Founder’s Five: Rob Brodo, Advantexe

Founder’s Five is a continuing series from Tyton Partners that invites education company founders to shed light on their own success and illuminate the landscape for other education entrepreneurs and investors by answering five basic questions.

Rob Brodo, Jim Brodo, and Joe Gekoski founded Advantexe in 2006 to improve the business acumen of client organizations.

Advantexe was founded in 2006 by Rob Brodo, his brother Jim, and Joe Gekoski. Its mission is to help client organizations achieve their missions by improving the business acumen of their managers. Advantexe utilizes digital, web-based simulations to help leaders develop a range of business, strategy, leadership, and selling skills. It serves a wide range of industries including Tech, Healthcare, Professional Services, Manufacturing, Hospitality, and others. The company’s products have been recognized by the Brandon Hall Awards for excellence.

What is your company’s origin story?

Advantexe is the second company we’ve built that is focused on simulation-centric learning. This first origin story had its roots at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in a strategy class that the professor created with a computer-based simulation. We thought it was a wonderful way to learn. Instead of somebody talking at you about finance and strategy, you’re learning by running your own company. So, we created an organization that trained businesspeople in business skills using simulations. That was in the early 1980s. We grew that business and eventually sold it to private equity. And then in 2006, when my non-compete expired, we started Advantexe as a second shot at creating a company to do simulation-centric learning. And we’ve been going gangbusters ever since.

How will the market be changed by your company’s success?

Prior to COVID, growth was challenging. Scalable growth of an in-person training company has always been difficult. COVID changed everything by accelerating our ability to create scale. We have more than tripled the size of the company since COVID. And we’re now able to deliver at scale to tens of thousands of leaders. That in turn has given us the opportunity to satisfy a significant unmet need of the marketplace through simulations.

What do you know now that you wish you had known when you began?

To be much more vigilant in deciding which clients to work with. As an entrepreneur – somebody who’s trying to grow a business – every single piece of businesses is like a gift from heaven. But the truth is that not every client is a great client. And if I knew then what I know now, I would either have not taken on certain clients, or I would have fired them much earlier. Today we have a much more rigorous discipline around bringing clients on. After a year, if we don’t see the relationship going in a place where we want to go, then we have the capability of resigning that business, and it’s a nice place to be.

What non-intuitive insight have you gained through this work?

I am unfortunately startled by the lack of business acumen and leadership acumen of people who work for large companies: the fact that they don’t understand their own strategy and that they don’t understand how their own performance is measured.