{"id":33785,"date":"2016-07-19T01:49:25","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T08:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=33785"},"modified":"2016-07-27T15:33:20","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T22:33:20","slug":"5-practical-lessons-i-learned-at-hbs-that-helped-me-launch-my-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/5-practical-lessons-i-learned-at-hbs-that-helped-me-launch-my-startup\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Practical Lessons I Learned at HBS that Helped Me Launch My Startup"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Learn<\/a>
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In exchange for that high cost, you can also extract high value.<\/p>\n

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Harvard Business School<\/a> is often seen as a \u201cfinance\u201d school, or a \u201cconsulting\u201d school, or a \u201cgeneral management\u201d school\u2014and usually isn\u2019t the first MBA program you\u2019d think of when it comes to entrepreneurship. My experience, though, was that HBS had a great entrepreneurial curriculum\u2014and despite the fact that I\u2019d founded two businesses prior to the program, I learned some invaluable lessons that I\u2019m applying every day to <\/span>ZipBooks<\/span><\/a>, my current startup.<\/span><\/p>\n

1. Leverage the Innovator's Dilemma<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even though the term \u201cdisrupt\u201d is tossed around casually these days, it\u2019s generally used outside of its original meaning. Founders, TechCrunch articles, and even investors can get caught using it as a placeholder for \u201cdo something really awesome.\u201d The term was coined, originally, by one of my favorite people at HBS, Professor Clay Christensen, and popularized in his book, \u201cThe Innovator\u2019s Dilemma.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Disruption<\/span><\/i>, used in this sense, means a new entrant to an industry serving\u2014with a new technology\u2014the bottom portion of the market that incumbents can\u2019t or won\u2019t serve, due to their profit-maximizing nature. Over time, that technology matures and is able to serve the most profitable portions of the market, \u201cdisrupting\u201d those incumbents and displacing their technology.<\/span><\/p>\n

As my team at ZipBooks creates strategy, we think deeply about the advantages and disadvantages we have as a new company, what portions of the market we can service, and how the dynamics of technology and pricing might play out over time. I think many founders and startups could do well to figure out how their own products can be \u201cdisruptive\u201d in their own right.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Solve a real problem<\/strong><\/p>\n

As part of HBS\u2019s first-year curriculum, students are required to form intra-section teams and get a small grant to start their own startup. My team focused on what most of our classmates were thinking about at the time\u2014finding jobs for the summer and post-graduation! To help solve that problem, we built a product called \u201cSpotRocket,\u201d which gathered data all over the web about startups, then pushed that data through an algorithm to rank startups against others in similar geography.<\/span><\/p>\n

We positioned it as a tool to help students find jobs at startups in different regions, and released it to the public. People <\/span>loved it<\/span><\/i>. It produced several thousand signups in just a couple weeks, and our team won our section competition. It was exciting to see the power of what you can accomplish with a product or service that really solves a problem\u2014and often, looking at your own problems can be a good way to find one.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Build the right team <\/strong><\/p>\n

Nearly every course at HBS is taught using the \u201ccase method,\u201d where students come having studied a \u201ccase\u201d that lays out a real-world situation that a manager, entrepreneur, or other professional has gone through. Sometimes they describe successes, many times they describe failures. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And over the course of at least 300 cases, I noticed a common thread in the failures\u2014it was a lack of a great team. Jim Collins preaches \u201cgetting the right people on the bus,\u201d and I\u2019m convinced that nothing is more important. The starting point for a great team at a startup is knowing what you\u2019re good at, and more particularly, what you\u2019re not. Then, take as much time as necessary to find the perfect complements to your own skill set. This can be frustrating, time consuming, and difficult\u2014but it <\/span>will<\/span><\/i> be worth it.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. Seek to be the fund returner<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking to raise venture capital for a startup, it\u2019s helpful to know how early-stage investors think. In a venture capital course at HBS, we dived deep on the dynamic between early-stage VCs and their own limited partners (investors). An early-stage VC knows that many companies of their company will fail\u2014literally return $0.00\u2014after their investment in them. They also have pressure from their LPs to create 25%+ IRRs and lofty cash-on-cash multiples, due to the illiquidity, risk, and time horizon of early-stage investment. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That means that each investment they make has to have the potential to truly blow up and create sky-high returns. And the companies that create this dynamic\u2014not one where this will \u201cfor sure\u201d happen, but one where it could\u2014are the ones that get the love from VCs.<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Leverage who you know with what you know<\/strong><\/p>\n

An MBA is an expensive proposition<\/a>. For many students, along with high tuition and living expenses, there is a substantial opportunity cost to attending an MBA program full-time. But in exchange for that high cost, you can also extract high value, especially if you take the time to create relationships with your peers and others you meet during your time at business school. <\/span><\/p>\n

Those relationships, along with your own growing skills and knowledge, can create a powerful dynamic as you dive into entrepreneurship. That principle has proved itself again and again in my time since graduation, as I\u2019ve taken what I learned at business school and augmented it through the expertise of others, or recognized where I\u2019m deficient and bringing in outside help. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Final thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot you can get out of business school if you\u2019re an aspiring entrepreneur<\/a>. Despite popular belief, not all startup learning has to be experiential. In the classroom, you can learn from the successes and mistakes of others. And when the time comes, an MBA can be a surprisingly effective tool as you take on the world with your own new venture.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Watch<\/a><\/p>\n

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\nTim Chaves is the founder and CEO of ZipBooks, an\u00a0intuitive\u00a0online invoicing software<\/a>\u00a0that helps small businesses get paid faster.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Related Resources:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 Why Do YOU Need an MBA?<\/a>, free guide
\n\u2022\u00a0Harvard Business School 2016-17 MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines<\/a>
\n\u2022\u00a0FT\u2019s Top MBA Programs for Entrepreneurship<\/a><\/p>\n

This article<\/a> originally appeared on\u00a0<\/em>blog.accepted.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Applying to a top b-school? The talented folks at Accepted have helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to their dream programs. Whether you are figuring out where apply, writing your application essays, or prepping for your interviews, we are just a call (or click) away.<\/p>\n

Contact us, and get matched up with the consultant who will help\u00a0you\u00a0<\/em>get accepted<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harvard Business School is often seen as a \u201cfinance\u201d school, or a \u201cconsulting\u201d school, or a \u201cgeneral management\u201d school\u2014and usually isn\u2019t the first MBA program you\u2019d think of when it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,939,775,243],"tags":[7,119],"class_list":["post-33785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mba","category-accepted","category-admission-consultants","category-blog","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-hbs","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33786,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33785\/revisions\/33786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}