devansh_god wrote:
My question is simple (eventhough the answer may not be):
Should an entreprenuer who has forged a successful startup leave working in his startup and go to B-school??
I mean that some people may look at it as a complete waste of time and effort on the entreprenuer's part. These people reason that a successful entreprenuer can not learn much at a B-school, which is mainly for people looking for high powered jobs etc. Plus he would not learn anything which he has not seen on ground before.
But the other school of thought reasons that a B-school is much more than academics and useful network building and exposure is worth the price.
I'd take my personal example. I am an entreprenuer but I have a very small scale startup. Not that it is not successful (it is as successful as you can get on the small scale), but I believe that for scaling it "upwards" and for properly, professionally managing it one would need a thorough understanding of managing large scale business. Granted, that the Bill Gates or the Ambanis of this world do not have an MBA, but, statistically speaking, how many are they??? Perhaps 1 in a million. And believe it or not, statistically that means not me and not you either.
Also, one may aquire such skills over time but it will take anybody a lot of time to figure it all out. An MBA (in my view) only shortens this time. And this is the major driving force behind my MBA decision.
But then again you are tempted to feel that your actual business would be two years behind the competition and you could do very well to stop yourself now and get more "street smarts" which really matter. This way saving a huge amount of time, money and effort.
What do you guys think about it?? Is an MBA worth it for an entreprenuer (like me) who will study on loans, never work for someone else and plans to return to his own business after 2 years???
No, I would say its not worth it for you.
In my opinion, a true entrepeneur would never get their MBA. A true "entreprenuer" would never spend the kind of money to go back to school and leave his dream, unless of course he wanted the safety net of an MBA to fall back on if his 'start-up' (AKA Small Business) ever went belly up. Now if you want the safety net in case you fail, then by all means go for it.
The biggest key to a successful small business is sales and marketing, especially selling as much as you can and as quickly as you can. The founder needs to be the best salesman and then he needs to hire more people like him at first. Management, finance and everything else is secondary because if you can't bring in revenue you won't be around long enough for the rest of it to matter anyway. So I would say if you really want to succeed as an 'entreprenuer', then learn how to sell. What's funny about an MBA is that all of these so called 'entreprenuer programs' leave out the most important part of the curriculum they should be teaching. Not really sure why.
You make one other assumption about why you are going back to get your MBA when you say:
Quote:
I believe that for scaling it "upwards" and for properly, professionally managing it one would need a thorough understanding of managing large scale business. Also, one may aquire such skills over time but it will take anybody a lot of time to figure it all out. An MBA (in my view) only shortens this time. And this is the major driving force behind my MBA decision.
Currently, there are 6 million small businesses in this country and roughly 3,000 businesses with over $1 billion in revenue. It takes an average of 20 years to reach $1 billion in revenue and less than .1% of businesses ever make it there. Of course that is if you don't fail in your first year, which about 10-15% of small businesses in this country do.
My advice is that you are going to be in this thing for 30 years and if you want an MBA as a safety net, then by all means go for it, but no true entreprenuer ever went to business school to learn the proper way to run a small business. The successful ones had a great idea and were capable of convincing people it was a really great idea and they should buy it. That is the secret to their success.