Totally agree. Going through the motions of selling something will teach you so much more. A few years back, I wrote a similar blog post, except I was recommending that MBA students drop out and launch an app on the App Store instead.
Who do these type of anti-MBA sentiments apply to? Do a lot of people enroll in MBA programs to "learn business" so they can start a startup, or do they enter MBA programs to learn management so they can get a job in corporate America? I've always assumed its much more the latter.
I could be wrong, but I don't think McKinsey is going to be terribly impressed with a sole story of "learning lots" from launching an App Store app.
I think its good advice for people entering MBA programs for the wrong reasons, but I'm just not sure how large that segment is vs. traditional MBA students.
Some people enroll in MBAs to become middle-managers in Fortune 500 companies. Luckiky, those people tend to not hang out on Hacker News, so that advice will only reach people who are thinking of the MBA as a way to entrepreneurial success, which it isn't.
>"I was recommending that MBA students drop out and launch an app on the App Store instead."
Wow, no offense, but that's terrible advice. Part of what's wrong with the tech culture is that everyone believes their "app" is a billion dollar enterprise waiting to happen.
Go look around at the crap on the App Store. Do you really believe that launching an App teaches you anything remotely close to what's covered in a MBA program? I mean, you're supposed to learn the stuff (marketing, economics) then apply that knowledge to things like building an app.
Doing will always (or lets say, "on the majority") be more effective then studying, or reading, etc. I ran a painting franchise during school (such as College Works Painting, Student Works and the like), and basically learned hard sales (walking doors, then making calls for 3-4 hours a night, sometimes the same leads all week for those 3-4 hours) for ~6-7 months. Sold painting projects from $300 - $12,000 (avg $6,500), hired painters, fired, lost painters, had massive headaches, worked 90 hours a week while first starting out "production" of getting the projects completed. Advanced the next year to "build" the team, ran ~12 college students doing the same thing I did the year before (trained them up from zero).
Most business classes were funny after that (on seeing the lack of concrete applicability), but not completely worthless.
EG: Operations made "sense" when examining project management of three painting crews, hours, time to completion, planning materials of the next jobs. I was just doing simplistic planning schedules on "operations" theory.
I learned a lot from failing (having my best painting crew quit because I sucked at management) and succeeding (having another awesome painting crew groomed to take over all client relations, to where I worked 10 hours a week "managing" (as I learned from my failure of management) and just closing deals while production was completed).
Article would do better with some metrics of numbers, whether they tried (or would try) to scale it. That was the hold back in the "internship" (basically franchises) of the painting gig. Average interns did ~$30,000 in production revenue and had 90% turnover. Top performers did $80-$100,000+ (I was one, and 90% of my team were the next year) and it was just about "scale" and delegation.
In my late teens and early 20's I had a lot of book & observation based business information contained in my brain. The most jarring thing about running a real business early on was all the ... bullshit. Most of which is unavoidable. The myriad of issues and red tape, that have nothing to directly do with creating or selling or product or marketing or managing.
The best thing to come out of those early experiences in my opinion, is the automation you properly build up that makes it possible to fly a lot faster through it all with each iteration. That part of experience is priceless. I waste a lot less time now, and know a lot better what to focus on.
I don't think any business school can teach you the kind of fast reflex adaption you acquire with experience. No two scenarios are ever the same, but with enough experience you'll find a lot of cross over similarities, things you learned over there that apply well over here. It becomes personal data that you can call upon instantly, bend, manipulate, adjust to solve new problems fast.
Data from experience is more easily available for manipulation to new problems than mentally distant 'book based' knowledge.
The funny thing is that ever since, Google sends me traffic for everyone googling "cheap MBAs". I'm sure I get unhappy visitors :-) http://blog.foundrs.com/2009/08/12/the-cheapest-mba-program-...