Why we have never hired an MBA
mattjackrob.com
Why we have never hired an MBA
1–10 of 72 posts
Re: Why we have never hired an MBA
#2It's kind of ridiculous that HN and the whole startup community has a vendetta against MBAs. Seeing it as a blackmark? You are quick to judge an MBA based on their education. Maybe if people working in startups weren't such elitists and thinking you don't need business skills to run a startup, you wouldn't have so many fail.
Re: Why we have never hired an MBA
#3It's kind of ridiculous that HN and the whole startup community has a vendetta against MBAs. Seeing it as a blackmark? You are quick to judge an MBA based on their education. Maybe if people working in startups weren't such elitists and thinking you don't need business skills to run a startup, you wouldn't have so many fail.
An MBA is like an engineering masters - you're more valuable with a BS/BA and 3 years experience. After you have ~5 years of experience, that graduate degree becomes highly valuable compared to additional years of work experience.
An MBA is an important step towards becoming a stronger manager for most people, however it probably shouldn't be the first step you take out of undergraduate studies.
Re: Why we have never hired an MBA
#4I had the impression that GoCardless was founded by a few ex management consultants, how come when they 'become' startup founders they start attacking their own trade? Also judging the whole population of MBAs by seeing a few over-anxiously MBA job seekers doesn't do any justice?
Re: Why we have never hired an MBA
#5It's kind of ridiculous that HN and the whole startup community has a vendetta against MBAs. Seeing it as a blackmark? You are quick to judge an MBA based on their education. Maybe if people working in startups weren't such elitists and thinking you don't need business skills to run a startup, you wouldn't have so many fail.
What makes you think that being a MBA equates to having business skills? Being MBA is just being MBA.
People who don't get higher education and just start their companies fresh out of high-schools will have WAY more business skills than MBA.
I'd say that 2 years of running your own business gives you more business skills than 5 years of MBA education.
Re: Why we have never hired an MBA
#6I wouldn't consider someone with an MBA a black mark, but the author hits the nail on the head -- an early stage startup needs someone who can execute, not just come up with ideas.
If that person with the MBA has the skills and more importantly the desire to get in an get their hands dirty executing on their own ideas, then great! But from my experience, most MBAs want to come up with the ideas and want others to execute them.
Re: Why we have never hired an MBA
#7I wouldn't consider someone with an MBA a black mark, but the author hits the nail on the head -- an early stage startup needs someone who can execute, not just come up with ideas. If that person with the MBA has the skills and more importantly the desire to get in an get their hands dirty executing on their own ideas, then great! But from my experience, most MBAs want to come up with the ideas and want others to exe…
I also know of a lot of tech people with the ideas and the skills, but no idea how to successfully execute them. I'm on the tech side of things, but I've experienced what a good PM can do for a team.
Re: Why we have never hired an MBA
#8This doesn't seem any different than the language wars that take place here. In fact, you could cherry pick anecdotes to support hate towards any demographic- age, hometown, music preferences, etc. An MBA proves nothing more than the candidate was interested in pursuing graduate level education.
I'm a solo technical founder. I write code, marketing copy, and proposals. I'm a product manager. And my MBA curriculum covered areas that would be a huge help to product managers.
If you auto-reject CVs with an MBA, you're missing out on a great talent pool. Perhaps you should only give "black marks" to candidates who are clueless about what it takes to manage products. But don't tie that to the MBA.
Re: Why we have never hired an MBA
#9One of the best hires I've ever made is a classic finance MBA -- top tier investment bank analyst program out of undergrad, HBS, private equity. The key was that:
1) He was referred to my startup by someone in our network, so he had at least a basic understanding of how our company worked.
2) He offered to come in as an intern just to get his foot in the door, and was extremely humble about his value to the company; basically recognized that he wouldn't that productive at first. (We brought him in as an analyst and he made because a lead PM in about 7 months).)
There is a lot to like about people with that background: extremely smart, hardworking, with hard analytical skills. If the two basic criteria from above are met (basic understanding of the business, strong desire to come in and learn), then I would strongly recommend snagging an MBA if you can.
Re: Why we have never hired an MBA
#10It's kind of ridiculous that HN and the whole startup community has a vendetta against MBAs. Seeing it as a blackmark? You are quick to judge an MBA based on their education. Maybe if people working in startups weren't such elitists and thinking you don't need business skills to run a startup, you wouldn't have so many fail.
What makes you think that being a MBA equates to having business skills? Being MBA is just being MBA. People who don't get higher education and just start their companies fresh out of high-schools will have WAY more business skills than MBA. I'd say that 2 years of running your own business gives you more business skills than 5 years of MBA education.
Doubtful.
In the same way being an hobbyist programmer will never give you the same skill set than a CS degree. It's highly unlikely you are ever going to study extensively algorithm, os and databases design, compilation or declarative and functional programming all by yourself because objectively it's not something you need to get the job done. Nevertheless, this knowledge becomes really useful as soon as you start designing complex system.
Doing an MBA (or an MSc for what it's worth, MBA cult is mostly anglo-saxon) is exactly the same thing. You will study a broad range of subjects and business areas and see different theories on them.
Don't misunderstand me, practical knowledge is invaluable and running your own company gives you a good understanding of your area. It's just than MBA will give you a broader if less practical view.