Taking a Year Off Before Business School to Pursue Entrepreneurship
Some quick background on myself - graduated in 2010, worked at a BB IB as an analyst for 2 years, now at a lower middle market private equity firm where I have worked as an associate for about a year and a half.
I would like to go to business school at some point as I personally feel that going through an MBA program would be beneficial to me for a variety of reasons. My firm has given me the option of staying on for a third year as a senior associate, but I really do not see a future for myself in private equity or finance.
I have always been interested in technology and entrepreneurship and have a solid opportunity lined up where I would be able to work on the marketing/business development side at an early-stage start up. I would not receive a paycheck until the company secures additional funding, but I have enough in savings to hold me over and I think this would be an excellent learning opportunity and low-risk way to "try-out" tech/entrepreneurship - if things don't go well, I can go on to get my MBA and pursue another career afterwards.
My questions are: Do you think this is a good idea? How would this look on b-school applications (favorable or unfavorable?) I would essentially be doing this for about a year and plan to go to business school in fall 2015.
Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.
go do the mongol rally
I think your profile will be more interesting than the countless IB+PE resumes they see every round
However, you have to make sure your career goals are clear. If it's tech+entrepreneurship, then it makes sense. If you put down you want to do PE/IB after MBA, then it looks odd. On MBA apps, they even ask what have you done to be prepared for your intended career goal so you can talk about it here.
Thanks, that's helpful. Any other thoughts?
Do it. Can't think of one reason why you wouldn't. As above poster said, you'll be different than the countless IB-->PE applicants, while still having a name brand pedigree on your resume.
More importantly, you're interested in entrepreneurship and tech. Best case scenario is this start up takes off and you either don't go to business school, or go to business school rich. Both are awesome. Worst case is you get your hands dirty doing early stage start up development and are more prepared/more marketable for start ups out of b school.
One thing to keep in mind is make sure they know that you were invited back for a third year. Assuming that you'll have at least one of your recommenders from the bank, you should be fine. Just don't want them to think you basically failed out of finance so you took a unpaid job at a startup. You'll also (obviously) cover that in essays.
Definitely good way to stand out
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