Founders on the Value of MBAs and Entrepreneur Courses
Does it help you to create a company? Elon Musk says no, but what does the rest of the world think?
Elon Musk’s critical opinion of MBA graduates is well known. He has, on many occasions, talked about this publicly
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“MBA graduates may be good at PowerPoint, but they don’t know how things work.”
“There might be too many MBAs running companies.”
“As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies.”
Sure, he’s probably the most famous and celebrated startup founder right now, but that’s just an opinion of one — albeit a very rich and successful one.
Mustering Better Answers
Since I have a lot of MBA graduates and startup founders among my LinkedIn network, I decided to do my own survey to gather a more representative opinion of the value of MBAs to an entrepreneur.
Here’s what I found out.
As you can see, only slightly more than a quarter of respondents felt that an MBA is helpful to being an entrepreneur. An exact quarter felt that it is more applicable to climbing the corporate ladder. 29% outright decided an MBA is of no use to entrepreneurship, and 20% didn’t think it would matter either way.
So I guess one could say Musk could be on to something here.
So what helps then?
But wouldn’t one need some basic business skills — management, accounting, marketing etc. — to be a good steward of a company?
Yes indeed. But I think one of the counterpoints here could be that most of these things can be learned online these days — often for free — or from some other community courses that cost a fraction of an MBA!
MBAs are expensive affairs, and it usually takes a year or two to complete, depending on whether you are pursuing a full-time or part-time course.
Friends who have done MBAs readily admit that what they are really after is the branding associated with the qualification and the university it comes from, as well as the networking among fellow students and the alumni.
So what does help entrepreneurs then?
I did a separate survey to find out, and here are the answers.
Having mentors — that’s what most founders voted for. Nearly half at 45%.
Interestingly, entrepreneurship courses ranked lowest among the choices, with just 12%. Even the next lowest, ‘corporate experience’, was much further ahead at 20%. Nearly a quarter also felt that one should just jump into the deep end and learn to swim.
In any case, the results do validate a personal theory I’ve written about — that entrepreneurship can’t be taught in schools.
Talk is cheap
But before you go rushing out to find as many mentors as you can, think about this for a moment.
No matter how successful someone is, his opinion is of necessity tainted by his own journey and experiences. Even someone like Musk is no exception; it’s just human nature.
Taking advice from anybody, despite their good intentions, can sometimes create mind traps that confuse or create uncertainty on what to do for the entrepreneur, because your circumstances and environment may be very different from your mentor’s. I’ve explained this and cited examples in my article "The Mind Traps That Entrepreneurs Must Avoid".
But if there’s one thing a mentor can bring you more than just theory and talk, it’s helping you to access the right networks and partnerships that can bring you talent, revenue and competitive advantages.
So to sum it up: entrepreneurship is not so much learning and talking, but more doing and experiencing.