i loved my part-time MBA program. with a primarily technical background, i had two key disadvantages that the program was meant to address:
1) weak business network
2) no prior business training
it accomplished these things well. could i have done it alone? possibly, but the program provides focus & structure, which are hard to come by otherwise. it also gave me closure on one chapter of my life so i could move on to the next. no single class is earth shattering, but taken together give me much more confidence when, for example, i walk into a negotiation with a VC, since i now know how to calculate the NPV of the deal terms.
my advice is to take classes around two poles: (1) managing people (teams, negotiations, incentives, etc.) and (2) quantitative measurement (stats, marketing analytics, entrepreneurial finance, etc.). strategy, branding and domain-specific (e.g., media management) classes in particular didn't seem to impart much actionable knowledge.
Comments
i loved my part-time MBA program. with a primarily technical background, i had two key disadvantages that the program was meant to address:
1) weak business network 2) no prior business training
it accomplished these things well. could i have done it alone? possibly, but the program provides focus & structure, which are hard to come by otherwise. it also gave me closure on one chapter of my life so i could move on to the next. no single class is earth shattering, but taken together give me much more confidence when, for example, i walk into a negotiation with a VC, since i now know how to calculate the NPV of the deal terms.
my advice is to take classes around two poles: (1) managing people (teams, negotiations, incentives, etc.) and (2) quantitative measurement (stats, marketing analytics, entrepreneurial finance, etc.). strategy, branding and domain-specific (e.g., media management) classes in particular didn't seem to impart much actionable knowledge.
and network like crazy (but with purpose).