable programs, we are a fraction of that others charge, but we are not 100% tuition free, but we're very close. I think in a year or 2, we're gonna be there. And what it takes, I think having like an ambitious you know, a a a very tough goal like that. It requires really out of the box thinking. So how can you offer tuition free education in a very costly industrial education. So and where do you kind of how do you keep the business going? So that makes us innovate every day. That's our innovation question. How can we make it tuition free? How can we make it tuition free? That's like kind of it's almost like asking question. How can I make a car gasoline free or something like that? You know? So that helps us innovate, and it takes a lot of thinking, a lot of iterations. We use agile in everything we do. So we we keep innovating, through sprints and agile processes. And we learned lots of things. For example, the the 50% at least the 50% of the tuition comes from brick and mortar, from the building, which has the limited impact on the learning. Because I'll tell you why. We didn't have this environment before. We had to bring people together. So we needed building. So I understand that, but today, we don't need it because what I learned in my career, organizations are not or or education or organizations are not like buildings. They are not their products. They are not their logos or organizations are simply one thing. They are conversations. and and anything like this phone, you know, it's from a brand, whatever it's from an organization, but it's a frozen version of a set of conversations made at a certain time. So everything are conversations. So if you can if you wanna have a quality organization, you want to have a quality of high quality conversations. So when we can have conversations, doesn't matter where they are. Education is also conversation. Technology is conversation. So now we have enough resources to enable these conversations. We've seen it with the pandemic. And I think digital is getting better and better. So that the building, the the one you get rid of the building, you get rid of 50% of the cost. The other thing is teaching. So the teaching is to me is about At least 10, 15% of the costs. And today, we don't need teaching. We don't need tutors. We need facilitators. We need guys. We need coaches. We need mentors, but we don't need teachers because knowledge doesn't need to be in the heads of a teacher anymore. It in Google. It used to be in Google, and we knew the generated AI was going to come. Now it's in the AI. So the AI tutor and a better tutor than us, but we have this relational quality where in our organization, so we don't have teachers or tutors. We have our faculty are either facilitators or mentors or coaches. And in these exchanges, relational exchanges, they enable people to upskill themselves. So get rid of that as well. The second the final thing is, which is very hidden, this innovation process. I'm giving all the secrets of our kind of fusion free pathway. you know, when you've facilitate a workshop or a class or, you are 1 to 500 people or 1 to 100 or 1 to 20. So in 1 hour, you can reach to 100 people. So that's not a big cost. It's a fraction. But when you assess an assignment, which is importantly in the higher education, you do one to 1. So you spend 1:15 minutes for every student. So if you have 1,000,000 students, you cannot do it. So how do you scale? Well, our our all of our programs are project based, and all of our assignments are project based connected to efficiencies and believe or not, they are giving our by AR AI platform and assessed by AR platform. and validated by the faculty and the students peer to peer, but our platform does an amazing job assessing the students. So all of a sudden, this one to one, like, with every student assessment time we saved. So all we're left is, you know, top faculty working as a guide, coach mentor, facilitator for our learners to grow. And that's not that's and that cost we cover with our employment partners. That's the question of the cost of a typical university and our employer partners for the, you know, sake of finding amazing talent built with tech and leadership capabilities. they, of course, pay this cost. And this cost for them is much lower than hiring a good engineer. the cost of hiring, you know, that much a fraction of what they would put, we give to a recruitment agency.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Beautiful. Level is, yeah, fantastic. a university without a campus or without cheap teachers, and without assessments in some ways. So it's amazing. So, but there's one real question of what I'll ask you at this point as we draw to a close here. And that's what do you need to shift inside of you if you wanna be an impact multiplier, right, if you want multiply the own impact that you make, get out of your own way, and have a bigger impact in the world. What comes to mind when I ask you about that personal stretch that you're gonna have to wrestle with in the years to come.

Alper Utku
Amazing question. I think immediate answer is I need to be I need to be bolder. I need to be more, courageous. Yeah. I need to stand up for that vision that I'm serving at the hard times, but I think I need to be bolder and bold and brave. And also, I think not not worried about conflict. because when you are on the path of innovation, doing new things, there's always a lot of conflict. So sometimes I I'm scared of conflict.

Richard Medcalf
So I don't wanna rock the boat or whatever, but I think there's a phrase. Right? the obstacle is the way, and I wanna put for you have conflict in play. Right? Perhaps need to zoom in. Like, where is that? And conflict is one word. just describe it's something else. It can just be sparky discussions. It can just be a debate of ideas. Right? It can just be, you know, putting your finger where where the energy is. Right? Sometimes when we reframe it, like, who wants to go into order conflict and cut nobody? Some people do, but most don't. They're saying, yeah, I wanna go where, you know, and have lively debate. I wanna go where you have the important conversations. you know, where there's energy and spark. It might be a different, more and positive way for for you to actually lead into that. And I hear you lot of leaders say things like I need to focus more, be more, you know, attention, but I think you've got a level deeper, which is, yeah, like, Where do I need to be braver? Where do I need to be bolder? Where do I need to think bigger? And and also and you talked about that sense of it in the power. Right? sometimes we give away our power because we're trying to be nice. We're trying to please people. We're trying to manage expectations. actually, when we have that conviction of where we need go. Sometimes we need to bring that out and embody it. And, nothing's gonna stop us.

Alper Utku
Yeah. And it may sound provocative. It may sound provocative, but it it is what we want to do. I think we want to be provocateors. to make a change. Yeah. Exactly. And thanks for reminding, I think the Ryan holiday, which I also had to purchased the medium as well, like Benjamin Zander was that he had this book with that title. Yeah. It was amazing.

Richard Medcalf
I'll put if people wanna find out about you or about, Amsterdam Tech, you know, where do they where do they go and do that?

Alper Utku
So I think the best way to connect with us is for me, I'm on LinkedIn. So I'll put it through. You can find me on LinkedIn. for us, we are Amsterdam dot tech, very simple domain name. So you can reach us at Amsterdam dot tech and join us you know, as a mentor, as a facilitator, as a student, as an employer, just join our community. so that's how to find us.

Richard Medcalf
Beautiful. I'll put I've really enjoyed that conversation. I've enjoyed we've gone from deep, you know, from conflict and, and and and being bold to love and compassion and, and to power. We've talked about innovation in the education space about you know, removing teachers, removing classrooms, removing one to one assessments, shaking things up, innovating you know, a huge part of that journey. So you're really fascinating to kind of dive in and explore these areas with you out of your depths of thinking, your openness, and you're willing to be present in this conversation and give it your all. So I really appreciated that. look forward to following you on as your on your journey as you modify your impact. So thanks very much.

Alper Utku
Thank you, Troyville Portchen to Richard, and I, I look forward to continuing our conversation.

Richard Medcalf
Thank you.

Richard Medcalf
Well, that's a wrap. If you received value from this conversation, please do leave us a review on your favorite podcast form. Redidly appreciate it. And if you'd like to check out the show notes from this episode, head to expod drink.com/ podcast, where you'll find all the details. Now finally, when you're in top leadership, who supports and challenges you at a deep level? to help you multiply your impact. Discover more about the different ways we can support you at xquadrant.com.