Do you need an MBA to start a successful startup?
I have written an article about this question at Stepcase blog. It’s an interesting questions to think about:
Wait, do you need an MBA to learn what you need to operate a startup? Maybe not. Starting up a venture is totally different from managing one. To start up, you need your time to work on the idea. More importantly, you need skills to execute it. Now the execution is not how well you manage your business, but your technical skills to implement your idea. Even if you have enough seed funds to hire engineers to work on it, you will still need enough technical skills and experiences to lead and guide them.
Yes, an MBA is still useful and you will really learn a lot from it – No doubt about that. The knowledge you learned will help you on management, including managing people, sales, marketing and raising funds. Steven commented on the post on what MBA could provide:
I did my MBA with much time spent on books and course materials. But then, there are still more to provide in an MBA programme:
a) Commitment, I have to say some people are more committed when they took classes. I also understand that this is not a good reason
b) Assessment, assessment of your knowledge to certain level, and not mis-interpreting the subject matter.
c) Fixed Curriculum, you can always read what you like to read. But now you are forced to read something useful while you might not like it
d) Discussion, you have chances to discuss with people of similar interests, not to mention the teacher who give guidance when you are struck with something
e) Projects, games, and visits, I think this is something that differentiate an MBA programme with other postgraduate business programmes. The school I studied offered an intensive entrepreneurial project. Although it is something far from actually starting a startup, I believe this is also the closest one can get without putting big amount of money, time, and idea. The teacher also have good experiences with startup too.
However, if starting a business is your goal, the question will become: Does it make the biggest positive impact to your objective as an entrepreneur? Or should you spend the resources (time and money) to something else that will make a bigger impact? e.g. invest its tuition fee as your initial startup fund.
What do you think?
Do you need an MBA to start a successful startup? – [Stepcase Blog]
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Leon Ho
Leon Ho has a decade of experience in technology and the Internet. He was a manager of Software Engineering at Red Hat, Inc. and led an international team of software engineers. In 2007, Leon left Red Hat to launch Stepcase as an umbrella for both Stepcase Lifehack and Stepcase Apps. Recently, he won the #4 spot in BusinessWeek's Top 24 Young Asian Entrepreneurs.
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Comments
B Smith @ Wealth and Wisdom says on July 7th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
In most cases an MBA is no help to a startup. In fact it can be a hindrance. When you start a business you need to:
-Identify a market you know and are passionate about.
-Identify a niche that is being under served.
-Find out their needs, wants, and pain points. Yes, this is a novel concept…talk to your customer!
-Develop products and services to meet these wants/needs or eliminate their pain.
-Sell, sell, sell.
-Adjust your product/service based on actual customer feedback.
None of this is complicated. It is all stuff that can be done with little or no higher education.
A business degree prepares you to be a worker (accountant, marketing, office manager, salesman, etc). An MBA prepares you to be an executive in a corporation. It creates people great at analysis but who readily over complicate the process. Their skills are incredibly valuable but only to established organizations. To a startup they complicate tasks and often make the wrong things important.
Ron Towns says on July 7th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
The answer is that you absolutely don’t need an MBA. And MBA might give you some insight on fundamentals, but if you spent those same 2 years working with a mega-entrepreneur as a mentor, you would learn much more. MBAs can be valuable, but they are not essential…. this is more valuable than an MBA… http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
cvaldes1831 says on July 7th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Absolutely not.
Bill Gates didn’t even have a college degree. Neither did Larry Ellison or Steve Jobs.
Page and Brin at Google have engineering degrees, as does Eric Schmidt. Yang and Filo at Yahoo also have engineering degrees.
Jim Clark started two billion dollar companies (Silicon Graphics and Netscape) without an MBA.
We could go on and on, but you get the point.
Troy Malone says on July 8th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
I think the degree is helpful on some fronts while starting up a company. It is most helpful when crafting the plans for the business and especially for raising money. I am much more comfortable talking with investors after my business school experience.
That having been said, when the rubber hits the road during the execution phase, an MBA is just another acronym. I have seen many instances where a non-MBA educates and out performs a degreed counterpart in the “real world”!
Alexey says on July 8th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
based on fact that George Bush has MBA issued by Harvard U, I can conclude that MBA in US is bullshit! So seems like this degree doesn’t matter, even you’re retarded – pay for it and you will get it.
Dallin Harris says on July 9th, 2008 at 2:57 am
There is absolutely no way to make a blanket statement about whether an MBA is useful or not. It depends largely on (1) what you already have to work with in terms of time, money, education and opportunity and (2) what your life goals are. In my case for example, I am an entrepreneur because I like the freedom to focus on what I consider to be more important. If I were planning to be a high-powered business man for the rest of my life, I would probably consider an MBA a good investment.
Rebel says on October 30th, 2008 at 11:29 am
If you check up the history of MBA, you will realise that, it is a course started to extract money from the middle level employees of US during the post indstrial revelution times. It was just an artificial course made out of a mixture of Economics Commerce Statistics and a lot of Bullshits.
But they sold the recipe so well that, MBA degree business is a couple of Billion dollar market.
john Sale says on October 12th, 2009 at 6:44 am
I think some entrepeneur needs (if they are not a business grad) that because, it will train him how to operate a business set-up for his business. Good luck!