
I'll save you the time of getting an MBA.. - petercooper
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/94hab/is_mba_important_for_a_programmer_to_start_a_tech/c0be4h0
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pgbovine
what many people don't realize about an MBA is the fact that it's a gateway
into certain big-company jobs (e.g., those in select Wall Street firms) ...
the degree and school name are what people pay for. obviously, they can always
learn the technical material from books or even online.

this post is basically like one that's claiming "I'll save you the time of
getting a driver's license" and simply telling you the local driving rules ...
the LICENSE itself is what people need to get if they want to legally drive.
an MBA is a 'license' to work in certain types of firms (probably those that
HNers probably don't want to work at)

~~~
fmora
Why is it that school is so important for an MBA? School is certainly
important regardless of career but there seems to be a strong emphasis when it
comes to MBA degrees. In Engineering or Computer Science, if you go to MIT
that is going to be awesome. But if you go to a state college you will still
be able to get almost any job that an MIT guy can get. Besides, skill is far
more important in these fields, as per my experience. Any comments?

~~~
gasull
Because what matters is not what you learn there, but your rolodex. As they
say, it's not what you know, but who you know.

If you go to one of the top MBA programs then you'll meet some of the people
that will be hired by other big corporations and you will be either competing
against them or negotiating with them.

~~~
vetinari
Or cooperating with them. You will pull them, they will pull you.

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mmaunder
Oh my. There's so much more to learn:

Finance, accounting, strategy, legal, HR, time management, sales, marketing,
management...

The list is endless. I don't have an MBA. I have many friends who do and are
spectacular entrepreneurs. I've acquired most of what they know over a decade
of being an entrepreneur but another way to do it would have been to drop
everything and dedicate 2 years to learning.

Here's an example of what you don't know because you don't have an MBA: Out of
all of your sales prospects, the customers most likely to buy from you are
those who just bought something from you.

Perhaps that comment on Reddit invalidates many viable businesses that could
have sold an $100 loss leader to those prospects and then up-sold them on a
$10,000 product a few months later.

Never underestimate how little you know.

~~~
lkozma
Reddit comes up as a topic in MBA courses ?

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nostrademons
It's weird reading a post, going to comment, and then finding out that you
already made the comment you were about to write a year ago. Deja vu...

~~~
cloudkj
Just read the comment you made re: RescueTime. I guess that's the MVP/dry
testing tactic. I recently learned about it and am fascinated as well. Getting
customers before writing code - a simple, yet brilliant idea that a lot of
hackers aren't used to, myself included. The dry testing approach can even be
applied to free consumer apps. "Launch" with mockups and screenshots and
invite users to sign up for a beta test.

The biggest question I'm struggling with these days is how to even drive users
to your barebones landing page in the first place. For pay-to-use consumer
apps or B2B apps, you can often seek out direct leads or use advertisments.
For general consumer apps, it's much harder to generate a buzz. How do you
even get started on driving traffic to something like that?

~~~
messel
I talk to friends and folks I know online and ask for feedback.

Once I come up with a compelling offer in the consumer space they'll jump all
over it.

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bryanh
I'll save you the time of reading that comment: due-diligence.

But seriously, an MBA is a little different from those couple paragraphs
(though they do contain valuable advice). An MBA is often a way to get your
foot in the door for Fortune 500 companies, or, in my case, as sweet way to
get a cushy, low-involvement TA/GA/RA position while I work on my own startups
and build a resume. That comment does not accomplish the same thing (clearly).

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snitko
Worth reading because of this phrase: _This is a bit like writing some code,
and then not testing it because you really don't want to discover that its
buggy._

~~~
StavrosK
Ah, the times I've done that (or not done market research because I wanted to
write the tool)...

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christopherslee
Getting an MBA is not getting a degree in entrepreneurship, although there are
schools who have tracks for entrepreneurship. Often times, you are learning
other things that are not terribly related to a pre-revenue software startup.

In my opinion, it is much like law school. You should have a pretty good idea
of what you want to get out of it before you go, otherwise, when you finish
you still won't know what you want to do with the degree.

If you want to jump from your current engineering job to a different field,
getting an MBA can be a good transitioning point. If you want to go into
quantitative finance, getting an MBA can also be very useful.

Just don't confuse getting and MBA with figuring out how to get your startup
off the ground.

* I recently finished a "mini-MBA" at Kellogg. While I very much enjoyed the experience, and I do say that certain things we learned added some foundational theory to things such as pricing and strategy (ever wonder where tiered pricing comes from?), the experience has not given me some "magic key" to turning any idea into startup gold. Everyone here should already know that there is no silver bullet for that. If you don't know that, I don't think an MBA will help you.

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jpark
What's sad is that the longest comment thread in that post was about Java vs
other languages. Not getting into analysis paralysis about technology is
probably another lesson to insert into that post.

~~~
steveklabnik
That particular poster basically searches Reddit for any mention of "Ruby,"
and then posts something that says "lololol Ruby sucks."

I'd like to say that such things just get ignored, but it's hard not to get
trolled.

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JVerstry
This post does not discuss the fact that, any idea, with a bit of adaptation,
could be attractive to other types of customers.

Sometimes, simply throwing it out there for people to try, will raise
interest. Many great company started with people inventing things they had no
plan to sell.

The statement made in this post is naive at best. The strategy consisting of
aiming at a potential customer, loading and shooting has created many monster
failures too. Things are not that systematic.

It is obvious the writer does not know much about strategy courses delivered
in MBA's...

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yurylifshits
That's basically "customer development in 5 paragraphs" :)

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alexkiwi
Ian is awesome. Glad his reddit comments are finally getting popular. Last I
heard he is a mentor for Capital Factory (YC-like seed stage in Austin)

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thibaut_barrere
Fantastic advice, that reflects a lot on what I'm going through right now.

Thank you!

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troygoode
I _nearly_ didn't give the guy the upvote he deserves when I saw the comment
sitting at 666 karma. Sad to be #667. :-(

I've heard LOIs discussed before, but primarily in the context of building &
selling big-ticket systems. Do investors care at all about that kind of thing
for smaller systems (say along the lines of GitHub/BaseCamp/Freckle/etc)?

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chmike
The market probing should be done wisely. If the business idea strikes gold,
pitching about it may blow the advantage to be first on it. The probing should
than be done in a way that does not disclose the business idea. Probing is
definitely required.

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comron
Sounds a lot like [http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-
Blank/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-
Blank/dp/0976470705), or am I wrong?

~~~
delano
Sure, but it's _much_ more succinct.

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pramit
Read some useful business book and that is it. The Success Manual -
<http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com>

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gaius
Hmm

 _figure out what your product is, then figure out who will buy it_

Oh that's easy! Or perhaps an MBA teaches _how_ to do that...?

