MBA or PhD – Picking the right degree as a University Entrepreneur

http://techentrepreneurship.com/2011/08/01/mba-or-phd-picking-the-right-degree-as-a-university-entrepreneur/

by naoufelt • 15 years ago

40 39 15 years ago

tedkalaw• 15 years ago

Do you think there's any sort of relevance for a Masters, not a PhD? The timescale is more similar to an MBA, and the 6-7 years of a PhD is quite a large commitment.

msellout• 15 years ago

Depends on what you're trying to do. If the technical skills you acquire with the degree are useful for the business, then of course yes. If not, then of course not.

You should also be aware that not all masters degree classes will be relevant. You could acquire the relevant skills through some non-degree-seeking classes.

noelwelsh• 15 years ago

Definitely. A Bachelors gives you the foundational knowledge in a field. A Masters should bring you up to the level of the current research. A PhD requires you to create new research.

A Masters degree is a great way to get the background to understand current research without the time investment of a PhD.

(Or do a PhD in the UK - 3 to 4 years is normal)

HelgeSeetzen2• 15 years ago

There is value in a Masters because it introduces a new mode of research beyond the bachelor (self-directed investigation vs. learning by rote).

The downside of the Masters is that it is a degree without role. It doesn't qualify you for anything more than the bachelor does (e.g. grants, faculty positions, entry to certain "degree conscious" societies, etc.). Those things don't matter in a lot of cases but the incremental time cost is so small that it would seem worth it to do a PhD instead.

Your PhD really shouldn't take 6-7 years. Realistically, the Masters should cover all your course requirements so the incremental time should be 1-2 years. If that's not the case then you have a time management problem which is a major problem for any contemplated entrepreneurial activities as well.

neilc• 15 years ago

Your PhD really shouldn't take 6-7 years. Realistically, the Masters should cover all your course requirements so the incremental time should be 1-2 years.

At least for a CS PhD in the US, this is not the case: even if you enter with a Master's, finishing in 4 years is usually typical. Of course, it depends on the school, area of study, adviser, and the student.

jerrya2• 15 years ago

The MBA is a bullshit degree for an entrepreneur.

A more interesting choice is between Ph.D or J.D.

refurb• 15 years ago

How do you define "bullshit"?

An MBA will teach you quite a lot than can be relevant as an entrepreneur. It also helps you build a large network of people that can help you.

Can you do the same thing without an MBA? Sure. I wouldn't argue it's the most efficient way to gain the skills needed to be an entrepreneur (starting a company will do that), but I wouldn't regard it as "bullshit".

jerrya2• 15 years ago

I have an MBA, from Berkeley, specializing in entrepreneurship.

The marketing case study stuff is interesting and certainly definitely in no way is worth 2 years of your time.

The basic accounting 101 and finance is valuable if you've never had that before.

The basic econ (micro and macro) is valuable if you've never had that before.

The marketing stuff is mostly way overdone unless you want to go specifically into marketing, and don't get me wrong, marketing is incredibly important for the startup to understand their customer, define their products, distribute them to the right channels, and get them to the customer. But for your time, I think you're better off getting that in other ways than a full time degree program.

If you want to be the technical cofounder get a Ph.D or MS. If you want to be the non-technical cofounder get the JD.

Both should take the basic accounting and finance and marketing. That's about a semester's worth of classes but hardly a 2 year degree.

And while I greatly enjoyed and valued Berkeley's Entrepreneurship Program, a lot of it is taught here, on the web, at Kahn Academy, and the rest is networking.

(Go Bears)

GameBoyAdvance3• 15 years ago

I have both (a PhD and an MBA) and I have also started a company before so I can speak to that part a little as well. I am sure a JD will also be useful but I question its utility compared to others.

Also, I am surprised that everyone is focusing on what you learn in such programs but no one seems to care that both an MBA and a PhD are also gateways to meet like-minded folks who are potential co-founders (or, in the case of an MBA, potential co-founders or future investors).

The company I co-founded was with PhD buddies and, even though I didn't do it myself with the MBA, I have seen many folks from my class working on startups during and after the MBA. Granted, both of these degrees were from Bay Area schools so that might have been a factor but still...

stfu• 15 years ago

Absolutely! This is the most overlooked aspect when it comes to arguing about things like that. Especially if you are not some naturally outgoing type these programs provide access to similar minded people who are ambitioned and curious about the problems of today. If you are a PhD student and find a problem chances are good that someone with a far more advanced knowledge on that subject and willing to share this is just a few offices away.

alain94040• 15 years ago

Talk about a flawed way to ask the question.

Don't collect any more degrees. Instead, start something. In my book, a real entrepreneur will invest the MBA tuition into their own venture.

The corrolary is to only start something you are passionate about.

seanos3• 15 years ago

A technical PhD will give you exceptional domain knowledge. With that you might be able to sidestep 99% of the start-up crowd who have programming skills alone and are stuck fighting over the 1% of business opportunities that require no domain knowledge. Take a look at the Steve Blank article that the author links to and read about the businesses mentioned. Those businesses could not have been created by someone starting without domain knowledge no matter how passionate they were…and I would call their founders real entrepreneurs (despite what your book says).

randomdata• 15 years ago

Businesses exist solely to solve the problems of others. Domain knowledge required to solve and implement a solution to one of those problems is irrelevant – it can be acquired at any point in time, including after the problem has been identified.

That leaves us with the question: Does the domain knowledge accumulated in a PhD program lead one to later find problems that they would have never otherwise been determined to solve?

My hunch says it depends. Some people will find a solution and then go looking for a problem. Others will find a problem, and then go looking for solution. For the former group, a PhD will be quite valuable, but not so much for the latter group – the chances of them even having studied the right domain in advance is slim.

brandonb• 15 years ago

An MBA or a PhD aren't good paths to becoming an entrepreneur. A PhD takes 5-7 years to complete, the purpose of which is to give you the skills necessary to be a university professor or researcher. If you don't want to be a professor, then the opportunity cost of those years is huge! What else could you be learning in that time?

If you know you want to start a startup, the best thing to do is to START - now. If you're not ready to start your own company, then join a small startup. You'll learn more about entrepreneurship in the first month than you will in any degree program.

pgbovine3• 15 years ago

If you know you want to start a startup, the best thing to do is to START - now.

I think people in the software world are inherently biased since it's possible to start dazzlingly-profitable companies at age 19 ... in many other fields (e.g., medicine, chemistry, biology, physical engineering fields), it takes years of research experience to be able to make a breakthrough that can lead to a profitable disruptive technology. In those worlds, you rarely see 19-year-old entrepreneurs who have just started college.

timr• 15 years ago

"In those worlds, you rarely see 19-year-old entrepreneurs who have just started college."

But let's not be confused: you rarely see 19-year-olds starting dazzlingly profitable companies in software, either. You just hear (a lot) more about the few that do.

I don't think a PhD is the greatest idea if your only goal is to be an entrepreneur. But it's a lot better than trying to make a run at the goalposts without any contacts or industry experience. If nothing else, it gives you time to ripen into a mature adult, and learn how to deal with failure.

dirtyaura2• 15 years ago

Just starting a company and figuring things out on the go doesn't work in many fields. It can work in software, and sales and marketing oriented businesses.

I'm software developer by degree and profession, but recently I started to study bioinformatics and biology (on my own). My dream would be to do something meaningful in these areas, preferably in the form of running a company, but there's absolutely no way that I could succeed in it, if I start one now.

There are lots of things in the world that are either just plain hard or require time to learn.

sycren2• 15 years ago

Why don't you think you could succeed now? There are tons of bioinformatics problems that could be solved by software developers who have a bigger background in computer science.

For example microarray experiments using image analysis algorithms and openCL; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_microarray

pgbovine3• 15 years ago

Although a Ph.D. is by no means a requirement for starting a profitable company, it can allow you to develop an expertise and specialization that, if the conditions are right, can give you a comparative advantage. You don't need a Ph.D. to start the next Groupon or Zynga, but you might need to have some Ph.D.-level research experience to start the next VMware, Determina, or Coverity.

acgourley• 15 years ago

I strongly disagree. You just might need to be the kind of person that finds a Ph.D appealing to start those companies. I think any datapoints you're thinking of are merely correlation.

Now, Ph.D level research is an important catalyst for certain "hard tech" companies. But I don't think the founders need to have done the research, just be aware of it. An undergraduate degree is sufficient formal training to figure out and harness something specific revealed by others in advanced research.

pgbovine3• 15 years ago

But I don't think the founders need to have done the research, just be aware of it. An undergraduate degree is sufficient formal training to figure out and harness something specific revealed by others in advanced research.

Hmmm, I doubt that taking an OS project course or reading some virtualization research papers gives anyone the amount of insight into the nitty-gritty details needed to make a production-quality VM product. There is simply no substitute for thousands of hours of hard work pushing the boundaries on a field in order to get that required expertise.

Yes, perhaps today someone could improve upon VMware's products and form a competitor, but when VMware was first forming, I doubt that anyone else had the required expertise besides the few research groups who were actively working on virtualization for PC-class machines.

One alternative option is to be a founder who raises money and then hires someone who has actually done that research.

(Of course, I'm only talking about startups founded on research technologies ... you don't need a Ph.D. to found the majority of software startups)

_dps• 15 years ago

This sounds suspiciously close to "dot.com CEOs don't need to know about software, they just need to hire programmers." It's a tricky idea because, in one very technical sense, it's actually true. The larger and more important truth it conceals is that a software company managed by someone who understands software is a completely different beast from a software company managed by an accountant. One of many obvious differences is that a CEO who isn't a programmer will have a very hard time evaluating the relative merits of potential hires (either front-line hires in a small organization, or technical leaders in a larger one).

New technologies that are actually important as competitive advantages, and not yet widely distributed, aren't like little packets of soup mix one can throw into a meal. In practice you can't say "Oh, I read about nonlinear discombobulation transducers in Wired and now I'm going to tell my engineers to use them". By the time the knowledge is nugget-ized enough to be in a Wired article it's already way behind current research.

The job of a CEO of a "hard tech" company is primarily to make choices about investing in new technologies and applying them in products. Does it really seem reasonable that someone who is merely "aware of" Professor X developing idea Y can make optimal decisions about those investments and applications? Is it plausible that Intel would be what it is today without Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce's knowledge of semiconductor physics?

phzbOx• 15 years ago

I had the choice to: Do a MBA or a PhD. I chose to do a startup. Best decision ever.

whathappenedto• 15 years ago

Can someone comment about IP issues around doing a startup during their phd? A few friends of mine are pursuing this route and are worried their university will say they own the IP. My understanding is that universities own all the research you do so any application of your research in your startup will infect the whole company's equity.

seanos3• 15 years ago

Yes, in most cases the university will own any IP. Usually they will want a percentage of any spinout company resulting from PhD research. The best thing to do would be for them to speak to the university enterprise office (or equivalent).

GameBoyAdvance3• 15 years ago

IANAL abut AFAIK it depends on the school. In general, yeah, the school owns the research. However, it might also possible to get an exclusive or non-exclusive license from your school, again, depending on the school. It will feel funny for a while to pay for your own research but such is life. I must also note that, the school might be willing to grant a non-exclusive license for a relatively small fee (a few grands; no equity) but an exclusive license will most likely set you back a lot more (in cash or in equity).

I co-founded a company based on the research of a classmate years ago and that is exactly what we did. We paid Stanford for a non-exclusive license. I believe Google has done the same for PageRank but for an exclusive license.

HelgeSeetzen2• 15 years ago

Depends on the IP policy of your university but generally the IP is owned by them (some universities outside of the US have an "inventor owned" policy). The good news is that you can leverage the university for your start-up in turn.(http://techentrepreneurship.com/2010/11/16/leveraging-the-te...).

tryitnow• 15 years ago

It depends entirely on the type of business you plan to create. Let's put potential businesses in three categories:

1) technical innovation, e.g. Google. If you want to go this route then a PhD program might be your best bet. 2) business model innovation, this is the most common type of entrepreneurship (outside of HN circles), think the Inc 500 list of fastest growing companies. You probably don't need an MBA for this and definitely don't need a PhD. 3) HN type of businesses, not necessarily technically genius, but at least one technical founder is needed. e.g. Facebook. Neither MBA or PhD, just do it now.

Where can an MBA be useful? If you plan to grow through business development, i.e. deals, JV's, alliances. An MBA connects you to financiers more quickly than a PhD would and it definitely gets you talking their language. For example, running a search fund out of business school is definitely doable.

An MBA is also very useful if you want to get a solid reliable day job in corporate America and eventually run or support corporate R&D or incubators. Most F100 companies spend more on R&D than the large multi-year VC funds do over a decade. From such a perch you can have a big impact if you've got the patience for corporate politics. This is the route I've taken and I can get access to top management faster than engineers who have been their for years and definitely faster than two guys and a dog. Of course, this is definitely trying in terms of patience.

As for MBA support for entrepreneurship. It entirely depends on the program. That's just part of the due diligence you've got to do before applying to business school. Most top 10 business schools will get you in front of VCs faster than just about any other way and your competition will be nothing.

As an MBA I would recommend most people who are reading HN to not get an MBA. It's not a bad degree, like anything it's what you make of it. But I can tell you that if you have the intellectual curiosity and the "get it done now" and "show me" attitude prevalent on HN, you're going to get frustrated very quickly with your MBA classmates and your corporate co-workers. If you've got the patience, great, but be forewarned, it's a tough road.

lightcatcher• 15 years ago

What are some example companies that you would include in your second group (business model innovation)? Would something like Groupon fall into this group?

Maven911• 15 years ago

Hi, I am interested in the career and education path you took to get where you are now, would you mind to provide some details

brc2• 15 years ago

I vote neither.

I studied an MBA and thankfully what I got from that is that being an entrepreneur is the best choice if you have the opportunity to attempt it.

I went into the course hoping to climb the greasy pole of corporate success and came out wanting no further part of it.

I would say studying a Phd is unlikely to lead to commercial success unless you're of a very entrepreneurial bent going into it, and have a strong desire to create commercially useful (and exploitable) research as your focus.

The simple fact is a good entrepreneur can easily find useful research results to commercialise if that is what they want to do.

That said, anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur could do worse than devote some time to studying aspects of marketing, accounting and finance that an MBA course provides. Recently I spoke to a guy who had a successful business but had to throw it in and get a job because he amassed a tax liability beyond his ability to handle, simply because he didn't understand how taxes worked.

j45• 15 years ago

It's not what your degree makes of you, but what you make of your degree.

If you are expecting your degree to set you up to succeed, it won't.

Like anything you spend time on it will give you time to hone your craft.

Having tech skills is self-learnable if you already know how. Learning Business skills might be worth focussing on.

You don't ever stop learning. When you do, you are dead in the water. Working on a mindset like this every day has been far more valuable for me.

Indepenture• 15 years ago

JDMBA.

MBA or PhD – Picking the right degree as a University Entrepreneur

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