The Student-Founder’s Dilemma: Why This Startup CEO Is Getting An MBA

Adventurelist founder and CEO Jeff Phaneuf came up with his startup idea when he was a Marine stationed in Twentynine Palms, Calif. He was always looking for adventures on his off time but was frustrated with the resources he found online. Courtesy photo

And how did you then turn Adventurelist from an idea into a startup?

Princeton doesn’t have a business school, but they do have a great entrepreneurial ecosystem. So, while I was there, I worked closely with the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council as well as the Keller Center eLab Incubator. We were able to begin to work on the idea. That helped with some resources and a lot of advice. We had incredible faculty advisors as well as folks from industry who advised us on the entrepreneurial journey. 

I ended up bringing on five Princeton undergrads who had various roles in business development in tech, doing everything from building out the Adveturelist website to helping us cold call guides and customers to get them on the platform. We also were excited to win the first-ever TechStars Innovation Bootcamp pitch competition in January, securing some early non-dilutive funding. We were then accepted to the Keller Center eLab Accelerator program which ran from June through August this year. 

So, in the middle of getting this startup off the ground, when did you start thinking about pursuing an MBA? 

I think it coincided with the beginning of founding a business. I realized quickly that, although I had plenty of leadership experience from the Marines and from some other coursework that I had done, I had no idea how to run a business. Founding a startup was a great crash course in it, but I definitely felt like I was running up a very steep learning curve. 

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I should say I had some incredible help from friends who have been entrepreneurs. For example, my friend Brendan Aronson, who I first met in Iraq and in the fight against ISIS, and the co-founder of Paintru, has been incredibly helpful both in applying to business schools and navigating the process of being a first-time founder. But, there was so much to learn. 

I realized that an MBA would do two things for me. One, it would give me the academic background, the actual understanding of how the business world works in a clear and concise way. And two, especially in a place like Stanford, I would be entrenched in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. That was an incredibly strong motivator. I think it’s really important when building a team to be surrounded by a group of advisers and others who really understand that world. There’s no better place than the Stanford GSB to found a tech startup.

I probably began thinking about pursuing an MBA last summer, and I wrote my applications mostly in November and December. I had incredible help from a lot of Marines who had gone to business school before me. There’s an incredible network of service members at business schools who go way out of their way to help other vets who are trying to apply. They would read my essays and offer advice, and they would give me feedback on the applications. 

Where else did you apply, and where else were you accepted?

I applied to Stanford, Harvard and Wharton. I was very very fortunate to be accepted into all of them. 

So, why Stanford?

A few reasons. For me, Stanford is so wonderfully located in the heart of tech innovation, and that was a huge driver. Those other schools are incredible places as well, and they all have their strengths, but specifically for what I’m trying to do, which is to found a tech startup in the outdoor industry, you can’t position yourself better than Stanford. I think, too, that Stanford is a little bit smaller, it’s a little bit more focused on entrepreneurship and innovation, so it just felt like a really good fit. You can’t beat the weather here either.

How is the veteran support network at Stanford?

The Veterans Club here is great. It’s a small but very vibrant group, and they were really wonderful as I was applying. Many of them gave me tons of their time, and that was really helpful.

Now that I’m here, we’ve already started to get together as a group. We did a 9/11 memorial run on September 11 to remember the last 20 years of war. Many of us who have served in the wars came from that era. So it’s a strong, strong community here.