Entrepreneurs in TOP 10 MBA Programs
I'm currently running an angel investor funded (non VC backed) internet startup in NYC which has 6 employees. I was hoping to use this experience later on when applying to some Top mba programs such as Cornell, UVA, Stern, Duke where there's still a chance to get in with a VC job afterwards. What other exit opps do entrepreneurs outside of H/s/w have? General management, Consulting, IB, PE etc?
thanks!
One question people who are interested in an entrepreneurship have to consider is whether an MBA makes sense at all. There are good arguments to make both ways. Here's a great discussion on this Mark Suster's blog http://bit.ly/2X9yrv
Entrepreneurs have lots of options after business school. You could go to an early stage venture backed company and get operating experience (the biggest asset in my opinion for a VC), you could go into equity research or investment banking from any of the schools you mention and develop skills that help you analyze companies, industries and build key relationships, or you could start your own company/grow your existing company. None of these are easy paths, but it's not easy to get into venture capital. I think going directly into venture capital after business school is really difficult. You've got an interesting background, but unless your startup is really knocking the cover off the ball, in which case you wouldn't go to b-school, it really won't make it easier for you to get into venture capital right away.
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if you crack 680; go for h/s/w
Thanks for all your inputs so far.
MBA Interview Questions: Entrepreneurship | Need help (Originally Posted: 01/15/2015)
I need your help in presenting one of my life's experiences to the B-School interview panel members. While every comment will be appreciated, I'm keen on constructive ones.
Last year, I tried to launch an eCommerce company, but couldn't do it because of lack of funds. I approached investors (VC, Angel Investors and Incubators) to raise enough to fund 12 months of operation, but they needed a proven idea. One of VCs ($600 million fund) was interested in investing, but wanted to see couple of hundreds of orders being fulfilled.
It's THE BEST job I have ever taken up - a job that gave me tremendous amount of LEARNING, EXPERIENCE and unforgettable moments; I was in LOVE with it. It was my life. It was an enjoyment that woke me up every night, mid-night only to think about the execution; it was a fever that never came down,....
Now, what's the best way to put across such an experience in front of the MBA interview panel members? While I'm sure they will ask me what I learnt from my failures, what else can I expect from them?
You sound extremely anxious about MBA programs and ask some "interesting" questions. Do you have any interviews lined up? From your older posts, it seems like you haven't even applied yet. Did you take the GMAT? Slow down and focus on what is in front of you.
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Sounds like you're very passionate about it... If you just speak from your heart, I'm sure the MBA committee will get what you're saying. I felt it just reading your OP. haha.
Of course, you need to back it up w/ technical knowledge... But I know for a fact that MBAs are frothing at the mouth from entrepreneurial candidates.
Does entrepreneurship help admission? (Originally Posted: 03/27/2012)
How much does starting your own business help for undergrad admission? I am a junior in high school with a 3.6 gpa and 30 ACT. I started my business which manufactures custom made golf putters in 8th grade and i also started selling on ebay in 4th grade. My company was also featured in a magazine. I was wandering how much this would help on admission to schools like Wharton, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford and University of Chicago? I eventually want to go into private equity.Im hoping that this is something outside of the box and will be a closing factor in my admission to one of them since i am always reading how they want someone different and unique. Let me know what you think and the link to my article is below if you are interested in reading.
http://issuu.com/kimleydiggordon/docs/clayton-stoker
I didn't realize WSO was College Confidential.
Are you actually asking this? Answer: Yes, it will help. And go take the SATs because a 30 ACT is enh.
Wandering will get you no where
Talking about how you want to make as much money as possible in a University of Chicago admissions interview or application will insta-ding you. Even though UChicago sends a lot of people into finance every year, you have no shot at experiencing "the life of the mind" if all you want to do is make money.
Your best bet is applying to Wharton, where your accomplishments will actually help your application.
Being the founder of your own business will be highly beneficial when applying to a Boston business school. The top programs look for people who are future leaders. By already leading your own business you are a step ahead!
Need Expert Advice - Entrepreneurship Before Business School (Originally Posted: 09/24/2014)
Hi all,
Had a question that I was hoping you could help me with. First, here is a brief overview of my profile: I graduated in 2010 from an Ivy, was a BB analyst for 2 years in a top group, now at a MM PE firm where I have been since.
Business school has always been on my radar and I would like to go at some point. However, I have always dreamed of starting my own company - I have been working on an idea for the past six months and it has gained significant traction to the point that I just got significant commitments from angel investors. If I were to continue with this, I would need to leave my firm at year-end (my contract finishes early next year anyway) and do this full time.
My concern is the following: I am not naive to the fact that startups/entrepreneurship will be 100x harder than anything I've done in the past, and if this flops, I would like to be in a position to apply to business school next fall. I would really love to pursue this idea and try out entrepreneurship while I'm still relatively young, but I'm concerned (and maybe stupidly so) how this will look to an adcom. Questions/Issues I can see arising are:
1) I would have 6 years of experience vs. 5, the average number of work experience for top schools 2) The adcom would be confused about my career goals - although I would obviously explain that my goals are to transition into tech and leave finance 3) The adcom would not like the idea of admitting an entrepreneur, especially one that has not (yet) created a Facebook or Uber
Do you think this is a good idea? How would this look on b-school applications ? I would essentially be doing this for about a year and if things don't go well I will apply in fall 2016.
Appreciate your advice!
Just my opinion but if you want to be an entrepreneur and hope that your idea is going to succeed you shouldn't be thinking about bschool. You should think that your idea is so good that it's not going to fail, even if it does. The 5/6 year thing shouldn't matter because you have the pedigree to get into a top MBA regardless. But if you want to give entrepreneurialism a shot then you need to jump into the deep end and just do it.
Thanks. I agree, I just want to make sure this won't be seen as a huge negative should I decide to apply for an MBA down the road.
Any other thoughts?
Schools loving entrepreneurs now so if you're decently successful you should be fine
Entrepreneurship --> MBA? (Originally Posted: 08/03/2012)
Hey everyone.
I'm looking for people with some knowledge on what MBA admission officers are looking for/expecting from an entrepreneur at the top schools.
I have a business that have been very successful, and am getting ready to move on to another venture - just in research and planning stages as of now.
So are they looking for innovation, employee size, revenues, potential growth? Can you tell me what they're looking for and what would be a turn off for them?
I guess this is pretty vague, so I'm asking pretty much what's the typical size of a company that you would need to be considered a good candidate.
I'm not inventing anything, just plan on doing a typical import and remarketing of an existing product.
Thanks for the input.
Someone is going to ask this anyway so I might just as well go ahead.
Why would you as an owner of a "very successful" business want an MBA? Owning a successful business is usually a pretty strong medicine against craving for these 70-100-hour-workweek low-six-figures post-MBA gigs.
You do realize most entrepreneurs, at least the successful ones, put 80+ hours per week.
Limited future growth and I want to move on.
"Very successful" for 95% of the population and considering my age. Not enough to be done working.
I was wondering if business owners are given the opportunity to get a MBA or if it's just for people in the corporate world.
Just my .02, but at the end of the day MBAs want to admit the ppl that are going to go on to do the "best" (better donations, better name recognition- both in theory at least). If your business shows good potential (or even just if YOU do), I see no reason from their point of view why you wouldn't have more to offer than the bro just trying to land an IB associate spot like all the other lemmings
Hi! I went to a Top 10 school with an entrepreneurial background, and currently do interviews for them. It is more about fit than anything else. Entrepreneurs are always welcome, but tangible achievements and drive are important. An explanation of why you want to go to business school, how you will contribute to it (while in it as well as a graduate) is essential in your application.
Hi! I went to a Top 10 school with an entrepreneurial background, and currently do interviews for them. It is more about fit than anything else. Entrepreneurs are always welcome, but tangible achievements and drive are important. An explanation of why you want to go to business school, how you will contribute to it (while in it as well as a graduate) is essential in your application.
What % of a class is made up of entrepreneurs?
First, the top schools are looking for academic smarts. So if you can get the ball over the net in that area, then it's on to your work experience.
Yes, they like entrepreneurs, because anyone who has started a successful business shows leadership. If you have managed people and product, dealt with uncertainty, potential failure, worked long hours on hope and dreams alone, you will be a great addition to a class.
Size of company is irrelevant. They care about the type of challenges you face, the impact you have on your teams and your world, and how you've grown in the process.
Hope that helps.
what about failed entrepreneurs? ones that did all you mentioned but the company failed in the end.
Top 10 MBA - How do they view entrepreneurship? (Originally Posted: 09/11/2008)
I'll be graduating soon from college (non-target) and I'm a little older than most seniors, 25. I realize that by age 25, most target school grads have already completed two years as an analyst and maybe even already one year into their MBA program. Anyways, I have a love for entrepreneurship and investing (real estate in particular). I've been saving for a while now and when I graduate college, I'd like to try my hand at entrepreneurship. Within ten years, I'd like to graduate from a top MBA program as well. This is something that I have wanted since I was 18. I may stick with entrepreneurship when I graduate from MBA, or I may move into private equity (another interest).
How do the top MBA schools view entrepreneurship and more so, a failed venture? Does it carry the same weight as say someone who was a management consultant with McKinsey for five years? Or another applicant who was an IB analyst with Goldman Sachs? I don't want my desire to run a business to reduce my chances of gaining entry into a top MBA program.
...why do you even need an MBA... blah :-/
with b2...gross.
There is a big difference between having an entrepreneurial idea and being an entrepreneur (ie: seeing your idea to the bitter end or brilliant future). Honestly, you shouldn't just see the MBA as some credential (even though yes, I know it is). Obviously an MBA makes you very mobile, but not even the golden graces of HBS/Wharton/SGSB etc. can save you from producing high-quality work. If you are afraid of professional insecurity, you should focus on taking that normal analyst path.
I think it would also be the way you spin your story. Guy Kawasaki writes in his blog that working on a startup that fails is more valuable than a success. Assuming you alone were not the cause, the things you learn are more valuable than say, someone who strikes gold by luck. For your MBA app, it really is about who you paint yourself as and how you sell your story. At the end of the day they don't want well-rounded people, they want a well-rounded class. They want people who have done something, not many little things. If it makes sense financially/mentally/physically for you, don't let anything stop you from spreading your idea.
Up until now, your adult life has been dominated by others' expectations of you and your ability or inability to meet said expectations (whether you will admit this or not). This is revealed in the very structure of your question.
To put it another way, it would be like risking your life running across a street to save a child from a burning building and then worrying about whether or not the cops were going to cite you for jaywalking.
Once you're in the "real" world, and you're either a successful entrepreneur or a failure on your way to success (more likely, statistically), you'll find that you don't really give a shit what some middle-aged prof who has hid out in a university his whole life thinks about you.
The VAST majority of entrepreneurs in this country have no college whatsoever. Especially in your chosen field of real estate (look at all the soccer moms who have a real estate license). Ask yourself if you want the freedom of making your own rules and calling your own shots, or if what you really want is the prestige of calling yourself an "entrepreneur" coupled with the acceptance and admiration of a clueless college community. The more brutally honest you can be with yourself, the more likely you will succeed either way.
if you really want to try your hand at entrepreneurship (and you genuinely feel that your ideas have promise) why would you base your decision on how it will look on an MBA application? an MBA is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
Edmundo Braverman, you're officially on analogy probation.
To hop on the same train as everyone else, if you want to become an entrepreneur, what is the point of getting a MBA? Seems pretty worthless to me, other than for the networking aspect.
My plan is to work in banking and then strike it out on my own, though I have my doubts regarding how well banking will prepare me to start something up.
If nothing else, the miserable hours and ritual floggings that are a part of daily life in banking will prepare you for the demands of the free market. I speak from experience.
Believe me, if you can handle 100-hour weeks working beside the biggest assbags on the planet, you'll find that the bar is set pretty low outside of Wall Street. Trust me, you'll be clearing it in street shoes...
Great :)
Did you follow a similar path?
at the same time, i do know that at least wharton has entrepreneurial programs where they even help incubate your business idea... so sure, the mba itself could be a waste, but the fact that you get incubated and supported (getting paid to be helped) is certainly helpful as it gives your business some credentials and implicitly a support network.
I came in on the heels of Milken and Boesky in the late 80s early 90s. Great fun back then, if you had no moral compass. Back then it was still acceptable (even expected) to bang your hot secretary like a screen door in a hurricane.
Eventually, though, most of us grew up and moved on, leveraging what we picked up along the way. Those of us that didn't are now running your firms. If you knew what I know, that would give you great pause...
If you apply the lead-pipe thuggery you learn on Wall Street to everyday business transactions, you will almost always come out on top, get rich, and have a LOT more free time.
Of course, if you consider rubbing one out to the latest Victoria Secret catalog a social life, keep doing what you're doing.
An MBA can definitely teach you how to think as an entrepreneur!
http://www.businessbecause.com/business-school-news/an-mba-in-entrepren…
From An Entrepreneur To MBA (Originally Posted: 05/30/2015)
As 2016 application process is upon us, I'm really struggling with the question in the title. I have already passed CFA Level 2 and I fully intend to complete it.
I already run a small equity research firm in a frontier market. Although the business is good but I think I have a lot more potential than what my current project can pay me in the long-term. But I'm not sure how will the admission committee see this. Is it a good idea to tell them I want to work for a big Asset Management firm post MBA and in the long-run expand my current company into asset management?
I will really appreciate your thoughts on this.
Thanks!
Thank you Scott, I will definitely email you with more details.
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