LBS' Incubator programme, IEPC and Ocean Bottle's Nick Doman featured in FT

Nick Doman (LBS alumnus, MIM 2018) , the co-founder of Ocean Bottle, and Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital (IEPC) Executive Director, Jane Khedair, are both featured in the FT article titled, Business schools incubate a generation of ethical entrepreneurs (FT , 12 February 2025).

The article examines how business schools and their incubators are playing a growing role in nurturing students' ethical start-up ambitions.

Nick, and his fellow LBS alumnus and co-founder of Ocean Bottle, Will Pearson (MIM 2018), have been regularly featured in LBS' Think magazine (see Ocean Bottle: a planet-positive success story and Cleaning up the Oceans). Ocean Bottle, a company that uses recycled plastics for its thermos flask products, has collected the equivalent of one billion plastic bottles that would have otherwise entered the world’s oceans.

In the FT article, Nick is reports that he attended LBS in search of a place to explore start-up ideas and to build his network. Then, one day in class, he sat down next to Will Pearson, who would eventually become his business partner.

“It was serendipitous,” says the 30-year-old entrepreneur. “We sat next to each other and spoke to each other at every lesson for the first semester in 2017.” Fast forward to today and Ocean Bottle is on course to turn a profit this year, according to Doman.

"Although Doman’s meeting with his co-founder at LBS might seem random, it is anything but. Thousands of people head to business schools to build a network, nurture ideas in the hope they will strike it rich, and do good for society.

"Ideas that make an impact are often simple. In the case of Ocean Bottle, for every bottle that customers buy, the company collects 1,000 plastic bottles to help reduce waste in the environment," reports the FT.

“I came up with this idea, to place purpose at the forefront of what we did,” Doman says. “With purpose comes profit. We don’t have to trade one for the other.”

"Some educators observe that Doman is typical of a generation of entrepreneurs who often want to do good as well as make money. Jane Khedair is the former head of LBS’ Incubator programme and now leads the LBS Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital.

“The focus of the founders is different from 15 years ago, when they were purely commercially minded and cared about securing an exit with a decent valuation,” she notes. “Now their motivation is often equally as much about doing good for society by giving back."

Photos © Jana Jackson, for the FT