Entrepreneurship as a career goal?

Thanks a lot for sharing your perspectives.

Hi nishantd88,

We quite agree with the suggestions above.

You could show your long-term goal as an entrepreneurial one and a short-term stint as a corporate role, which, along with the expertise gained during the MBA, will help orient you towards the long-term goal. Remember, a close sync among your existing experience, short-term goal, and long-term aspirations is highly desirable and the essays that you craft should well depict the same. Again, while you do not need an exact business plan for your entrepreneurial venture, we suggest that you do have a broad idea of the same

All the best!

Hi Nishant,

As a rule of thumb, the more audacious the career goal, the bigger the leap from what you’re doing at the moment, greater the credibility required (through how you can pull the transition off).

Startup is extremely hard and therefore it requires explanation of higher order. Is there anything that positions you better than others to make this a success? It could be background in the related industry. It could be deep understanding of the users/ customers and hence the gaps in the industry you’re trying to break into. It could be a distribution advantage especially if it’s B2C. Relationships. IP. Or a combination of few. And if the startup happens to be capital intensive, it’ll add another huge layer. Passion and drive are a given for any serious entrant in this space; they aren’t an advantage.

With startup, you also need to think of why MBA carefully. It’s not easy to explain why you need an MBA degree to start a company. BTW, you don’t need experience in a startup or the particular industry (though this one can be a positive) to start your own company. Other points such as few mentioned earlier can be more important.

If entrepreneurship is your long-term goal, think about whether that idea/ industry/ gap can still be exploited after many years. Some industries change fast, become saturated and may be much harder to get a foothold later on. Just apply commonsense here. Some bit of details matter because sometimes people loosely mention entrepreneurship as a long-term goal when they’re indecisive about it. Equally important, try to differentiate from other applicants from the consulting background.

For a Moment- Let us look at how the schools LISTEN to you when you tell them that you will be an entrepreneur within 48 hours of finishing your MBA Program.


Let us think of the following: You are in May( 2021), your classes are over, other classmates are headed out for a quick vacation before joining their first POST MBA Company.

What would you be doing if your goal is to be an Entrepreneur?

Would you be looking for funding for an idea that you have not validated yet?

Would you be looking for Co-founders to help you across different functions?

Let us look at things realtime- What would your mindset be? How much money do you have to sustain on the RUNWAY before you breakeven in your venture?

Have you thought through – How will you pay for the School Loans after you have graduated?

You have a business plan ready already- and you know how you will impact the world- but have you Validated it yet? I mean- have you struggled to scale a team, trying to market it, running after teams to get the product to market, and DOING ALL THE OTHER EXPERIMENTS where you failed , and realized that the first step to your SUCCESS is MBA.

Schools do not have a problem with you choosing entrepreneurship as a goal. They have a problem in understanding – IF YOU HAVE NOT TRIED ANYTHING YET, How did you get to A CONCLUSION that entrepreneurship gets started with an MBA.

One thought could be that – You are looking for credibility on the resume so as to attract investors too- or to NOT HAVE THEM IGNORE You when you make your pitches- That is a FAIR POINT but this will not independently convince the schools of your reasons to choose an MBA. Why ? Because even FUNDING IS NOT a bottleneck to becoming an entrepreneur. Funding is needed TO SCALE A VENTURE- and before you scale it- you need to go through bloodbath of what it means to be an entrepreneur.


And schools may or may not agree with this but – they DO NOT MAKE ENTREPRENEURS. They can give you solid general management skills, and help you understand how to run a large P&L on an autopilot but – they cannot make you an entrepreneur. They can admit an entrepreneur and teach him HOW TO Be more resourceful but – you will have to take responsibility of telling them that – YOU ALREADY ARE AN ENTREPRENEUR( with past actions, successes and or Major failures).

If you tell them that they are the first step to your entrepreneurship- they will RUN- they will think you will be a liability.