Great points. Though one tangential thing is - MBA school is largely not funded and I believe this largely cuts out the ability of people with MBA's to be in a startup at the early phase. I do not doubt the fact that a lot of MBA's and lawyers are very smart innovative people, just that the cost of their education often undermines their ability to take risk.
That and life stage. By the time you graduate from b-school a spouse, family and house are coming soon. The years in which one can earn ramen wages are precious and b-school takes up two of them, often at what might otherwise be your living expenses vs experience peak.
MBAs are sophisticated thinkers that can create high quality business plans
HAHAHA This person has clearly never been to an MBA school. If only my peers were sophisticated thinkers. I'd say less than 10% of MBAs are sophisticated thinkers (and by extension great problem solvers) and those 10% are the ones you WANT to hire. The MBAs who can just churn out business plans - forget those.
I have a sample size of one school to pick from, but I have to agree with this. The overwhelming majority of MBAs are quite normal in their outlook. I graduated from the #1 ranked MBA in Canada and I believe it's top 20 in the world (depending on whose skewed, biased ranking system you're using) and I met only 2 or 3 people who thought "big". Most people I met were getting MBAs because they wanted to move up in the organization or move away from engineering and get into management.
Not all MBAs suck at startups. Learn how to spot Durant MBAs.
I've been meaning to write this post for awhile--since I originally started this blog actually. When I originally warned startups to beware of MBAs, it was not to say all MBAs are bad for startups, but that one should be careful when working with one in an early stage startup. To be clear, most are bad for early stage startups, but certainly not all.
This post is about learning which MBAs get it and which ones suck. Any why.
Why All The Hating?
It has become hip to bash MBAs. Some of my favorite rants have been from Mark Suster, Stu Wall, and DHH. My overarching take on this discussion is that MBAs are more useful post-product-market fit and less helpful (or outright bad) pre-product market fit. When a company is in the exploration phase, all the skills of an MBA are backwards. MBAs are sophisticated thinkers that can create high quality business plans. But in the pre-product market phase of a company, the entrepreneur's job is to find the repeatable business model, wherever it may be hiding. At this stage, iteration trumps planning. Speed trumps quality. Perseverance trumps intelligence. Passion trumps sophistication.
Because of the structure and curriculum of business schools, MBAs are better trained for the later stages, when the goal is optimizing value, not finding it. My favorite analogy comes from a commenter on Hacker News:
"I like to think of this topic using an automotive racing analogy: Fortune 500 companies are the formula 1 cars. They need a great big team to perform efficiently, and minor tweaks applied correctly can yield significant results. The MBAs are the specialists who work the electronics and the advanced controls for the race cars. A team working on a formula 1 car could find a way to increase down force by 5%, or they could install a GPS system to analyze turns and scrape 1/100s of seconds off of lap times, and that edge could help them win.
Startups are cars with a very different purpose. They are project cars, and they have 1 purpose: to go. Forget GPS systems and down force. These cars need tires and a working steering wheel. It would be a mistake to think about installing spoilers on a car that doesn't have all 4 tires, just as it would be a mistake to worry about ideal liquidity ratios in a startup. Entrepreneurs are the mechanics who decide to take on these 'project cars'. Eventually, as the car project develops and grows, specialists (MBAs) can be brought on to find the minor, yet precise changes that will improve the car's results."
Of course, this is not by accident. Business schools teach what the vast majority of its students need: specialist skills in large-scale optimization. Entrepreneurship, it turns out, is a very different beast that requires a very different academic approach.
Business School is not Entrepreneurship School: Sloan vs. Durant
Steve Blank has been advocating for the Durant School of Entrepreneurship.
Billy Durant founded GM, was fired, founded Chevrolet, was fired, regained control of GM, and was fired again. He was a true start up founder, but very few have ever heard of him.
It was Alfred Sloan that later became CEO of GM, grew the company, invented cost accounting, and effectively founded the modern corporation. He was an accountant and MIT named their business school after him.
Business schools teach Sloan-style business fundamentals. It's not a bad thing--it's just not relevant for pre-revenue, pre-product market fit companies. During the iteration and customer discovery phase, companies need founders versed in the Durant School of Entrepreneurship.
Learn how to spot the Durant MBAs
When hiring or picking co-founders or doing investment due diligence, you're searching for data that predicts success. The list below is a collection of possible data points that can indicate whether someone gets it--whether they have a bit of Durant in them.
Interesting points even if we don't agree with all of them - most of all, for the importance of a) not typecasting everyone with a particular piece of paper and b) emphasizing the best things that business-y people could bring to the table.
US bschools have been overly focused on banking and consulting for the last 15 years (or more). Innovation programs have tried to balance that bias, but in my experience those programs have mixed results. Someone with certificate in entrepreneurship or innovation are trying to use coursework as a proxy for being an entrepreneur. The best entrepreneurs may have gotten an MBA and maybe a certificate in entrepreneurship but those are not future indicators of entrepreneurs.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 39.6 ms ] threadHAHAHA This person has clearly never been to an MBA school. If only my peers were sophisticated thinkers. I'd say less than 10% of MBAs are sophisticated thinkers (and by extension great problem solvers) and those 10% are the ones you WANT to hire. The MBAs who can just churn out business plans - forget those.
===
Not all MBAs suck at startups. Learn how to spot Durant MBAs.
I've been meaning to write this post for awhile--since I originally started this blog actually. When I originally warned startups to beware of MBAs, it was not to say all MBAs are bad for startups, but that one should be careful when working with one in an early stage startup. To be clear, most are bad for early stage startups, but certainly not all.
This post is about learning which MBAs get it and which ones suck. Any why.
Why All The Hating?
It has become hip to bash MBAs. Some of my favorite rants have been from Mark Suster, Stu Wall, and DHH. My overarching take on this discussion is that MBAs are more useful post-product-market fit and less helpful (or outright bad) pre-product market fit. When a company is in the exploration phase, all the skills of an MBA are backwards. MBAs are sophisticated thinkers that can create high quality business plans. But in the pre-product market phase of a company, the entrepreneur's job is to find the repeatable business model, wherever it may be hiding. At this stage, iteration trumps planning. Speed trumps quality. Perseverance trumps intelligence. Passion trumps sophistication.
Because of the structure and curriculum of business schools, MBAs are better trained for the later stages, when the goal is optimizing value, not finding it. My favorite analogy comes from a commenter on Hacker News:
"I like to think of this topic using an automotive racing analogy: Fortune 500 companies are the formula 1 cars. They need a great big team to perform efficiently, and minor tweaks applied correctly can yield significant results. The MBAs are the specialists who work the electronics and the advanced controls for the race cars. A team working on a formula 1 car could find a way to increase down force by 5%, or they could install a GPS system to analyze turns and scrape 1/100s of seconds off of lap times, and that edge could help them win.
Startups are cars with a very different purpose. They are project cars, and they have 1 purpose: to go. Forget GPS systems and down force. These cars need tires and a working steering wheel. It would be a mistake to think about installing spoilers on a car that doesn't have all 4 tires, just as it would be a mistake to worry about ideal liquidity ratios in a startup. Entrepreneurs are the mechanics who decide to take on these 'project cars'. Eventually, as the car project develops and grows, specialists (MBAs) can be brought on to find the minor, yet precise changes that will improve the car's results."
Of course, this is not by accident. Business schools teach what the vast majority of its students need: specialist skills in large-scale optimization. Entrepreneurship, it turns out, is a very different beast that requires a very different academic approach.
Business School is not Entrepreneurship School: Sloan vs. Durant
Steve Blank has been advocating for the Durant School of Entrepreneurship.
Billy Durant founded GM, was fired, founded Chevrolet, was fired, regained control of GM, and was fired again. He was a true start up founder, but very few have ever heard of him.
It was Alfred Sloan that later became CEO of GM, grew the company, invented cost accounting, and effectively founded the modern corporation. He was an accountant and MIT named their business school after him.
Business schools teach Sloan-style business fundamentals. It's not a bad thing--it's just not relevant for pre-revenue, pre-product market fit companies. During the iteration and customer discovery phase, companies need founders versed in the Durant School of Entrepreneurship.
Learn how to spot the Durant MBAs
When hiring or picking co-founders or doing investment due diligence, you're searching for data that predicts success. The list below is a collection of possible data points that can indicate whether someone gets it--whether they have a bit of Durant in them.
1. Previous Founder Experience
The best entrepreneurship schoo...
Upvotes for the cached version, thanks!