Hi djsamson,
I'll pass along the same advice verbatim that I received over 20 years ago, from the dean of my school's MBA program ( I was in his undergrad entrepreneurship class ), when I asked about MBA as path to entrepreneurship.
His advice was to instead spend time working for the smallest possible companies after college for as long as I could stand it, and get a breadth of exposure about running and growing a business. His take was that an MBA was training ground for large corporate positions where they wanted highly qualified candidates. And that even w/o getting an MBA, working for large companies after ungrad would put you on a track for specialization where you wouldn't be in a position to see the big picture, or able to make big decisions/mistakes for a long time.
I took his advice, got a lot of great experience at a few very small companies where the exposure and mentorship was invaluable (and the breadth of forgetful and thankless tasks was endless). And that experience came at a severe earnings discount for 5-10 years compared to my contemporaries who went straight to bigCo and big paychecks. But once I learned enough to take leadership roles at several subsequent companies, the tables changed dramatically on the earnings.
My advice beyond that to you as a non-technical entrepreneur just starting is perhaps consider not working for a pure startup where it will be mostly engineers fighting to find product/market fit, but instead look at small/growing firms that need sales/bus dev/marketing help, and start there, since you'll have an opportunity to be exposed to the full picture of a going concern. Learn everything you can to excel at your craft, spend extra time learning as much tech as you can, then apply all that to a raw startup later potentially with folks you meet along the way.
Comments
Hi djsamson, I'll pass along the same advice verbatim that I received over 20 years ago, from the dean of my school's MBA program ( I was in his undergrad entrepreneurship class ), when I asked about MBA as path to entrepreneurship.
His advice was to instead spend time working for the smallest possible companies after college for as long as I could stand it, and get a breadth of exposure about running and growing a business. His take was that an MBA was training ground for large corporate positions where they wanted highly qualified candidates. And that even w/o getting an MBA, working for large companies after ungrad would put you on a track for specialization where you wouldn't be in a position to see the big picture, or able to make big decisions/mistakes for a long time.
I took his advice, got a lot of great experience at a few very small companies where the exposure and mentorship was invaluable (and the breadth of forgetful and thankless tasks was endless). And that experience came at a severe earnings discount for 5-10 years compared to my contemporaries who went straight to bigCo and big paychecks. But once I learned enough to take leadership roles at several subsequent companies, the tables changed dramatically on the earnings.
My advice beyond that to you as a non-technical entrepreneur just starting is perhaps consider not working for a pure startup where it will be mostly engineers fighting to find product/market fit, but instead look at small/growing firms that need sales/bus dev/marketing help, and start there, since you'll have an opportunity to be exposed to the full picture of a going concern. Learn everything you can to excel at your craft, spend extra time learning as much tech as you can, then apply all that to a raw startup later potentially with folks you meet along the way.
Best of luck!