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Ask HN: Can I become a biz/customer development guy after college?

3 points by djsamson ↗ HN
I'm a junior in college and my major is Business Administration. My life goal is to become a successful entrepreneur. I was initially going to go down the real estate investment route after college like some of my mentors have, but after reading Steve Blank and taking part in Start-Up Weekend I love the start-up scene.

This is my issue. At my college everyone is either a Finance or Marketing concentration with plans to work for Corporate America. I met with my adviser and told him I don't want to declare a concentration since entrepreneurship is not an option and he told me my plan isn't viable.

I'll be taking part in an incubator this summer at a neighboring college and I acknowledge I will probably not become financially independent from the company that I create through it (although I'll try!). But is it unrealistic for a non-tech guy to plan on moving to Boston or Silicon Valley after college and find a business development job? Why is this not an acceptable path to some people? I feel like working for successful entrepreneurs is probably the best learning environment for becoming one, even if it meant less pay than my colleagues who are going to try to work for Goldman Sachs.

3 comments

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zerohp
The degree programs for business at most universities are just corporate prep schools. They're not educating you to be an entrepreneur. You'd be much better off in a science or engineering program where people, at least a few of them, are actively trying to invent the products of the future and will build a business to make it happen.
devs1010
Why not at least take a stab at learning some tech skills? I'm not sure the world needs more non-technical managers of tech companies but even if you just get a solid grounding in the basics this could spur your interest and make you more valuable overall to a startup company
mjs00
Hi djsamson, I'll pass along the same advice verbatim that I received over 20 years ago, from the dean of my school's MBA program ( I was in his undergrad entrepreneurship class ), when I asked about MBA as path to entrepreneurship.

His advice was to instead spend time working for the smallest possible companies after college for as long as I could stand it, and get a breadth of exposure about running and growing a business. His take was that an MBA was training ground for large corporate positions where they wanted highly qualified candidates. And that even w/o getting an MBA, working for large companies after ungrad would put you on a track for specialization where you wouldn't be in a position to see the big picture, or able to make big decisions/mistakes for a long time.

I took his advice, got a lot of great experience at a few very small companies where the exposure and mentorship was invaluable (and the breadth of forgetful and thankless tasks was endless). And that experience came at a severe earnings discount for 5-10 years compared to my contemporaries who went straight to bigCo and big paychecks. But once I learned enough to take leadership roles at several subsequent companies, the tables changed dramatically on the earnings.

My advice beyond that to you as a non-technical entrepreneur just starting is perhaps consider not working for a pure startup where it will be mostly engineers fighting to find product/market fit, but instead look at small/growing firms that need sales/bus dev/marketing help, and start there, since you'll have an opportunity to be exposed to the full picture of a going concern. Learn everything you can to excel at your craft, spend extra time learning as much tech as you can, then apply all that to a raw startup later potentially with folks you meet along the way.

Best of luck!