MBA for Entrepreneurship

Graduate School Business School - MBA
1

<p>Hey.</p>

<p>I'd like to know if taking up MBA is practical or logical when one's real objective is to become an entrepreneur (put up own business).</p>

<p>People typically take up MBA to advance their careers, so there's little risk in spending for tuition since "return on investment" is almost always sure due to potential salary increases.</p>

<p>What if the plan is to open up a business, would there be a similar "return on investment"? Or is it better to take up MBA when you've already established your business?</p>

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<p>Try a program like this one, it’s specific for entrepreneure and last only 1 year.
[Entrepreneurship</a> at UF - Finance, Insurance & Real Estate - Warrington College of Business Administration - Finance, Insurance & Real Estate - Warrington College of Business Administration](<a href=“http://www.cba.ufl.edu/fire/programs/mse/traditional.asp]Entrepreneurship”>http://www.cba.ufl.edu/fire/programs/mse/traditional.asp)</p>

3

<p>Carnegie Mellon is known for being a great school for entrepreneurs. Also, if you attend HBS, Wharton, or Stanford you should be good to go also. At worst, you could leverage those degrees to work for a young startup prior to starting your own business. At best, you will have plenty of knowledge/connections to start your own business.</p>

<p>I don’t think a lower ranked MBA program is good for Entrepreneurs unless they have a good entrepreneurship program. However, one program of note is the Acton MBA in Entrepreneurship: [Acton</a> MBA - Home](<a href=“http://www.actonmba.org/]Acton”>http://www.actonmba.org/)</p>

<p>This program was founded by former University of Texas professors so the teaching is top notch. Also, it appears to be a very rigorous program (80-90 hours a week)</p>

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<p>Babson college has a good reputation too, bu i think it’s 2 years.</p>

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<p>I was not aware that CMU is known for being a great school for entrepreneurs. CMU’s MBA strength has traditionally been production/operations, and CMU is ranked only #20 for entrepreneurship by USNews. Do you have evidence to show that CMU is a strong entrepreneurship school?</p>

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<p>WSJ has Tepper #6 for top Entrepreneurship programs. How that ranking stacks up…i couldn’t tell you. I was mainly speaking from the information I gathered when considering graduate business schools. Tepper certainly sold themselves as a great place for entrepreneurs and free thinkers. Given Tepper’s technology focus, it’s quite likely that this program is better for those entrepreneurs interested in high tech startups.</p>

7

<p>I don’t mean to threadjack, but perhaps my additional question can help clarify the OP:</p>

<p>What makes a school good for entrepreneurs? Or, what would an entrepreneur look to learn from an MBA?</p>

<p>From my studies, experience, etc. I see most entrepreneurs at go getters and self motivators. IMO, it seems putting off starting a business in order to get an MBA would be anti-entre. Instead, wouldn’t an MBA in this instance be more to polish a business owner than it would be to create one? Thus, what one would look for in the education would be different. Right?</p>

<p>I guess I’m confussed on this matter.</p>

8

<p>I applied to b-school with entrepreneurship in mind. Now that I am almost, here’s my 2c: </p>

<p>The practicality of MBA for an entrepreneur wanna-be largely depends on the type of new business and founders’ own background and network. </p>

<p>Common business sense, not MBA training, is required to start/run many “lifestyle” or family-type businesses, e.g. a restaurant, a retail shop etc. In general, anyone who is willing to self learn and shameless to ask will learn the rope of starting and managing a business through trial and error. </p>

<p>Nevertheless, I think the MBA experience is useful for:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Learning from <em>practitioners</em> the nuts and bots of going through VC-funded route and building the “right” contacts. </p></li>
<li><p>Trying out new business ideas in a relatively safe laboratory. B-plan competitions are useful to hash out the good ideas and kill those bad ideas. </p></li>
<li><p>Understanding what it takes to professionally manage a relatively large business, which includes successful startups and family business.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>The WSJ ranking, eh? Isn’t that the same WSJ ranking that ranked Tepper #5 overall, over Wharton (#11), Harvard (#14) and Stanford (#19)? I don’t know, do you believe the ranking? Somehow I find it very hard to believe that many people are turning down Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton to flock to Carnegie Mellon. </p>

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<p>Yes, but how many startups can you actually name that come from Carnegie Mellon, or from the Pittsburgh area generally? In particular, how many venture capital firms are in the area? </p>

<p>Let’s be perfectly honest. Pittsburgh, while a nice city with a pretty darn good football team and a decent economy with numerous larger companies, isn’t exactly a hotbed of technology entrepreneurialism. And I’m not the only one saying it. Here’s what essayist and computer entrepreneur Paul Graham has said about Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon:</p>

<p>*Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no rich people. The top US Computer Science departments are said to be MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie-Mellon. MIT yielded Route 128. Stanford and Berkeley yielded Silicon Valley. But Carnegie-Mellon? The record skips at that point. Lower down the list, the University of Washington yielded a high-tech community in Seattle, and the University of Texas at Austin yielded one in Austin. But what happened in Pittsburgh? And in Ithaca, home of Cornell, which is also high on the list?</p>

<p>I grew up in Pittsburgh and went to college at Cornell, so I can answer for both. The weather is terrible, particularly in winter, and there’s no interesting old city to make up for it, as there is in Boston. Rich people don’t want to live in Pittsburgh or Ithaca. So while there are plenty of hackers who could start startups, there’s no one to invest in them.*</p>

<p>[How</a> to Be Silicon Valley](<a href=“http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html]How”>How to Be Silicon Valley)</p>

10

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<p>I don’t think it’s really a matter of learning anything. I completely agree that entrepreneurship is not really something that is easily learned, and especially not via the way that most B-schools are run currently. </p>

<p>But that’s a bit of an unfair criticism, because the truth is, B-schools don’t really teach you much of anything for any career. That’s why a lot of MBA students don’t really care that much about the academics and treat them as secondary. </p>

<p>So why are they there? The same reason why an entrepreneur might consider B-school. </p>

<h1>1 - The network. This is probably the single most valuable asset you will obtain from a B-school. B-school is an excellent place to meet people. Ever notice how only a minority of successful startups, especially in high technology, have only 1 founder? I can think of Ebay and Amazon, and that’s basically about it. {I’m sure there must be more, I just can’t think of them off the top of my head.} It seems that 2 or 3 is the magic number. Microsoft had 2, Apple had 2 (actually started with 3, but one quit early so it was effectively 2), Google had 2, Yahoo had 2, Cisco had 2, Oracle had 3, Netscape had 2, Intel had 2, YouTube had 3, Myspace had 2 or 3 (depending on whether you count Brad Greenspan), Facebook had 3.</h1>

<p>Hence, if you don’t already have a business partner, business school is a great place to find one. </p>

<p>Business school is also an excellent place to meet venture capitalists and angel investors. See below.</p>

<h1>2 - The Brand name. This holds, obviously, only for those schools like Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, Berkeley, etc. that have a powerful brand name. But if you can get into one of these schools, then you can use them to get a big leg up to talk to venture capitalists and angels, many of whom have also attended big-name schools. It’s hard for everybody to get access to VC’s/angels, so you have to use whatever edge you have to get to them.</h1>

<p>Nevertheless, I certainly agree that entrepreneurs don’t really “need” B-school and if you already have a business idea, you may be better off just pursuing it rather than taking time to get an MBA. Nevertheless, I do think there are assets that a B-school can provide to a budding entrepreneur.</p>