From banker to entrepreneur via an MBA - and a leap of faith

MBA graduate Alastair Mackie has walked away from a stable corporate job to start up a new venture – here, he talks about where he is at the moment with it, where he wants to be in the future, and how the MBA has helped.

I’ve been reflecting recently on the past few months and what’s been happening: looking back has its value, but nothing matches the adrenaline of standing at the starting line of a new venture.

Right now, things with my start up, WasteSync, are moving faster than I ever anticipated but getting to this point was anything but a straight line.

The leap of faith - you only live once!

Walking away from a stable corporate career to build a startup from scratch is terrifying and exhilarating. People think you’re mad; sometimes you agree with them. When I first mooted the idea to my wife, I half-expected a lecture on risk management. Instead, she became my biggest champion and pushed me to take the leap.

The decision came down to a stubborn realisation in my late 40s: I wanted to do work that meant something to me. My goal was to combine what I love, what I’m good at, what the market needs, and what can deliver a commercial return.

That pursuit of purpose sparked WasteSync, but getting here took some serious detours.

The meander in my 20s

My career started with a law degree at the University of Edinburgh - mostly because I did well in school and it seemed like the respectable path. After graduation, I packed my bags for London and threw myself into advertising. I took a year out to travel through South-East Asia and Australia, then returned straight back to radio and press advertising sales.

Advertising was brilliant fun, but I had a nagging feeling that I was coasting rather than hitting my full potential.

The turning point came when I jumped into hospitality, running a catering business with a friend. For the first time, I was dealing with the raw reality of daily operations and cash flow. I realised I’d picked up a lot of hands-on knowledge, but I wanted to formalise it. I wanted to codify what I knew so I could build a proper strategic career. That itch drove me to sign up for an MBA.

The itch I couldn’t scratch!

There’s a common saying that an MBA should help you change one of three things: your industry, your salary, or your geography. I managed to change all three.

I joined Lloyds Banking Group on a leadership programme designed to bring non-traditional thinking into banking right after the credit crunch. I stayed for over a decade, moving from commercial and private banking to running specialist lending teams. Eventually, I landed strategic roles, finishing my time there as Chief of Staff to one of the group's main directors.

On paper, it was a fantastic job. Yet the entrepreneurial itch never quite left.

When automation and AI advancements began accelerating, I saw a window of opportunity. I wanted to execute my own ideas, not just manage someone else's. I negotiated an exit package, left the corporate comfort zone, and spent hours at the kitchen table retraining in technical cloud architecture so I could build the software I was imagining. My wife kept me caffeinated and sane through those frustrating nights of debugging.

Thinking high and low

People often ask how an MBA helps in the messy early stages of a startup.

First, the programme was an investment in self-belief. It gave me the confidence to trust my gut and back my own ideas. It also changed how I look at market opportunities:

• The Strategy: Instead of relying on rigid, old-school academic frameworks, I paired a big-picture strategic outlook with modern deep-research tools to dig into the waste sector and find where the unaddressed operational bottlenecks were.
• The Accelerators: While the MBA gave me that 10,000-foot view of financial modelling and corporate structure, the startup accelerators I’ve joined since have been a healthy reality check. Where an MBA focuses on corporate strategy, accelerators drag you down into the immediate mud of raising cash, launching pilots, and making your first sale.

Lonely Founder Syndrome is real

Building a business from scratch is isolating. Most of the time it is just you, a laptop, and your own thoughts (alongside driving your family mad by talking about bins and logistics over dinner).

Reconnecting with the university network and joining the Strathclyde Inspire ecosystem in January was a lifesaver. Being around other founders fighting the same daily battles gave me an immediate sense of community.

The support from the Inspire team has been a massive shot in the arm. Despite spending years delivering high-stakes corporate presentations to senior directors at Lloyds, my first start-up pitch was a humbling experience. The Inspire team gave me the blunt feedback I needed to strip out the corporate fluff, simplify the business plan, and sharpen the pitch for the recent Inspire 100 competition.

Winning the competition opened doors to mentoring and networking that completely shifted our trajectory but the best part of that win was coming home to celebrate with my wife and kids, knowing the family sacrifices were turning into something real.

Taking WasteSync forward

The road ahead is what gets me out of bed every morning. WasteSync has moved fast from a simple concept to an accelerating venture. I’ve gone from working on my own to bringing on a fantastic business partner, and we are moving at speed.

We are also bringing in two brilliant MBA students, Pius and Niloy, to tackle specific, high-impact projects that will create opportunities for both them and us.

Our Three Month Plan

• Launch the Pilots: Deploy our technology to prove our operational capabilities in the real world.
• Build Case Studies: Gather the performance metrics to make our model undeniable.
• Generate Revenue: Transition those successful pilots into active, paying commercial contracts.
• Raise Capital: Open a seed funding round early next year.

We’ve been running on pure adrenaline since the Inspire 100 win to get everything lined up. Knowing I have my family standing squarely behind me makes the upcoming sprint feel completely doable. It's now time to stop reflecting, get to work and take WasteSync to the Moon!

About Alastair Mackie

Alastair Mackie is co-founder of WasteSync and Scail. Alastair previously worked for Lloyds Banking Group for 11 years, leading a team of 27, driving innovation and building governance frameworks inside one of the UK's most heavily regulated institutions. He completed his MBA at Strathclyde Business School, graduating in 2013.