

Is an MBA a Plus or a Minus in the Startup World? - jfi
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/08/is-an-mba-a-plus-or-a-minus-in-the-startup-world/

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Major_Grooves
I think the actual education would be very beneficial. Most MBA schools now
position themselves as very entrepreneurial. Oxford, for example, has a seed
fund for startup ideas from MBA students.

The thing that puts me off doing an MBA is the time and the cost. One or two
years is a long time to _not_ act on an idea if you've already got some in
your head. If you don't already have some startup ideas in your head and
you're thinking of doing a MBA I would argue that you're not really a startup
person. There are lots of people that want to be an "entrepreneur" but don't
have any actual startup ideas.

The cost is my biggest worry though. Having a £50,000 dept with £700/month
repayments really does put a dampener on the idea of bootstrapping a startup.
Hence why so many MBA graduates end up doing investment banking or consulting.

Me - non-coder, lots of startup ideas, entrepreneur wanabee, business school
interview in a week!

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sachinag
I'm a non-technical founder who's founded one startup, joined another, and am
now an Advisor at TechStars - before I go back to B school to get an MBA. And
that's _after_ I did a business degree in undergrad.

To me, getting an MBA is all about option value. If I want to go to a big
company, it's a prerequisite. If I want to do startups, it's not. If I want to
jump back and forth, then it's a prerequisite again. I'm willing to pay
$150,000 to have the option value of jumping back and forth for the thirty
years after I graduate, not to mention the experience of the two years there,
the network I'll have, and the other attendant benefits.

I wrote about this decision last week; maybe it'd be useful to some people
here: [http://www.sachinagarwal.com/why-this-startup-guy-is-
going-b...](http://www.sachinagarwal.com/why-this-startup-guy-is-going-back-
to-busines)

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tullius
Exactly the kind of the logic that people use to justify going into the
corporate world instead of a startup. For people serious about building a
successful startup the possibility of going back to a cushy corporate job if
things don't work out should be the last thing on their mind.

~~~
mwerty
So should health insurance by that logic.

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Maro
In the Startup World, it's not the MBA that matters, it's you!

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rick_2047
I don't know much but I have a slight doubt whenever I read something like
this. I presume you get an MBA to give you a better understanding about
business. And startups are in essence businesses. Then how come having a
better understanding not impact your startup?

~~~
pg
The cause of the apparent paradox is that "business" spans a huge range. MBAs
train you to be junior officers in the armies of managerial capitalism. But
there is almost zero overlap between that sort of work and what startups do.

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deltapoint
Do you think there could be an MBA program that teaches relevant things to
what start ups do? and what would it teach?

I feel in some ways part of what Y Combinator does is like an extremely
condensed business school that is relevant to start ups.

YC "spend[s] much more time teaching founders how to pitch their startups, and
how to close a deal once they've generated interest." YC also invites speakers
to share their knowledge <http://ycombinator.com/w9speakers.html>

I think the ultimate educational experience for a future start up entrepreneur
would combine what Ars Digita University taught (programming)
<http://www.aduni.org/>, web design, the relevant aspects of business, a bit
of elementary worldly wisdom <http://ycombinator.com/munger.html>, and to top
it all off the school would require the students to work on a start up as a
side project.

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pg
Startups are one of those things that are best learned by doing, so YC pretty
much already is what you're talking about. We've tried to make it the optimal
way to learn about startups. But YC is structurally so different from a
university that I don't think they'd be able to evolve very far in this
direction.

There's a discontinuity between investment firms and schools. We've taken the
investment firm and made it a lot like a school, in much the same way that
seals became a lot like fishes. But as with seals and fishes, there is an
unbridgeable gap despite the surface similarities.

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pkaler
I don't get this either or thing. I got a BSc in Computing Science when I was
a kid. I'm 30 now and preparing for the GMAT. I also keep abreast of the
latest on the lean startup and on the fat startup. Why not learn it all?

~~~
ojbyrne
In my opinion you're the ideal MBA candidate - undergrad in either engineering
or a science, some work experience, then the MBA. The problem is that so many
MBAs have undergrads in Business and go straight to the masters without any
intervening work experience. So they don't have experience and the courses
have a lot of overlap. They give the MBA a bad name, but they're the cash cow
of business schools.

~~~
rick_2047
Where I live (India) most of the MBAs are Engineering or Science Graduates.
This year only 9 people from business and 1 from arts got into IIM-A. Its a
common choice among Engineers to take up MBA after there Graduation (BE/BS/B
Tech).

It kind of annoys me though. Its fine if you are doing an specialization in
something like Project Management, Computer Management, E-Commerce or
something like that. But it just bugs me if you take up finance or banking.
WTF? If you wanted to do finance or banking why the hell did you waste the one
seat of Eng/Sci student. In a country where there is already a shortage of
Quality Engineering studies, these people take there education from IIT and
then join IIMs taking up banking or finance. This is a total waste of the Rs
900,000/- the government is spending on each IIT student. I just hate to meet
someone working in a bank and them mentioning "I did an B Tech in Electrical
from IIT then went to IIM".

Either I am missing the node joining finance and banking with engineering or
this is really just the product of the herd mentality students here have. Its
a trend now to go for MBA and they would take any branch if they get into an
IIM, "Why bother, its IIM!!!".

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roel_v
What's an IIM and IIT? How much is 900k Rs?

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rick_2047
IIM : Indian Institute of Management. These are the most premium B-schools of
India supported by Indian government.

IIT : Indian Institute of Technology. These These are the most premium tech
schools of India supported by Indian government.

900 000 Indian rupees = 19 758.6 U.S. dollars

~~~
glen
IIT - most selective school on the planet. Much more competitive than Harvard.

~~~
endtime
Your comment inspired me to do some research, and the first page I found was
this one: <http://www.kamalsinha.com/iit/acceptance-rate.html>

Given your comparison to Harvard, I thought you might be interested in this
paragraph:

>While it seems true that admission rate at IITs is less than even the most
selective US school like the CalTech, it does not mean IIT recruits students
of higher caliber. In a country like the USA, educational resources were well
developed and the enrollment capacity for engineering majors is kept about the
same as the number of seniors intending to enter those programs, if not more.
It means less desparation. Moreover, there are lot of top-notch schools
schools of about equal caliber which decreases their selectivity figures. My
guess is that the top 50 engineering schools in the USA exceed IITs in almost
all respect and another 100 or so other schools are not far behind.

~~~
mvp
glen is probably referring to the ratio of the number of successful applicants
to the total number of applicants - which is about 1% ( about a decade and
half ago, maybe even less now).

I don't know whether it makes any sense to compare the calibre of students
coming from colleges in different countries with vastly different cultures in
the absence of results from common tests.

However, these people are definitely among the best from a populous country
where education has a status closer to religion and is also a ticket to earn
legal income disproportionate to efforts expended.

~~~
endtime
Yes, I knew that's what he was referring to. But the comparison to Harvard was
obviously intended to imply something more, thus my quote.

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barnaby
It was a very good plug for the authors' own classes that he teaches (link in
the last paragraph).

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some1else
I don't mind it. Almost everyone plugs their own stuff in guest posts on TC,
and I've read plenty of Vivek's brilliant posts to allow a plug like that in
the latest one. I do mind the fact that he maintains his affection towards the
MBA and disagreement with Guy although he clearly believes an intense one-year
program that focuses on the important bits is a better alternative.

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vishaldpatel
Being in a start up is a game. We have an idea and we are playing the game to
make that idea as successful as possible. We need tools in this game -
engineers, lawyers, accountants etc.. are all tools. Some tools are more
useful in the beginning than others. Some tools become more important as our
startup matures.

Now MBA is this awesome general degree that teaches you a bit of everything -
accounting, sales, some business law. This makes you a versatile tool! :D. The
question is, do you know how to best serve a startup? What can you do? What do
you want to do? How will you make up for your lack of experience in a certain
area - can you learn quickly? Adapt?

Many startups these days start out with the core team being engineers -
they're looking to build something, so it makes sense. That said, some
startups may do well with a gritty MBA who can go out there and talk to tons
of people to generate / prove ideas and report back to the engineering team;
take care of accounting; HR stuff if need be; etc... basically it means being
the CEO from day one without worrying about the title.

Is that what you're looking for or do you just want a cusy desk job as a
junior manager? ;)

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dave1619
I think an MBA can be helpful in the right situation/startup, but in other
situations it might not be needed or the person might need to unlearn some
things. It's the debate between B-School and E-School (Entrepreneurship School
advocated by Steve Blank).

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pramit
Related Reading Which You Will Find Useful: The Simple MBA Manifesto: Do We
Really Need MBAs? A Presentation [http://www.slideshare.net/pramitsingh/the-
success-manual-do-...](http://www.slideshare.net/pramitsingh/the-success-
manual-do-we-need-mbas) Presentation Transcript is Available Here
[http://bighow.com/news/the-simple-mba-manifesto-do-we-
really...](http://bighow.com/news/the-simple-mba-manifesto-do-we-really-need-
mbaspresentation-transcript) Do we need MBAs? A 5- part look
<http://bighow.com/tags/doweneedmbas>

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thewileyone
I was a founder at consecutive startups years ago and I recently got my MBA.
One thing I can attest, if I had my MBA in the past, it would have helped to
run the startups more productively and efficiently.

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davidw
I don't think this debate will really be settled until we have actual data to
deal with, which isn't likely to happen any time soon, because you'd have to
observe the same people with, and without MBA's.

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NyxWulf
We actually do have some data, but a little thing like facts never hinders an
uninformed opinion.

<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1127248>

~~~
ericlavigne
That's an interesting read. Some conclusions about US-born tech startup
founders include: (1) they tend to be 30+ years old, (2) they tend to have
advanced degrees, especially from ivy-league schools, and (3) those with
advanced degrees tend to create bigger companies, especially if they went to
ivy-league schools.

I didn't see any commentary on whether someone who is older or has a degree is
more likely to succeed in their venture at all. This study couldn't address
that question because the survey sample was composed entirely of people who
had already reached a certain threshold of success. I find the study
interesting mainly because it hints at the answer to this related question,
and would love to see some data that addresses this issue more directly.

