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Varun Balsara is an award-winning entrepreneur, business platform creator and alumni from Warwick Business School.
In 2021 he co-founded Let’s Level Up, an intelligent platform designed to support coaches and course creators in building and scaling their online education businesses.
He began his entrepreneurial journey while at Warwick University, founding the startup ConnectUs. This was a platform created to tackle student isolation, which helped over 500 students find meaningful connections.
Varun received an Outstanding Student Contribution Award (OSCA) at Warwick Unversity for his impactful work. He also served as an innovation fellow at Warwick University, promoting entrepreneurship on campus.
Varun is also a prominent public speaker, with his TED talk, What Impact Do You Want to Have on the World?. He co-hosted The Human Entrepreneur, a podcast that explored the human side of entrepreneurship. The podcast became an Apple Top 20 Podcast in under two years, gaining significant popularity.
He has been featured on various other podcasts, including the Millennial Investing podcast, where he discusses entrepreneurship alongside other top entrepreneurs and professors.
Varun Balsara grew up in India and went to an international school in Mumbai before heading to the UK for higher education. He studied for a BSc in Digital Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Warwick Business School.
Varun was aware of the issue of isolation and loneliness while at Warwick University and it was while he was a student there that he founded ConnectUs, now known as ConnectWarwick. The project aimed to foster campus connections using a psychology-based algorithm and successfully helped hundreds of students find connections on campus.
It was while at Warwick University that Varun found himself overwhelmed, worried about what life entailed after university. His experiences and observations led him to realize the need for more people-centric approaches in professional and educational settings. This realization eventually inspired him to create Let’s Level Up, a platform that helps online content creators build profitable communities and scale up their businesses.
Varun emphasises the importance of building genuine connections, both online and offline, to create a loyal audience and sustainable business model. Let’s Level Up focuses on human-centric values, helping others achieve their goals through innovative and supportive platforms.
Within two years Let’s Level Up has served over 200 experts, who connect with thousands of learners. It has attracted venture funding from APX (rebranded to heartfelt) and notable UK angel investors and has expanded into the US market.
Varun and Let’s Level Up are focused on product innovation and revolutionising knowledge commerce to empowering creators.
Varun adapts his talks to the needs of the organisation and audience. These are popular topics and themes:
Overall topics
Hard Skills
Mental Health
Varun delivered a Tedx Warwick titled What Impact Do You Want to Have on the World?. Varun opened up about the panic attacks he experienced when thinking about internships, assessment centres, CVs and the uncertain world of what to do after university.
He shared how the pause provided by the pandemic gave him time to ask himself ‘what impact do I want to have on this world?’. This led to Varun’s understanding of the need to find work he was passionate about, work that he loved, as well as the realisation that careers are not linear.
Varun co-hosted The Human Entrepreneur podcast in 2021, releasing 50 episodes of conversations with expert guests, providing listeners with the skills, mindset and confidence to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions while also managing mental health. As well as co-hosting his own podcast, Varun has been interviewed on Milennial Investing – The Investor Podcast and Breaking Uneven podcast.