With an MBA, Cody Kraatz Became a Two-Time Business Owner

Not everyone can say they’ve started not one, but two companies within a year of each other, but Cody Kraatz did just that. A recent alumni of Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business , Cody was driven to use the tools he acquired from his MBA program and the experience he had working with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority to create businesses that aim to make the world a better place.

“I'm passionate about what will make the world better. I want to be able to build new things and start things, create things. That’s just how I like to work.”

Prior to launching his companies, he worked in digital communications as well as marketing & innovation in public transit. And while he enjoyed working at the Transportation Authority, he knew there wasn’t much opportunity for advancement and that there were very few similar organizations in which he could move into higher positions.

Seeking to become more marketable in the job market, considering a different field, and wanting to explore the possibility of becoming an entrepreneur, Cody decided to pursue his MBA. However, he had some specific criteria for the program he chose. It needed to allow him to attend part-time so that he could accommodate a full-time work schedule and still have time for his family.

The program also needed to be comprehensive. He wanted to come away from his MBA program with the knowledge that he had the skills to run all areas of a business: everything from marketing communications and managing finances to being an effective leader. He also needed a local program that didn’t require a long commute. The MBA program at the Leavey School of Business fit the bill - and SCU’s stellar reputation solidified that his investment into graduate school would be well worth it.

Cody methodically went through the program 1 class at a time, finishing his degree in roughly 6 years. As a new grad, he wasted no time entering into entrepreneurship with the launch of his two companies: SimplifyTransit and Road-Ready Marketing .

Road-Ready Marketing specializes in providing quality marketing services to small-to-mid-sized transit agencies. Seeing a gap in the marketing for this demographic, Road-Ready’s first product, “Packages”, spreads the cost of a high-quality marketing campaign across a group of smaller transit agencies, customizing for each one. The company’s mission is to provide quality, year-round marketing campaigns that work within the budget of transportation agencies of any size.

SimplifyTransit was also founded to address a gap in the transportation market. That gap being an effective, cost-effective way to notify transit users of alerts, such as delays in service areas.

From Google Maps and Twitter to text messages and emails, SimplifyTransit simplifies transit alerts and has a business model that scales pricing based on how large an agency is. This keeps the tool affordable for agencies of all sizes and budgets.

Now, Cody’s focus for both businesses is to scale for profitability, putting the knowledge he gained during his MBA program to further use. “I feel like every day I’m using things that either I completely learned in the program or skills that were really strengthened through the program because I had those opportunities to practice.”