Escape the City Reviews 

The startup accelerator is a great vehicle to drive you from zero to a working business in 10 weeks. The program makes you accountable from day one, shores up a validated idea with a working business model and sets you up well for success.

Outside of the course material and working on your project, you will meet a network of great people and be challenged emotionally to confront fears, doubts and feeling of inadequacies. As a direct result, I've found myself making strides forwards in my day job as well as developing a business.

If you are thinking 'I need to make a change in my life', join the course!

I took part in the Career Change Accelerator - May 2018 intake.
Before the course, I felt like I had 'analysis paralysis' ... too many options open to me, not knowing which to pursue and feeling afraid of pursuing any!
Having completed the sessions last month, I now have a completely different mindset to not just my career but being able to tackle any change in my life. I understand what directions are possible, how much change i really need to make in my life and the tools and techniques (which seriously work!) to make the change possible. The added bonus is the community and friends i have made along the way.
I feel somewhat invincible which is probably not true but an amazing feeling none the less!
My recommendation for anyone considering the course is, just to do it, you really won't regret it!

I have just completed the Career Accelerator Course (May 2018 intake). As I see many others have already done, I cannot recommend this "course" enough (not sure what to call it actually because it is so much more than a course) ! I tend to be skeptical about this type of things but I was pleasantly surprised across the board. The dedication of the facilitators is incredible, the value addition of what you learn is immense and the tribe that you build around you is priceless. What is more, you will gain a great mindset that you can use not only for career changes but for any change in life... this course is the best gift you can possibly give yourself if you wanna make a real step ahead in your professional life and beyond!

Best decision I've ever made. I graduated from the May 2018 intake for the Career Accelerator intake and suffice to say, this has opened my eyes to the world of opportunities I can have with my career. I feel excited, alive and have all the tools to tackle my transition - plus the community you gain. Oh my gosh. I just can't put this course into words. You'll learn more in this 10 weeks than boring university lectures and everything is just sooo practical. You'll go away not just with theory but with tangible results. Cannot say enough about this - if you have any questions at all speak with anyone that has done the course - and you'll see why you need this!

I took Escape the City's Startup Accelerator course in the summer of 2018. I'm American, and I quit my job and temporarily moved to London just for this course, so I invested a lot in it and had quite high expectations. I have to say, they were met and exceeded.

I got three main benefits from this course. First, I got the technical knowledge and tools I need to start a business. We learned about customer development, building websites, pursuing funding, legal and accounting basics, etc. Second, I became part of an incredible community: both the others in my cohort as well as the greater Escape community. I've already gotten so much help, support and encouragement from these people, and they really put a strong emphasis on staying connected, active and involved, because accountability and solidarity is a big part of entrepreneurship. Third, and perhaps most importantly for me, I gained a new mindset, or at least began that journey. They weave a lot about mindset into the curriculum, which was extremely helpful to me in building my confidence as a budding entrepreneur, and I know others felt the same.

So I highly recommend the Accelerator, and I recommend the company in general, too. The staff are all so incredibly dedicated to the mission, and they're genuine and authentic in wanting to help others on their journey. 100% positive experience, I'm so glad I did it!

I had a great experience on the start up accelerator.... It is definitely worth all the time, money & effort ... I would highly recommend it to anyone thinking about joining.

Met a great bunch of like minded people all driven towards finding what matters to them and was inspired each week.

Ben & Emma are brilliant teachers & mentors dedicated to supporting & motivating everyone. They don't give up on you (even when you give up on yourself) & will do whatever it takes to support you. I was amazed to see how far they go to help.

Initially I was cynical of joining the startup accelerator, despite reading the strong reviews. I'd already been working on a nascent business, had a small group I'd meet up with for accountability / sharing ideas, and felt familiar enough with the broad legal / tax / accounting considerations for a new business.

The questions I kept coming back to were 'What could I learn from this group that I hadn't already?' and given my demanding financial services career 'Was this the best use of my time, when I could spend the same time working on my startup project?'. I narrowly decided on joining and with hindsight I'm delighted I did!

With the benefit of hindsight, this is how I'd answer the questons posed by my earlier self.

Q. 'What could I learn from this group that I hadn't already?'
A. Much more than you realise. The acceleartor provides an excellent template to test and implement your current idea (and to come up with one if you're not there yet), which can also be applied to future startup projects

Q. 'Was this the best use of my time, when I could spend the same time working on my startup project?'
A. Turns out I'd fallen into many of the pittfalls of starting a new business pre-accelerator, despite reading some of the same books from where the accelarator draws inspiration. In addition it fast tracked progress on my current idea (critically by helping me to avoid mis-directing further efforts, and providng the right tools / approaches to getting maximum impact for minimal effort) and provided a helpful community who were hungrier and more driven in their startup mentality.

In addition the whole experience was throughly enjoyable and I'd strongly recommend to anyone who is thinking of or already on a startup journey!

Highly supportive community led by an extremely dedicated team of individuals who are showing you how to kickstart your ideas whilst avoiding the common start-up traps. Ben is like a supercharged duracell battery who never gives up on you. He took a keen interest in my startup idea and constantly checked up on me while providing a bunch of extremely valuable ideas about creating an emotional connection with my target audience.

Things I absolutely loved -

- the energy, passion, and dedication of the ESC team
- the powerful content and resources, which would take you years of reading to assimilate yourself
- the community spirit/pay it forward spirit in the classroom
- the rapid 'determining your personal values' and 'generating a business idea' exercises
- the open mic nights. Every company/organisation should have these to help you bond with and know your team members/staff better
- escapee of the week awards (helps to create a bit of healthy competition)
- the party after demo day; Ben and Emma absolutely brought it! Prepare to be dazzled!

There are however a few areas of development, which I feel could be worked on to make this brilliant initiative bullet proof -

- more time could possibly have been spent on certain useful technical concepts that were rushed through as a result of a few classroom discussions that went on for too long
- the weekend sessions felt significantly more beneficial and collaborative. Maybe have a couple more of these in place of the short weekday sessions.
- maybe have a few potential early stage investors attend the Demo Day
- the weekend lunch options for vegans/individuals with special dietary needs could definitely be improved on. I found myself constantly eating just potatoes. Not a massive issue, but during weekend sessions, a low carb option could help maintain longer stints of focus.

Overall, this is a wonderful initiative, which is seamlessly run by three of the nicest, and highly motivated individuals. If you constantly find yourself procrastinating or building castles in the air, sign yourself up to this accelerator right away; you won't regret it!

Like everyone on the Career Change Accelerator I was feeling stuck before I signed up and it was getting me down. I was lacking the motivation needed to make changes. The course energised me, introduced me to the latest online tools, opened my eyes to many inspiring books and Ted Talks and of course connected me to a great bunch of people from the class leaders to my class mates. It didn't necessarily lead me to quit my job but it thought me a way to reframe my situation and a new approach to solving problems, Design Thinking. I would highly recommend anyone to do this course and the earlier in your career the better.

I went into the experience feeling drained and stuck, ready to quit my job and run away. I've left the career accelerator course feeling absolutely energized and positive about the future, ready to tackle whatever it may bring! I have learnt so many tools to to get stuff done and have made many new friends, and we all support each other on the path to a more fulfilling career. It's a brilliant network creation and I would recommend this to anyone who is stuck in their career, but actually also to people who feel like they need to reflect and understand their own ideals and values better - and how to live by them!

We spend so much of our lives at work, yet it’s a rare thing to have chance to reflect deeply on what work actually means to us with others. Escape the City provides that opportunity, over ten weeks, and in the company of a supportive group of new friends who are on the same journey. So often when we want to make a change in our careers and lives we realise something’s wrong with our present but we don’t necessarily know why, or how to move things forward without it seeming uncomfortably risky - and so often we then get stuck. The Career Accelerator is special, you really get to test out your career dreams and it has a strong bias not just for reflection but for putting curiosities into practical action. Put your heart into it - and it will stretch you - and your mindset and world view will shift, and along with it your sense of the possible. You will gain so much, not just from the feedback and warmth you receive from your group, but also the satisfaction from helping others and realising that however stuck or even lost you may feel in yourself, you have so much that you can give back, and that will energise you. Your biggest challenge will not be lack of possibility, but how you manage your time and energy to go all out for all the exciting things you can do. And most of all you will be inspired, encouraged, supported and even moved by the extraordinary team who put this programme together. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The Career Change Accelerator was part practical careers advice, part group therapy and part life coaching.

I have come away with a clear process of how to continually move towards a life where I am happy with what I do to make money and how that sits within the rest of my life.

I have made lots of great friends, lots of useful contacts, have a set of tools to effectively move from interests, curiosities, ideas to practical actions that are more towards something tangible. More than any of this, I have a completely refreshed view of what I am able to achieve and what paths are acceptable when trying to achieve that.

I’ve just finished the Career Change Accelerator Feb – Apr 2018 course.

Some thoughts I had before deciding to do it:

Am I actually ready to admit - out loud - I’m feeling lost / stuck
I’m not the right person for this kind of thing
I’m going to be the odd one out
Everyone else will have the right answers for why they are there
I could just watch lots of you tube videos to help me
I could just read all the books to help me
I could do this by myself
I don’t need to go on a course
I can’t do it
It’s not the right time

Yes, I could have watched the you tube videos / read the books / done it myself - but why hadn't I yet? It’s not the right time - but when would have been the right time? I’m not the right person / I’m going to be the odd one out / everyone else will have the right answers - if I was searching for something like this, it was likely that those other people were too, and so there was also a good possibility they were having the same thoughts as I was. I still wasn’t sure if I was ready to admit - out loud - that I was feeling lost / stuck - especially to a whole bunch of strangers - but I realised nothing was going to change, unless I made an effort to do something about it, and by signing up for the course - this was my first step towards trying to do 'something'.

I could have said, no thank you - not for me. I could have waited until I felt the time was right. I could have let the self-limiting beliefs take over. I could have not done anything.

But if I had done that, I wouldn't have met the amazing people that I did on the course - who I now count as friends. I wouldn't have gained the courage, insight, knowledge, self-belief, momentum I have now. I wouldn’t have done anything differently from Feb to April, and therefore, I’m pretty sure - nothing much would have changed. There’s no pressure to reach an enlightened epiphany at the end of the 10 weeks, there’s no pressure to leave your job, there’s no pressure to have changed in any way at all. Everyone is on their own journey, but for me personally - so much has changed, and it’s all been for the better, and I couldn’t have / wouldn’t have been able to have done it without doing this course.

Skye, Matt and Mia - are brilliant as coaches / facilitators / cheerleaders.

If you have any doubts about doing this course, ask yourself – as I asked myself - how do you see the next 3 months of your life and what will you actually be doing to change it for the better / get out of your stuck-ness / progress in the way you would like. If you feel you will look back and wish you should have just done the course, then I hope by reading this, it helps you get closer to a decision.

(P.S. Do it...)

If you're at the stage where you're looking at reviews for the Escape the City's Career Change Accelerator, you're probably thinking seriously about whether to sign up to the (not insignificant) time and money outlay for the course. If you're anything like me, you might be thinking it sounds too good to be true, wondering whether it will contain any tangible and unique content (that you couldn't get online for example), wondering how a course can teach you how to change career when recruitment processes always seem so risk averse, wondering whether this is a course for people who have the independent wealth to take a huge salary cut (we've all groaned at the magazine articles "from hedge fund manager to yoga teacher!"), wondering whether it is stupidity to spend money on a course that isn't accredited and that you've probably never heard of.

I've just completed the CCA. All I can really say is that if, having read the course description you feel this might be exactly what you are looking for if only its as good as it sounds, then you're in luck because it is absolutely as good as it sounds! For me personally it exceeded every possible expectation and from the other reviews here you can tell I was not alone in feeling that way. To list some of the great things:

-its a full, proper, creatively and intelligently designed curriculum;
-the facilitators are not only awesome facilitators, they have personal experience of all of this, they have written the course themselves, they put in a huge amount of time in outside the actual course - in short they really, really care about making this a positive experience.
-the community aspect really enhances the course and you end up with new friends
-you learn practical stuff, like designing an awesome CV
-you learn stuff about yourself (lots of coaching tools used)
-you learn not only what conversations you should be having, but HOW to have the conversations, which words etc - this is practical and helpful.

In short, I can't recommend highly enough, best course I have ever experienced, by some distance. Do it do it.

An incredible course which creates real momentum over 10 weeks. So many tips and tricks to get us up and running quickly and expert advice from tutors to help prepare us for the road ahead.

On top of that, a group of 40 great people that provide lots of moral support to each other each week and even beyond the end of the course.

I completed the Start up accelerator programme at the end of 2017. The course facilitators Ben and Skye are awesome - supportive, experts in their field, understanding and more importantly they encourage you every step of the way. My fellow escapees on the accelerator are inspiring, encouraging and it was amazing to spend time in the company of others who have similar vision, are encouraging and supportive, and we continue to stay connected and meet regularly - whether socially, to help each other out, or to help keep ourselves accountable to our plans. The course is not cheap but I can, hand on heart, say it was the best investment I have made on myself... Ever!

Excellent course if you need some structure to test ideas and build a business. All the key skills are covered. Course facilitators were very knowledgeable, supportive and great fun to be with. Lots of tools to bootstrap your business idea without spending loads of money.

I went to the 'Start your Business on the site' event and was extremely helpful and informative. Ben is a really down to earth guy, who is great to get ideas and feedback from. It's also a great event to meet other like-minded people and build some connections.

Escape The City is run by progressive, open-minded guys who are the role models when it comes to the career change and who have tried and tested all the tools they talk about. The course itself, the knowledge and relentless support of the facilitators, the energy of other participants all came together as a thought-provoking, rejuvenating experience. I highly recommend the course to get unstuck, to look inward and explore your curiosities, to start generating ideas and experimenting. It was worth every penny and more.

I did the career change accelerator course and it was totally worth it. It was an amazing experience over 10 weeks, you learn so much about yourself, others, careers, life in general and much more. I can totally recommend this to everyone even if you are not (yet) seriously thinking about making a change in your career.