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Ask HN: Startups founded by MBAs?

6 pointsyangtheman7 comments

I am preparing a presentation about Silicon Valley and its startup culture for software developers in Korea. From my research (and reading from Founders at Work), most successful startups in Silicon Valley are founded by engineers. I am curious, though, if there have ever been any successful startups founded by MBAs? If you know one (or many), please post!

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The more interesting question is not if any successful startups have been founded by MBAs but what their success ratio was vs startups funded by other groups of people.

I know at least one very well funded one that was sunk by an MBA CEO, but that's just one datapoint, I'm sure there must be plenty to the contrary.

The MBA is the poster child for bad management decisions but I find it hard to believe it is as bad as the stereotype would have you think, so it won't surprise me at all if the number of successful startups started by MBAs numbers in the hundreds, thousands or even much more.

Lots. Of the "old school" ones Electronic Arts, Sun Microsystems, Extreme Networks, Macromedia, 3Com, Genentech, Fast Company, Handspring.

From the web generation Akami, Geocities, Salesforce.com, Keyhole, E-Trade, MySpace, aSmallWorld, Doostang.

I think the core of the question is can you start a technical company if you have a MBA. Yes you can, but you have to have a strong technical founder. Sun Microsystems had Andy Bechtolsheim and Bill Joy. EA had David Maynard. Genetech had Herbert W. Boyer. Macromedia had Marc Canter. Akamai started from technical founders ... etc. etc. Having a MBA doesn't preclude from being a founder (i.e. Intuit), but you better start finding a good technical co-founder.

I was actually more interested in high-tech startups. And, yeah, I think the ratio of successful startups founded by MBAs and those by engineers would be quite interesting. My guess is that it'd heavily lean towards engineers. "Success" could also be somewhat subjective.

I think only Scott held MBA degree when SUN was founded. I am not sure if I'd call Extreme Networks a success.... 3Com had its high, but now it's limping....

You may want to consider where people gained their MBAs. Some second wave MBA programs were a blatant attempt to cash in on the successes of the first wave, but have much lower standards of admission, teaching and content. Any analysis and statistics would be most interesting to read.

ebay

Pierre Omidyar doesn't hold an MBA, are you thinking of Meg Whitman who didn't join until quite a few years later ?

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