

Ask HN: Does anyone here actually want to get an MBA? - jasondrowley

Or, if you already went to business school, why? Do you think your degree helped you run your business/startup/company more effectively? Do you believe you could have acquired the skills you got in B-school that you couldn't have acquired "in the wild"?
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damoncali
HN is very anti-MBA. Frankly, that's because the anti-MBA set don't have MBA's
and lack an understanding of what an MBA is all about.

An MBA will:

...introduce you to many, many smart, helpful, agressive, motivated people.
Hundreds of them. And you will have two years to go drinking with them, travel
the world with them, and get to know them. That alone is extremely valuable.
There is a bond of shared experience that is unobtainable by "reading books".

...make you smarter about the worlds of big business and finance. This
classroom stuff is _mostly_ available in books. Mostly. But are you really
going to read them? Finance is not the hardest thing I've ever learned, but
having a few classmates and professors who had been investment bankers and
money managers is a good thing.

...be really, really fun and educational, just not in the way you're thinking.

An MBA will not:

...prepare you for a startup. The tech business has a lot to it that just
isn't taught in B-School. You'll have to learn that on your own like everyone
else.

...prepare your for a career in big business. EVERY business has a lot to it
that just isn't taught in B-School. You'll have to learn that on your own like
everyone else.

...fast track you to wealth. Business school is expensive these days. You'll
be broke for a while as you recover unless you're really, really lucky.

...turn you into an asshole. Assholedom takes root at a much younger age.

Is it worth it? For me, it's an unambiguous "HELL YES".

In perhaps the funnest two years of my life I managed to:

travel to 7 countries

play rugby with schools from around the world

learn more than I ever imagined about finance.

learn less than I would have thought about marketing.

meet many of my best friends, including several startup CEOs.

meet my wife.

watch my school win a national championship in football.

drink more than is healthy.

see some _really_ smart people do some _amazingly_ dumb and wonderful things,
sometimes simultaneously.

and that's just the stuff that comes to mind now. A fantastic experience
overall.

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zbruhnke
I think for a lot of people Business school tends to serve the same as a
startup incubator serves for small companies. You do not go to business school
because you cannot learn it unless you go, you attend so you can learn it in a
controlled environment without making too many mistakes along the way.

In many ways this is similar to incubator programs for these companies, lots
of these companies were going to succeed or fail whether or not they went
through these programs, others were probably on the cusp without it and with
it they will flourish because of the impact of being around bright people with
good ideas and lots of feedback.

Business school helps lots of people. But it is not for everyone. Some will
benefit more than others because they need structure. Those types of people
likely will not be the ones running a company some day. If you need structure
being an entrepreneur simply put, probably is not for you. It's a scary ride
full of ups and downs, twists and turns and lots of bumps along the way, but
it can be one of the most rewarding things you'll ever do if you stick with
it.

There is a lot to be said for those people who go through business school then
go on to become great business people and entrepreneurs ... first of all they
have patience and vision. They are usually working toward a goal and they have
carefully planned out how to reach it. Sometimes those plans work and other
times they do not, but either way in most of those cases those were the people
who were already destined to become great.

To be an entrepreneur is in your blood ... for the people who have started a
company and one day said to themselves "Why would I ever work for anyone other
than myself" they know exactly what I am talking about. You have to be able to
be stubborn enough to know when to not give up but realistic enough to know
when to cut your losses and move another direction.

The only difference between a successful business man and a failing one is
time ... the more time you put into something the more likely you are to
succeed. Being wise helps, being conservative with spending is even better,
but being willing to go without is what truly makes good business people
great, while they do not teach that in business school if you read about the
great entrepreneurs of all time that is one thing they almost all have in
common, and that, is one thing that can never be either learned nor taught.

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SatvikBeri
The company where I currently work, which is highly successful (ranked 9th
fastest growing software company by Inc 500 last year) has a management team
filled with PhD's, MBA's, and Management Consultants.

Some ways in which the MBA/Management Consulting mentality has really helped
the company:

-Extreme customer focus. HN talks a lot about knowing your customer, but the management here takes it to a much higher level. The exacting level of detail of how well they understand users, as well as the amount of time/money they're willing to invest in training their employees to understand their customers is astounding, and pays in spades.

-Really good Sales/Marketing

-Since we started out with consulting, the company has always been profitable, and always had a very clear line of sight as to what brings in the money

-Very well thought out, long term strategy. The company has the next several years planned out, yet the strategy is flexible enough to take into account new technological innovations, data from customer responses, and even new exceptional employees

-Very well done hiring. I haven't met anyone at the company I would consider stupid-in fact, I haven't met anyone I wouldn't consider smart

-Excellent resource management...even as the company has grown money and people are assigned to the projects that consistently provide the most leverage, rather than being tacked onto the emergency of the day

Now the MBA/Management Consulting strength is not the only thing that has
allowed the company to succeed-we are roughly 60% hackers and our CTO is
absolutely phenomenal. But having management with such strong business skills
is a MASSIVE force multiplier.

~~~
stfu
_-Very well thought out, long term strategy._

Probably HN unrelated but: I would love to hear more about that and how this
is actually turning out. From my perspective the whole Strategic Planning
thing has come under severe attack at least since Mintzberg's Rise & Fall of
Strategic Planning. And if I remember correctly from reading the Lords of
Strategy even Porter has grown more skeptical on Strategic planning in the
long term. Would love to see how this is turning out in practice/is
implemented/realized at your company.

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hkarthik
My wife has an MBA from a top university so I can speak to this from some
experience.

I think an MBA still provides value for those looking to take established
startups and turn them into viable, Fortune 500 businesses. These are the
folks that become the "adult supervision" during the later stages of a company
as it approaches that mid-market sweet spot and starts trying to become a
large cap public company. There are areas around finance, operations, and
strategy where the MBA still provides a lot of value.

You can certainly learn those things on the job if you decide to stay at a
startup beyond the early stages. But it carries a bit more risk and mistakes
can be a lot more costly.

I don't think most of the crowd here is all that interested in working at
companies during these later stages, hence the strong anti-MBA sentiment you
see in a lot of HN posts.

The biggest problem, I think, is that there are now too many folks with MBAs
that are skilled only for the later stages of the company. These folks often
lack the raw talent needed to succeed in the early stages and get a company
off the ground.

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twog
Yes, I do.

I have multiple startups with varying levels of success since I was 16, and
its extremely evident to me thats its not just what you know, but who you know
as well. I think an mba from a top-tier university will help me open some of
the doors I want to open in my career.

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pitdesi
Half of our company is made of MBA's. Getting an MBA is very different from
doing a startup. If you want to do a startup, do a startup. However, there are
useful things you can learn from an MBA. Here's why we like them:
[http://feefighters.com/blog/should-you-hire-mbas-at-your-
sta...](http://feefighters.com/blog/should-you-hire-mbas-at-your-startup-and-
why-we-love-them/)

~~~
Fliko
MBAs have a place in businesses, but most of the good points argued are just
as easily (if not better) argued for engineers. Good engineers are way more
analytical than MBAs (that's what they do!), and good engineers are often more
ambitious and driven than the average MBAer.

Most of the successful MBAers I have met are actually engineers who have had a
company pay for them to get their MBA to 'traditionally promote' them to a
higher position in said company.

In my opinion MBAs are like glue that hold a company together, the glue is
absolutely critical for the company but you also don't require an army of it.

