MBA Startups: Turning Down J&J To Do Her Own Thing

One thing that I really love about the entrepreneurial support at the University of Texas is the faculty. Every professor of entrepreneurship at McCombs has either built their own company (or several), been involved in venture capital/private equity or has consulted companies to help them get off the ground.

Jim Nolen, who taught me small business finance, was voted as one of the best business professors in the country. Rob Adams, who leads the Texas Venture Lab (TVL), runs the business plan competition that my team was a part of. He also taught our New Venture Creation Class.

We took Managing Complexity with professor Ruben McDaniels. That class was critical because it taught us that we could not predict the future. It taught us that we needed to be comfortable with uncertainty.

Even after we graduated, we still found ourselves meeting with and being mentored by the professors at UT. For instance, we reached out to marketing professor Jim Nolan to talk about pricing. We continue to keep our UT relationships close to this day.

There are two pieces of advice that I would leave for aspiring MBA entrepreneurs. The first is to not be shy in sharing your idea. Most people think that if you talk about your idea that someone will steal it. Ultimately, few ideas are truly original. The real difference is in execution. Talking about your idea will attract the people, feedback and resources that you will need to be successful; which brings me to my second point. It is very important to put together a strong team. Entrepreneurship is hard and it helps to have a team that is aligned with each other and with a common goal.

Really get to know your classmates while in business school. Seek out people who are just as excited as you are, but whose skills and aptitudes compliment yours. You’ll never have the opportunity to be surrounded by the kind of people you will be in business school with again—at least not in such a concentrated group. Take full advantage of what such an environment has to offer. I did, and it has made all the difference.

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