Want An MBA? Questions To Ask

There’s a reason MBA students are jumping for joy at Stanford Graduate School of Business these days: the prestige Silicon Valley school now has new world-class facilities–a nine building modern campus for B-school students.

The Most Successful Stanford B-School Graduates Of All Time

You’ve probably heard all the stereotypes about Stanford. They’re laid back and California cool; they’re not like those Ivys who supposedly foam at the mouth as they step over their classmates. Stanford students are do-gooder free spirits, an eclectic bunch who bend the world to what they believe it should be. In other words, they are the James Dean of business schools, misunderstood iconoclasts with warm hearts and mad Excel skills.

And maybe there’s some truth there. But there’s no denying one fact: Stanford grads have made more than the proverbial dent in the business universe. They’ve drilled a hole right through it!

Not surprisingly, Stanford is consistently ranked among the top schools for entrepreneurship, with alumni (and dropouts) founding and co-founding game-changers like Google, Nike, Cisco, Netflix. Yahoo, and Linkedin. So who are the top graduates of Stanford Business School?

This week, Business Insider compiled its list, featuring alumni from both the MBA program. Wondering which big names passed through Palo Alto on their ways to wealth and renown? Check out this list:

Joe Coulombe (’54): Founder of Trader Joe’s Grocery Store

Charles Schwab (’61): Chairman and CEO of Charles Schwab Corporate

Phil Knight (’62): Founder of Nike

Nolan Bushnell (’70): Founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese

John Browne (’72): Former CEO of British Petroleum

Jeffrey Bewkes (’77): President and COO of Time Warner

Kendall Powell (’79): CEO of General Mills

Vinod Khosla (’80): CEO of Sun Microsystems

Miles D. White (’80): CEO of Abbott Laboratories

Richard Fairbank (’81): Chairman and CEO of Capital One

Seth Godin (’84): Best-selling author

Steven Luczo (’84): CEO of Seagate Technology

Penny Pritzker (’84): U.S. Secretary of Commerce

John Donahoe (’86): CEO of eBay

Carlos Brito (’89): CEO of Anheuser Busch InBev

Mary Barra (’90): CEO of General Motors

Jacqueline Novogratz (’91): Founder of Acumen Fund

Kevin Tsujihara (’92): CEO off Warner Brothers

David Sze (’93): Managing Partner at Greylock Partners

Victor Koo (’94): Co-Founder of Youku

Jeffrey Skoll (’95): First President (and employee) of eBay

Mariam Naficy (’98): Founder of Minted and Eve.com

Sam Yagan (’05): CEO of Match.com

Pete Flint (’05) and Sam Inkinen (’05): Co-founders of Trulia

That’s quite a list! And you can bet everyone is looking to buddy up to Brito and Sze at reunions. And wouldn’t you love to have been in those class discussions from the class of ’84! And get this, here are some of the Stanford GSB grads who were left off Business Insider’s list:

Robert Fisher: Chairman of Gap, Inc. (Graduation date unavailable)

Richard Kovacevich (’43): Former Chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo

Tom Peters (’72): Best-selling business author

Micheline Chau (’76): Former President and COO of Lucas Film

Jim Collins (’83): Best-selling business author

Yair Landu (’89): Former President of Sony Pictures

Greg Waldorf (’94): Founding investor and former CEO of eHarmony

Ali Rowghani (’02): Former COO of Twitter

One more point: This list only includes graduates. Stanford GSB dropouts have included John F. Kennedy, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, and Reliance Industry’s Mukesh Ambani.

Source: Business Insider

DON’T MISS: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A STANFORD FIRST YEAR