Interview with Zero Gravity's CEO: 'Tech driven, human powered'

With Bdaily’s Innovation week now in full swing, we hear from Zero Gravity’s founder and CEO Joe Seddon. From humble beginnings in West Yorkshire, Joe made his way to Oxford University, upon graduating he founded Zero Gravity, where his innovative ideas and determination would see him become one of Forbes’ 30 under 30.

Zero Gravity’s digital platform connects low-income students with mentors and masterclasses, giving them the inside track on reaching the best universities and careers. Their membership community inspires members to not only defy the odds but to extend the ladder to the next-generation too.

Joe told me that, “Since launching, we’ve mentored 8,000+ low-income students into highly-selective universities, and our platform is now mentoring hundreds of students into elite careers with our employer partners.”

Having faced adversity coming from his single parent family in West Yorkshire to being accepted into Oxford University, Joe understood the need to break down barriers for other students from low income backgrounds. “I saw first-hand on this journey just how high the barriers are for students like me to break into elite institutions, and when I graduated, I wanted to do something about it.

“So, after graduating from university, I turned down my corporate job offers to work in the City and set out to create the first tech-driven business solution to social mobility. After graduating, I moved back to my childhood bedroom in West Yorkshire and founded Zero Gravity with the last £200 of my student loan.”

Joe’s innovative idea relied on utilising big data and algorithmic analysis to identify low income talented students who would, historically, find themselves overlooked. Once identified, Zero Gravity would provide mentorship to support students on their paths into Oxbridge courses.

“I initially focused on these institutions as the Oxbridge ecosystem was what I knew best, and both universities were completely out of touch with the country. When I started the platform in 2018, only 11 per cent of students at Oxford came from backgrounds in the bottom 40 per cent of disadvantage, and 42 per cent of Oxford students were from private schools, despite private schools only educating 7 per cent of the population.

“Our success stories were featured across the UK press, and the number of state-educated and disadvantaged students going to Oxbridge started to rocket. Our platform has now scaled to support students applying to all UK universities, and we’ve mentored over 8,000 low-income students into highly-selective universities.

“In the past decade, the tech industry has been too focused on leveraging technology to extract financial value at huge social cost. However, Zero Gravity shows that technology can be a force for good in the world. It’s possible to be digitally powered and human-driven.”

Since then Zero Gravity has raised £4m of social impact investment to build proprietary technology to identify talented students from low-income backgrounds and unlock their potential.

Discussing the importance of investing in social mobility, Joe commented, “I believe people have mischaracterised social mobility as a charitable issue when it is fundamentally about talent. The members on our platform have overcome huge obstacles and defied the odds, but they are not charity cases.

“Every government, business, and university is now focused on reaching far and wide for the best talent because it is a commercial imperative for them as well as a social one. If the UK could increase social mobility to just the Western European average, we’d boost GDP by £39bn. This shows that when talent wins, everyone wins.”

With Joe’s background in mind, i wanted to find out how he felt about making his way into Forbes’s 30 under 30. Joe told me that, “Being featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 would’ve been unfathomable to my 21-year-old self when I first launched Zero Gravity.

Starting a business on £200 only sounds like a romantic story after the fact. The truth is that getting started without any financial backing or personal financial security made things really difficult. It’s no wonder that the tech startup sector is dominated by rich kids when the barriers to entry are so high.“

“The Forbes 30 Under 30 is really nice recognition though and I hope it can inspire other young entrepreneurs from “unconventional” backgrounds to defy the odds. I get hundreds of LinkedIn DMs every month now from student entrepreneurs starting their own mission-driven businesses who’ve seen Zero Gravity’s success and now believe they can do it too. Hearing those stories is what gets me out of bed every day!”

With Zero Gravity providing such crucial help to low income students, I wanted to find out what plans Joe had for the future of the company. Joe said, “We ultimately want to create the global talent platform for low-income students, ensuring that background is no longer a barrier to success.

That means continuing to scale to mentor over 10,000 low-income students each year into top UK universities, and scaling our work into offering to place thousands of Zero Gravity members into elite graduate roles with our employer partners.

“However, our long term ambitions are not restricted to the UK. The technology we’re building can identify and incubate talent in any country, and over the next couple of years we will take our first steps to expand Zero Gravity into new territories. Global expansion will be an exciting new stage of our business growth and will enable us to deliver our mission by democratising access to opportunity across the world.”

The Sutton Trust found that, “young people from less well-off backgrounds who attend university are more likely to become socially mobile into higher income brackets, and income gaps are lower between graduates from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers compared to non-graduates.”

With this in mind, the importance of organisations like Zero Gravity creating a more even playing field for young people regardless of their background, colour or creed cannot be overstated.

By Mark Adair – Correspondent, Bdaily

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