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Comment by viscanti | Hacker News Reader

Starting a business is only half the battle (at best). The biggest value of the MBA is the networking that happens. You're meeting people who will go on to work in a diverse set of industries. It's not uncommon for an entrepreneur with an MBA to go a year or two in business only calling on people they met in school, or fellow alumni. That networking isn't impossible to replicate, but an entrepreneur who forgoes the MBA route needs to make a concerted effort to make up for that.

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This myth is so widely repeated I have to call it out. The people you meet doing an MBA either a) leave and go into corporate middle management or b) go start their own businesses. The chance that the middle managers end up in a position where they can directly or indirectly help your startup is extremely low; the idea that you could be fully occupied as an entrepreneur just exploiting those contacts for 12-24 months is laughably naive. As for your MBAers who become fellow entrepeneurs - well they have their heads down working on a startup which is probably in a totally different sector to you - they're incredibly busy building their own businesses and contacts in a totally different sector, and even less able to help. Overall, best case scenario is that an entrepreneur starts a B2B business and a handful of his classmates end up as potential clients/introducers to potential clients - but even with five of these contacts, at $100k for an MBA that works out at $20k per lead, hardly the best return on investment. There are plenty of reasons to do an MBA, but networking to establish a startup isn't one.

It depends on the school you attend. The networking effect is bigger than just the people you attend class with, although those connections are often very valuable. Most MBA students aren't studying for entrepreneurship. They're someone who has already had success in the business world and are going to advance their career. Having a network of connections across business domains can be very valuable.

Obviously it depends on the startup. B2B businesses would get more value out of those connections. I stated that it's likely the biggest benefit of business school, not the only benefit. A true cost-benefit analysis would look also at the knowledge acquired as well as the strength of the alumni network.

I agree.

I've also learned that there is no one path to entrepreneurship, or programming for the matter. For some people it makes sense to quit school or avoid college. Others follow a more traditional route. There are pros and cons to each. More importantly, it is an extremely personal process. What makes sense for one person does not make sense for another.

As for me, I am very happy in my decision to attend business school. In addition to the networking benefits you pointed to above, I've found that some of the things that I've learned (e.g. Coaching and Mentoring) have wonderful applications to my personal life. Put differently, business school has made me a better father. I plan to write a post on this soon. All the wonderful friendships I built while I was there is icing on the cake.

I should also point out that I didn’t go to business school for the hard skills (i.e. finance, accounting, etc.). You can learn a lot of that by picking up a book. I went to business school to become a better leader and person. Classes like Interpersonal Dynamics (aka "Touchy feely"), High Performance Leadership, and Leadership Coaching and Mentoring are the main reasons I attended business school.

Finally, while at business school, I made an effort to meet and build friendships with brilliant graduate and undergraduate students across all of Stanford. I now know wonderful people that studied CS, Engineering, Earth Sciences, Stats, Medicine, and much more. I feel fortunate to have had the chance to study with all these people.

To follow up to the parent, there is a lot more to B-school then just to network. From common MBA-bashing that takes places on HN it seems that that many people fail to grasp the difference between building a product and building a company. If you want to build a product - MBA may not be necessary, but if you want to build a good company, an MBA will be a great help along the way. With all aspects of running a business covered in one class or another, you at least have an understanding of the issues you'll run into.

An MBA doesn't provide you a road map, it gives you a framework of how to approach business questions and an understanding how simple decisions cascade down to all aspects of a company (hr, accounting, operations).

"but if you want to build a good company, an MBA will be a great help along the way."

An easy way to see if this is statistically valid, or just something that MBAs tell themselves, is to make a list of 'good' companies (by your personal definition of 'good') and see if the folks who built them had MBAs. The results might be surprising (either way).

Nice point. You can build a great ruby site without Rails, but Rails gives you a nice framework to make the process easier. Similarly, you can build a business without an MBA, but an MBA gives you a convenient framework to help with important decisions.

True. Good point. So it comes down to - which type of person are you? I stick by my original point - YC is the new grad school. MBA's learn all the theory of business, and YC throws you right into it. There's no better way to learn.

To each his own. An MBA helps some people - the network is powerful coming out of schools like HBS and SBS. At the same time, a determined entrepreneur can create his own network and wow people with a great product.

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