Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
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Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#2I really enjoyed reading this. I've considered an MBA on and off for the past few years and I'm still leaning away from it. An MBA seems to serve a very specific function and I'm not sure if I want to be that person.
I wonder how this is at more entrepreneurial programs like Sloan.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#3I notice the author mentioned "leave-behind Powerpoint decks." I had a short stint in consulting after getting my MBA, working with enterprise software clients. Within that job I've never once seen a Powerpoint deck that was useful after the fact unless you were in the room when the talk was given.
All it took for me to forget nearly everything I learned in business school communication classes was a seminar led by Edward Tufte, where it dawned on me that Powerpoint is no substitute for an appropriate executive summary of your content that can be passed around and referred to long after your talk is over.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#4I really enjoyed reading this. I've considered an MBA on and off for the past few years and I'm still leaning away from it. An MBA seems to serve a very specific function and I'm not sure if I want to be that person. I wonder how this is at more entrepreneurial programs like Sloan.
Typically at a top-20 MBA school roughly 5-10% of graduates start businesses.
LBS run an entrepreneurship summer school which concentrates on the entrepreneurship parts of their MBA program. Over the last 9 years they've had 350 graduates, and produced 90 businesses. Of those 90, 80 are still operational.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#5I notice the author mentioned "leave-behind Powerpoint decks." I had a short stint in consulting after getting my MBA, working with enterprise software clients. Within that job I've never once seen a Powerpoint deck that was useful after the fact unless you were in the room when the talk was given. All it took for me to forget nearly everything I learned in business school communication classes was a seminar led by E…
Leave-behind decks are for when the deliverable is the deck. It can be a useful tool for the company because the content is conveying information that they need for whatever project their working on. While working for a consulting firm, I did a marketing analysis for a grocery chain--it was a 150 slide deck packed with data about each of their geographies. It's something they'll refer to hundreds of times in the future.
As entrepreneurs, we're rarely delivering data in this way. it's usually our job to distill all the potential data points down to the 1 or 2 most important.
It comes down to whether you're persuading or informing. For persuasion, Tufte>MBA every time.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#6Research shows that business schools do not contribute to business success: http://www.aomonline.org/Publications/Articles/BSchools.asp
From "The End of Business Schools?: Less Success Than Meets the Eye" by Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford University) and Christina T. Fong (University of Washington):
"Although business school enrollments have soared and business education has become big business, surprisingly little evaluation of the impact of business schools on either their graduates or the profession of management exists. What data there are suggest that business schools are not very effective: Neither possessing an MBA degree nor grades earned in courses correlate with career success, results that question the effectiveness of schools in preparing their students. And, there is little evidence that business school research is influential on management practice, calling into question the professional relevance of management scholarship."
Far better to skip the MBA and teach yourself. Better results, and far less debt.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#7I really enjoyed reading this. I've considered an MBA on and off for the past few years and I'm still leaning away from it. An MBA seems to serve a very specific function and I'm not sure if I want to be that person. I wonder how this is at more entrepreneurial programs like Sloan.
At most schools, the majority of your class will be pushing in one direction, and that's generally towards consulting, banking, bigCo rotation programs, etc. It's what they're explicitly selling--preparation and access to these types of positions. If you don't want that, you should think very carefully about spending that much time and money. If you want to be an entrepreneur, do everything you can to get into YC or any of the other incubators. As many have noted, it's a far better startup prep course.
I don't regret my MBA for a second. The best two years of my life. I intend on using my skills from my MBA throughout my life. Someday I want to run a large non-profit and the tools I developed at Tuck will be invaluable. The painful lesson of the last few years was that all of that education is near-worthless as a startup founder.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#8I notice the author mentioned "leave-behind Powerpoint decks." I had a short stint in consulting after getting my MBA, working with enterprise software clients. Within that job I've never once seen a Powerpoint deck that was useful after the fact unless you were in the room when the talk was given. All it took for me to forget nearly everything I learned in business school communication classes was a seminar led by E…
Leave-behind decks are used in enterprise sales to allow your internal champion to present to their colleagues and superiors to go through whatever process is necessary to move the sales cycle forward. If you can give them the deck using their own corporate template you save them some time and they are more willing to advocate for you when you aren't onsite or in the meeting.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#9Maybe the takeaway should be MBAs are better suited to startups that are post product-market fit.
Re: Beware of MBAs: The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups
#10Research shows that business schools do not contribute to business success: http://www.aomonline.org/Publications/Articles/BSchools.asp From "The End of Business Schools?: Less Success Than Meets the Eye" by Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford University) and Christina T. Fong (University of Washington): "Although business school enrollments have soared and business education has become big business, surprisingly little evalua…
I wonder how the biz started by Stanford Engr students compare with those started by Stanford Biz students? (Yes, Stanford's CS department is part of its Engineering school.)