Why I spent my severance on a startup instead of an MBA

Sam Perry long viewed an MBA as a shortcut to senior corporate roles, but after being laid off in 2022 in his late 30s he chose a different path. Rather than spend his mid-five-figure severance on expensive degrees that might not guarantee a job, he decided to back a side project he had begun at G-P: an HR tech marketplace.

A family friend urged him to start a company instead, and Perry put about a fifth of his payout into building the business. Keeping costs low with off-the-shelf technology and free online courses, he launched Ensemble in late 2022 and later pivoted to procuring HR software for customers.

Running the company taught him practical skills across marketing, product development, hiring, and resilience — including the hard lessons of cold-calling potential customers. Ensemble saw early sales and was acquired by a competitor in the summer of 2024. Today Perry is a group vice president at Sphera and says the startup experience has been more differentiating than an MBA would have been.

sam perry, severance, mba, startup, ensemble, hr tech, marketplace, layoff 2022, acquisition 2024, sphera