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Comment by Maro | Hacker News Reader

In the Startup World, it's not the MBA that matters, it's you!

I don't know much but I have a slight doubt whenever I read something like this. I presume you get an MBA to give you a better understanding about business. And startups are in essence businesses. Then how come having a better understanding not impact your startup?

Because this assumption is false.

The cause of the apparent paradox is that "business" spans a huge range. MBAs train you to be junior officers in the armies of managerial capitalism. But there is almost zero overlap between that sort of work and what startups do.

MBAs train you to be junior officers in the armies of managerial capitalism.

Some MBA programs do -- most, even. But more and more programs are focusing on entrepreneurship.

I think it is pretty obvious that having an MBA is useful if you're going to do a startup. Is getting an MBA more useful than spending the time/money on something else? Perhaps, perhaps not -- depending on the person involved, the skills of their cofounders, the type of the business, and so on.

Actually I would say it's a slight net minus to have an MBA when doing a startup. You learn nothing of use to you, but investors discriminate against you slightly.

Almost all investors are looking for founders who match past stars. So what they're looking for at this point is hackers.

I have to say I agree with them. I can't imagine Bill Gates or Larry & Sergey enduring B School.

You learn nothing of use to you

For a small percentage of startups, that might be true, but I think it is far from true for most startups. Consider the 1-year "mini-MBA" at Duke that Wadhwa mentions, which covers "marketing, finance, intellectual property and business law, and management." You would really suggest that this training offers nothing of value?

Again, there might be more efficient ways to spend your time/money, but for the vast majority of startups, that is a very useful skillset to have, particularly if it complements technical knowledge.

Maybe that knowledge isn't useful if the founder is content to handle only technical stuff, the startup remains small, and the company doesn't have any paying customers. Seems like a pretty big limitation to me though.

You would really suggest that this training offers nothing of value?

Pretty much. Early stage startups don't need to know anything about finance, business law, and management. All they need to know about IP I can tell them in 5 minutes. As for marketing, it depends what the schools teach, but startup marketing is so unusual and varies so much depending on the product that I would be very surprised if a B school class had anything useful to say about it.

Do you think that every investment you make is in the next Google or Microsoft? How about other investors? It seems like if you were specifically looking for the next Google or Microsoft that would be a great thing, but what if your not.

Do you think that the majority of investments you make (which likely aren't going to be the next microsoft or google) could be better done with an MBA on the team? Has this really been even tried in the startup world since the dotcom bust? I am not saying the way you in vest in founders is wrong by any means, but could VC's be missing out do to a bias of trying to find the next microsoft when in reality they know the company they are looking at is likely only acquisition bait?

We hope every investment we make is the next Google or Microsoft, in the sense of growing very big. Remember that when Microsoft started, it was two undergrads making Basic interpreters for what were then called "hobbyists."

I don't think the majority of companies we fund would be better off if some of the founders had MBAs, no. It would at best not be harmful. What makes startups succeed, at our stage, is building products users like, and I have seen no evidence that an MBA gives you any advantage there. In fact I've probably seen evidence to the contrary.

What about Elon Musk?

Do you think there could be an MBA program that teaches relevant things to what start ups do? and what would it teach?

I feel in some ways part of what Y Combinator does is like an extremely condensed business school that is relevant to start ups.

YC "spend[s] much more time teaching founders how to pitch their startups, and how to close a deal once they've generated interest." YC also invites speakers to share their knowledge http://ycombinator.com/w9speakers.html

I think the ultimate educational experience for a future start up entrepreneur would combine what Ars Digita University taught (programming) http://www.aduni.org/, web design, the relevant aspects of business, a bit of elementary worldly wisdom http://ycombinator.com/munger.html, and to top it all off the school would require the students to work on a start up as a side project.

Startups are one of those things that are best learned by doing, so YC pretty much already is what you're talking about. We've tried to make it the optimal way to learn about startups. But YC is structurally so different from a university that I don't think they'd be able to evolve very far in this direction.

There's a discontinuity between investment firms and schools. We've taken the investment firm and made it a lot like a school, in much the same way that seals became a lot like fishes. But as with seals and fishes, there is an unbridgeable gap despite the surface similarities.

Something like http://www.founderinstitute.com/ seems useful to me - that plus a degree in computer science and design plus a term in Y Combinator.

(there are alternatives to Founder Institute that don't seem quite so MBA-ey, too)

Agreed. But you link to HBS's "Working Knowledge" in the YC library. Is there much good stuff there? HN voters don't seem to think so.

(That link in the YC lib broken now, btw. It's redirecting to their front page. You want this now: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/topics/entrepreneurship.html)

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