The United Kingdom has recently added a ‘unicorn’, as a fast-growing company is called, worth more than a billion euros. Since the latest financing round, in which it raised more than 200 million euros, Multiverse has a value of 1.58 billion euros. This is a remarkable undertaking for two reasons. First, because the successful founder is Euan Blair, the eldest son of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Second, because the mission of this young company is a kind of political patricide.
Multiverse arranges apprenticeships and internships for school leavers at more than 500 top companies, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Blair founded the company under the name WhiteHat six years ago with Sophie Adelman, a former colleague at the investment bank Morgan Stanley. Blair junior’s net worth is now estimated at 400 million euros, making him almost ten times as rich as his wealthy father. Earlier this month, for his services to education, the 38-year-old was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
Old Blair, who himself recently joined the Order of the Garter, must have had mixed feelings at the awarding of this royal award. When he took office as Prime Minister a quarter of a century ago, his ambition was to send half of Britain’s young people to university – studying had to become the norm. A university degree is also desirable for practical professions, from nurse to police officer. The academisation had already been set in motion by his predecessor John Major, under whose auspices vocational training courses were given the title ‘university’.
Cheap is expensive
Euan was also sent to university by his parents. The young Blair studied archeology in Bristol, where he obtained a bachelor of arts degree in 2005. He had a carefree time in the college town, where his parents had bought him two flats: one to live in and one to rent out. In retrospect, however, he concluded that he had ‘learned nothing’. After college, Euan did an internship with American congressmen, making grateful use of his father’s contacts. He also did an unpaid snooping internship in Westminster. He studied international relations at Yale University.
He seemed to be making a career as a banker. But although he found it interesting, his heart was in it, he said in an interview with The Daily Mail, in the combination of education and employment. Euan was aware that a short circuit had arisen between what young people were going to study and what was needed on the labor market. Too many graduates had to settle for jobs that were ‘below their level’. Meanwhile, graduates were stuck with sky-high student debts, which they often couldn’t even pay off, leaving the bill with the taxpayer.
British and American employers realized that years earlier they had wrongly cut back on apprenticeships and internships by leaving training to the government. Cheap turned out to be expensive. The business model that Blair has envisioned from the start is simple. Multiverse, which employs 600 people, offers nine different levels of apprenticeship programs to suit every school-leaver or university graduate. dropout what to choose. The customers are data and tech companies in the United Kingdom and the United States. The potential employees include a relatively large number of people of color and from the lower social classes.
Learning in practice
It is in keeping with the zeitgeist. Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, unlike Tony Blair’s New Labour, wants to make practical learning attractive again. For years, the middle class has looked down upon young people who are not ‘highly educated’. That is changing. An apprenticeship is now seen as better preparation for a career than academic studies, something endorsed by a YouGov poll. For the Conservatives, this development has an additional advantage: universities today are known as progressive hotbeds.
In an essay for the think tank Policy Exchange, the young Blair denounced the English ‘obsession’ with studying at ‘uni’. He advises young people to choose an alternative path. That has brought him on charges of hypocrisy. After all, Euan himself studied at two top universities. And also grew up on 10 Downing Street, the son of a top politician and a top lawyer. Talk about wheelbarrows (and check marks)! He recently treated himself and his wife Suzanne Ashman to a £25million London property, complete with a parking garage, swimming pool and underground cinema.
Blair senior claims to be proud of his eldest son. He has reluctantly admitted that his goal of sending as many young people as possible to college seemed like a good plan at the time, but it didn’t turn out the way he had hoped. Despite this, the Tony Blair Institute came back two months ago with a report that stated that by 2040, as many as 70 percent of school leavers should be entering higher education, a percentage that is currently at 53. The 69-year-old former prime minister received support from, among others, Jo Johnson, the brother of the prime minister who was Secretary of State for Higher Education until three years ago.
For Tony there is one consolation: his youngest son Leo has ‘just’ gone to university.
3 x EUAN BLAIR
Ladder sat
Euan Blair first made headlines when he was 16 when he was lying in Leicester Square, just after his father called for tougher action on young people who misbehave. He gave a false name, address and age to the police.
Euan test
In building the Millennium Dome, the permanent marquee built in Greenwich before the turn of the century, Blair was guided in part by the tastes of his 13-year-old son. He even talked about the Euan test.
Millionaire
In addition to Euan, the Blairs have three more children. Kathryn is a lawyer, Nicky is a football coach and Leo is active in the Labor Party. Thanks to smart real estate investments by their parents, the children are all millionaires.