Comment by hakaaak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hakaaak | Hacker News Reader

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I have to agree with this post to some extent. Years ago we had an MBA from a local university apply and it actually made a negative impact on the interview when we saw that on the resume- and this was for a business analyst position.

But, I think if you are geniunely interested in business, there is nothing wrong with getting an MBA anywhere. Just couple it with starting your own business. You don't even have to list it on your resume if you think it will hurt. Just be aware- it is NOT cheap, and you are lucky if your company will fully fund it; the last place I worked would fund only the cheapest in-state MBA program and they wouldn't pay for books or associated fees, so it would have been thousands of dollars a year out of pocket I couldn't justify.

From my and few other people's I trust (totally unscientific) observations: not only MBA does not help you with starting your own business, it actually lowers your chances.

MBAs come out of schools with a set of skills geared towards big businesses. That is what MBA was created for. But the real killer: after so many courses and case studies, for any idea or execution plan you know exactly why it is not going to work. Because this "was tried before and did not work", or "it works sometimes, but we do not have enough capital".

Why entrepreneurs that make it big are usually young? It is not just pure energy and stamina. It is also because they do not "know" that things will not work. And they don't, 95% of the time. But 5% of the cases when they do, against all odds, bring real innovation and wealth creation.

MBA adds too much years of this kind of knowledge on your shoulders.

One or two succeed and tens of thousands fail. With MBA's, one or two succeed but only hundreds fail. I call that improvement. It's not guaranteed success but you've improved your situation. And failure does actually have real consequences.

This "I'm too dumb to know better, therefore I am better" idea is based on the few lucky people but ignores the huge amount of failures. Consider there may be ten thousand failures each year that you never even heard about.

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