The CEO Skills Not Taught To MBAs

How Business School Can Help Entrepreneurs

 

Entrepreneurs and MBAs: Talk about the Hatfields and McCoys for the digital age! To entrepreneurs, MBAs are sterile, soulless sycophants, petrified of risk and living quarter-to-quarter. And entrepreneurs? Well, MBAs view them as the Yosemite Sams of business, shoot first and worry about a business plan later. Sure, both are caricatures, but they reflect an underlying tension, the same opposites- attract dynamic that’s fueled every buddy copy movie since the 1980s.

Based on recent columns in The Huffington Post and Linkedin, both sides may have reached a détente (on the entrepreneur’s side, at least). It was bound to happen, with so many MBAs flooding into entrepreneurship. In both articles, the writers – both of whom are b-school graduates – are able to straddle the line between an MBA’s precision and a entrepreneur’s passion.

In Linkedin’s “How Business School Helped Me Become an Entrepreneur,” 2012 Wharton alum David Klein doesn’t buy the church-state division between MBAs and entrepreneurs. When people ask him whether they need to enroll in business school to become an entrepreneur, he encourages them to ask a different question: “What do I have to do to maximize my chances of being a successful entrepreneur?”

For Klein, who co-founded CommonBond, a firm designed to supply more affordable loans to students, “business school is an insanely fertile environment.” From being exposed to gifted professors, peers, and alumni, students gain ideas, know-how, energy, and connections needed to launch a successful start-up. In particular, Klein cites these experiences at Wharton as being key to his development as an entrepreneur:

• “Alumni Who Are Successful and Generous: Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Warby Parker, Neil Blumenthal, came back to Wharton in August of 2011 to speak to a hungry, wide-eyed group of students during pre-term. His story strengthened and further inspired my desire to build a company with a strong social mission. He was gracious enough to accept an invitation to coffee, and we began an ongoing dialogue. A year later, he graciously opened up his headquarters in New York for my company’s first offsite. I could think of no better a setting to inspire my team.”

• “Clubs That Connect Like-minded Entrepreneurs. Some of the smartest and grittiest people on campus were active members of Founders’ Club. I first learned about the club at Wharton’s Welcome Weekend in April 2011 from Davis Smith, Co-Founder/CEO of Baby.com.br, one of the most respected start-ups in Brazil. Hearing his entrepreneurial story and the power of plugging into an entrepreneurial community inspired me to join the club he founded. It was in the Founders’ Club’s weekly workshop-style get-togethers that I solidified my entrepreneurial knowledge base and mental frame in evaluating good businesses from bad. On the personal side, I consider myself incredibly fortunate to call many of my fellow Founders’ Club entrepreneurs both good friends and continual inspirations.” 

• “Practical Resources to Get You the Extra Mile. I couldn’t get into a David Wessels course on venture capitalism while in school, but I was part of Wharton Social Venture Fund (WSVF) – an organization that not only taught me how to think like a venture investor, but gave me access to Wessels’ ingenious teaching (ingenious in his ability to turn complex topics into easily understandable pieces). It was also through WSVF that I learned about and was encouraged to attend a weekend-long training session on LBO modeling. Between Wessels’ involvement in WSVF and the LBO training, I probably learned more about advanced structured finance than I did in any of my courses.”

Crystal Ung, a 2014 NYU Stern MBA who co-founded clothing search company Seyrue, approached the intersection between b-school and entrepreneurship more broadly. In her post, “Aspiring Female Entrepreneur: 7 Lessons I (Re)Learned From Business School,” Ung shares hard-won wisdom from her time as an entrepreneur, intern and student. Here are her thoughts on how her lessons from the classroom and the pavement shaped her approach to business:

• “Be Relentless: I (re)learned this during my summer internship at Amazon. There was no better training ground than that created by the brilliant and terrifying (in a good way), Jeff Bezos. This experience taught me there is no dream too big and that persistence and vision can overcome overwhelming doubts. Whatever you do, do it with conviction and be relentless.”
• “Expect That People Will Surprise and Disappoint You: As an aspiring entrepreneur, you lean on your support system for help and guidance and attempt to rally strangers into advocates. This experience will pleasantly surprise and deeply disappoint you. Sometimes, those you expected to be your biggest cheerleaders will fall silent, and those you considered acquaintances will become the biggest champions of your ideas.”

• “Be Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable: Comfort gives you a false sense of security. The reality is, things are always changing and the only way to evolve is to live beyond your comfort zone. Being courageous is not about the absence of fear but rather doing things in spite of fear.”

To read the full articles, click on the links below.

Don’t Miss: The Best MOOC for Entrepreneurs

Source: Huffington Post, Linkedin