
Business school grads and quants are winning the battle to create the next P&G - replicatorblog
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/12/business-school-grads-and-quants-are-winning-the-battle-to-create-the-next-pg/
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WisNorCan
The CEOs of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services all have MBAs.
There are also lots of examples of MBA founders.

This has happened despite the fact that historically most MBAs have gone to
banking and consulting. With MBA grads shifting toward tech, we should expect
that many more tech CEOs and founders will have MBAs.

edit: added Apple.

~~~
nostrademons
"CEO" and "founder" are very different job descriptions. An MBA can be very
useful for a peacetime CEO [1]. It is basically useless for a wartime CEO or
founder (all of whom are wartime CEOs).

An MBA basically teaches you how to apply rational analysis and best practices
to the running of an existing business unit. This works great during normal
times, when your company has a competitive advantage, you know what it is, you
have a large and growing customer base, and you are making a profit on every
transaction. It works terribly when the default outcome, if you follow all the
best practices and do everything you're supposed to, is that you'll fail
miserably. This is the situation most founders are in - if their market
opportunity were obvious to someone with an MBA, then someone with an MBA
working for a big company with lots of resources would already have done it.

[1] [https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-
ceo-2/](https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo-2/)

~~~
WisNorCan
That is a really strange theory. It is also demonstrably false.

Many of the founders of the top unicorns have MBAs (Grab, StitchFix,
CloudFlare, etc) [1] Also, I wouldn't categorize building AWS from scratch as
a "peacetime CEO" job.

1\. [https://poetsandquants.com/2016/02/24/38-mba-founded-
unicorn...](https://poetsandquants.com/2016/02/24/38-mba-founded-unicorns/3/)

~~~
mdorazio
Not sure how it's incompatible with your stats. If the degree is useless then
you would expect MBA holders to have no advantage over non-MBA holders in
founding companies. Not that MBA holders wouldn't sometimes be successful.
You're missing a data point showing that MBA holders are more likely to
succeed at founding startups, which I have yet to see anywhere.

Realistically, an MBA _can be_ helpful to a startup founder if that founder
lacks basic business acumen from prior education or experience (basic
accounting, financial planning, marketing, etc.). It can also be a hindrance
because MBA coursework tends to trivialize many of the core skills needed to
be successful at starting a company in favor of the higher-level thinking and
planning needed for large corporations (you won't learn how to make your first
sale, for example, or how to hire your first employee, setup a billing system,
etc.).

------
lloydde
Brought to mind “Over 400 Startups Are Trying to Become the Next Warby Parker.
Inside the Wild Race to Overthrow Every Consumer Category”
[https://www.inc.com/magazine/201805/tom-foster/direct-
consum...](https://www.inc.com/magazine/201805/tom-foster/direct-consumer-
brands-middleman-warby-parker.html) and the corresponding YC discussion from a
few months ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16992301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16992301)

~~~
mc32
Which reminds me, I went to the drugstore, a few weeks ago, to get a razor and
blades; I took a look at Harry’s, I think, and, surprise-surprise, they are
priced about the same as the incumbents...

~~~
twblalock
What's your point?

~~~
mc32
That often times "disruptor" is just marketing to get people on board thinking
it's novel and advantageous to the consumer. But in reality, after initial
buzz, they are mostly just another player in the market offering little in the
way of differentiation, including price.

~~~
raverbashing
Also see all the foam rolled mattresses "different companies".

They buy from the same OEMs, they just have different websites.

------
Regardsyjc
I just found out today that I helped my client potentially double or triple
their sales on Amazon. They went from $5k daily sales to $10k. I'm still
trying to process that that could be $1-2m in revenue. They're basically for
the time being now one of the top 3 products on Amazon for their category,
beating other established brands.

My colleagues and I are building new brands on Amazon every day. There are
other ecommerce entrepreneurs building brands on Facebook ads and social
media. It is now easier than before to find customers, build that list, and
retain customers. There's been a shift and I see new brands challenging
dominant sleeping brands every day. The craziest thing is that all these new
challengers have very very small teams. I'm working on launching a product to
challenge P&G, but I already know one startup, 3 founders, backed with VC
money, that are already doing $50k+/mo on Amazon on that product.

~~~
fabricexpert
Are these products fundamentally different? Or are we just seeing a new wave
of marketing and fulfillment?

~~~
Regardsyjc
I think it might be too rapid change within the last 5 - 10 years.

Amazon and Shopify made it possible for anyone to start their own internet D2C
business. Facebook ads/social media, make it easier than ever before to find
and reach potential and current customers. China's manufacturing opened up and
became easier than ever with Alibaba.

1\. Fulfillment became easier and more accessible.

2\. Marketing became easier and more accessible.

3\. Manufacturing became easier and more accessible.

Quality in my experience differs a lot. I don't have that much experience but
these are two examples. One electronics startup is still trying to make it
work and dealing with a lot of QC issues. Their hardware and design expertise
is not up to Apple's standards but they are able to work with a smaller
factory. I've also worked with shoes and it seems that for some of my clients,
they seem to get their shoes from the same place...

Another trend I've noticed is affordable luxury. Most of my clients have been
doing well in "affordable luxury". I read an article that Dollar Tree stores
are doing well. I think it's making good quality products more accessible and
affordable- and this is possible by cutting out A LOT (90%+) of middle men and
offshore manufacturing for better or worse.

In the past, it was a lot harder and much more people were needed to get a
product from factory to customer. Now for some of my Amazon colleagues, they
go straight from manufacturer to fulfillment centers. Then there are Chinese
manufacturers on Amazon going straight to the customer. Or dropshippers, going
straight from manufacturer to customer.

------
robterrin
Micah is an HBS alumnus. I'm not saying he's wrong, but he brings his own
biases to the table, as we all do. I also went to business school, and while I
wouldn't say it was worthless as a founder, the things that are valuable are
not always what people believe are valuable.

There are three reasons to go to business school: knowledge, network and
brand. People go for many reasons, such as feeling insecure, wanting insurance
and taking a break from their job. These are not good reasons. Here is my
evaluation of the good reasons:

\- Knowledge (overall grade C-) Yes, you will learn things if you study. Could
you learn these on your own? Sure. Will you? Likely not. If you weren't an
accounting/economics/finance major in undergrad you may find the academics
particularly valuable. Some of the classroom experience is useful for things
like negotiations, management and other "soft" skills. My experience was that
the greatest intellectual advancement I found was through cross registering in
the engineering and statistics departments. Go to a large research university,
particularly if you went to a small liberal arts school for undergrad, and
make the best use of a world class institution!

\- Network (Depends mostly on the competition to get in, B+) This is the
biggest reason and often cited as the true reason people go. Academics are a
joke and going for the brand seems gross, so people default to this answer,
which is cronyism, but at least it's not as superficial as branding. In my
experience, this was incredibly useful. I've landed three of my seven clients
through business school classmates. The alumni network is good too, although
not terribly strong unless you go to a smaller program, which lowers your odds
that the alumni will be usefully placed for your purposes.

\- Brand (depends entirely on prestige, A+) This is vastly underrated, at
least in polite conversation. Nobody like a braggart, and playing the "I went
to Stanford GSB" card is an ugly move, so savvy MBAs resort to more subtle
signaling. It's hard to measure the value here because it makes everything
easier, from pitching and starting conversations, to being taken seriously and
getting access to programs and resources.

Finally, a word on digital vertical native brands. Developing a valuable brand
is low probability event (that's why people buy a brand by going to business
school!). That is not to say it's difficult, or any more difficult than
winning the lottery, but it is rare. Intentionally creating a brand can be
hard, but I doubt there's much correlation between effort and success. Besides
brand, these digitally native vertical brands have no sustainable competitive
advantage, and I fully expect their profits to get competed away. The market,
however, can stay irrational long enough for many people to get rich. Best of
luck to anybody starting or investing in a digital brand!

------
libertine
Well I'll start by saying I'm a bit biased. I've worked for a media agency
where it had some of the world retail behemoths accounts. I was a digital
media strategist on a specific market - though some of the stuff we did was
indeed by global guidelines, so we had visibility on what was being done at a
global level, still my bias is towards the reality of the market I was in.

I've dealt with their management and executives (brand managers, marketing
managers, etc) and even by their criteria of HR choices, and it's pretty clear
what kind of people they want: they want smart, orderly people who can execute
well.

Some they get them from specific business universities early - people above
average - and enroll them on some internal college for some time.

They are not very creative and innovative, even if they were they will dry out
because they don't have margin for it - and maybe that's part of their
success: they need to have a multinational oiled machine that outputs results.

Even the product launches came either by market alignment, or simply from an
internal catalog.

Most of their insights came from internal dashboards fueled by Nielsen, GFK,
Kantar (amazing sources by the way), and many private studies.

The thing is, they got to where they are because they had the Mass
Media(Communication) and Distribution upper hand for years. TV, the king for
many years, was the most effective way to get to the masses but it was
extremely expensive - yet they had the financial muscle so they just had to
pump GRPs.

Same goes for Retail Distribution, they built good distribution
channels/partnerships - people wanted their products, they had emotional
relationships with their brands.

But times change... first it started with retailers creating their own brands
(distribution brands) because they built the financial muscle to advertise
them, and had the distribution channels, they just had cut down margins to win
in price and win the volume game...

Now it's the internet - people who know what their doing can reach a specific
audience, deliver great messages, build amazing brands, and have great
distribution channels - such as Amazon.

It's a loud market, and they mumble terms, jargon's and keywords they don't
fully understand. They have historial brands, with amazing value, yet they are
not connecting with people like some of these brands are doing.

Maybe they are so big they don't even notice it in their market shares, but
some of these numbers aren't even known in their holy reports... and it chips
off, day by day. They are also too proud to assume their are not doing a good
job - they rather blame agencies and create pitches instead of taking
accountability.

I've quit the agency job because my goal was to learn from with their mistakes
and successes - and I believe it's quite doable to out-pace them, since they
are extremely slow. I'm working on that right now.

In my opinion they need to employ entrepreneur minded people and give them the
opportunity to fail.

It's a weird-amazing time to be alive as a marketer :)

