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Hey, big baller b-school 2nd year — working at a start-up is not a stepping stone in your career


Last night I got an e-mail from a friend and classmate asking if I would spend some time with his friend who is graduating this spring from a top 3 b-school. He said she is:

…moving from consulting to a start up and would like to know how to best position herself in order to build the necessary skill set and make the transition to VC in the longer term (sales & ops, biz dev, sales etc).

start-ups are not stepping stones

I really don’t know what to say to this. People who start-up suffer, they grind, they obsesses, they push against the way the world is because they believe they can change it– for the better. You cannot survive this if you are not driven by passion and you will not do well if you are focused on what is next rather than what is now. Working at a start-up can open lots of doors — if you crush it. But if you view it as a stepping stone in your perfectly planned, career management optimized life plan — you will fail. Doors will close.

When I hear this type of multi-step plan I want to be helpful, but I struggle. I think the most successful people find ways to always pursue the opportunity they are most passionate about at that moment. Life is too short to spend years “learning the necessary skillset” to do what you actually want to do. You can be successful at a job if your motivation is to build the necessary skill set to make the transition to something else. If you want to be a VC, or anything else, then do that. Don’t waste a start-up’s time and money by optimizing for your future instead of the future of the company.

When I joined AND 1, I saw the opportunity to work on sneakers, a life long passion, and to play hoops at lunch, another life long passion. When I joined the footwear department, it was a department of 2 (me and a co-founder of the company) and I spent my first week organizing a storage closet and making photo-copies of design sketches. I loved it. I loved looking at the sketches and I loved being in a closet full of shoes. I also loved playing ball at lunch everyday and talking trash with a bunch of other young, smart people working their asses off to be part of the number one basketball company in the world.

I had no idea what I would do next and I didn’t care. We ended up at close to $200M in revenue and I played my part, but I never could have been part of this journey if I was motivated by anything other than love of the game.

When I left to build a fitness gaming company, I knew it would be hard (maybe impossible) but I was compelled. I could not help myself. I needed to work on the idea because I could not think of anything else. If I had thought starting that company would have helped me get a job in VC, we never would have pivoted from triathlon training software to home fitness games; We would have quit when we couldn’t get developer kits from Microsoft for X-box; We would have closed the doors when NIKE chose to work with Sony (instead of with us) on a fitness game; We would have given up when the gaming retailers said no and we never would have gotten Nordstrom or the fitness video buyers as Best Buy and Wal-Mart to say yes. If anyone on our team had been looking forward to their next job, we never would have raised money, built the product, sold over 100k copies and helped a bunch of people discover a personalized, interactive, goal-oriented home fitness experience…we would have just failed…sooner.

If you are a second year MBA and you are going to McKinsey or Goldman, great. You have a job. Enjoy. If not, spend the break getting back in touch with your heart and forgetting the strategic idea of necessary skill sets and career trajectory. Come back in the spring understanding the career safety net that lives in the risk mitigating degree you just spent 24 months earning and be ready to pursue a passion – be ready to jump.

When you want to talk about that, how to do it, where to start, I bet you will find lots of MBA alumni, including me, ready and willing to help. If you are still trying to figure out the stepping stone game to the end game that you can’t define because it is 5 years out…maybe talk to career management instead…

 

This entry was posted on December 13, 2011, 11:08 am and is filed under Other Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  • http://twitter.com/thredup thredup

    Exactly right Phin. The other important thing to note is that start-ups are not a place where there is career direction. If you need to be taught to roll-up your sleeves and get shit done, you are definitely in the wrong place. If you need a plan and a fully-baked job description you are probably focused on the wrong thing. I ask MBAs right off the bat  ”can you add significant value right away? how and why and why are you so confident” – if they have good answers, I’m pretty keen to hire an MBA from a top-school. Otherwise, the ROI just isn’t there. 

  • http://www.sneakerheadVC.com/ phineasb

    word

  • http://www.clipik.com Pablo Lema

    a nuanced difference and well explained.  thanks Phin.

  • http://procause.com/ matthewhughes

    Funny, never would have thought of a start-up as a stepping stone.

  • http://www.meeteor.com Philip J. Cortes

    Count me in on talking to Whartonite about their passions!  Completely agree. 

    Conversely, don’t go into consulting or banking just because you think THAT will be a “stepping stone” to your success as an entrepreneur. You either live and breathe the problem in your head, or you don’t care enough to face the Everests and climb them. (Everests, plural). 

  • Steve Banfield

    This isn’t new. When I was at HBS in 1998 I had lots of friends asking me how to make the transition from consulting or i-banking to a startup. The first bubble was growing and from their perspective coming from the Street and Harvard Business School made them perfect candidates to be tech startup CEOs or VCs. It’s ridiculous. They may have analyzed hundreds of businesses but that’s a far cry from running one. The best thing anyone in this position can do is take a low level sales or operations job in a startup. Go in at the ground level and learn what it means to close a sale or ship on time before you start trying to figure out how to turn startups into stepping stones. If you’re successful in those roles, new opportunities will always present themselves.

  • http://twitter.com/guyfriedman Guy Friedman

    This is a really good post. I would have had a really rough time of it if I wasn’t completely obsessed and committed to my idea and just thinking about the future…You gotta sit down and say to yourself: “this is it, there is no next step besides success. There is no future option, safety net, or good failure.” It goes beyond dollars and sense. 

    Of course rationally we all plan for the worst and hope for the best – but if you don’t keep a obsessive mentality, its really hard to succeed in my opinion. One question for all of your readers or you about joining a startup from an MBA’s perspective. Assuming the average exit probability, standard “biz dev” equity stakes and time to exit – what’s a mathematical example of an Wharton/HBS/Stanford MBA joining (not starting) a startup and the expected value of that job beating out that I-B or consulting job?

  • http://lauriekalmanson.blogspot.com/ laurie kalmanson

    It was funny during the first boom when those types stared showing up.

  • http://lauriekalmanson.blogspot.com/ laurie kalmanson

    It was funny during the first boom when those types stared showing up.

  • http://www.twitter.com/famolari famolari

    The advice to focus on what’s now not what’s next is great.

    Curious tho, what you would council if instead of a stepping
    stone, this 2nd year MBA wanted to make VC her ‘now’ and was
    passionate about and compelled by venture investing?

  • http://www.sneakerheadVC.com/ phineasb

    Amen

    Phineas Barnes
    Principal, First Round Capital phin@firstround.com | @phineasb | sneakerheadvc.com

  • http://www.sneakerheadVC.com/ phineasb

    The expected cash value will never beat out the I-b or consulting job, but hopefully the MBAs that choose the start up path are optimizing for something other than NPV as they make this choice…
    Phineas Barnes
    Principal, First Round Capital phin@firstround.com | @phineasb | sneakerheadvc.com

  • http://www.sneakerheadVC.com/ phineasb

    Happy to chat a out MBA->VC and how to start/get in the door. For me, it was thinking and acting like an entrepreneur that got me in front of first round. I leveraged my network and got introductions to the partners from people they trust.

    Phineas Barnes
    Principal, First Round Capital phin@firstround.com | @phineasb | sneakerheadvc.com

  • http://www.sneakerheadVC.com/ phineasb

    Happy to chat a out MBA->VC and how to start/get in the door. For me, it was thinking and acting like an entrepreneur that got me in front of first round. I leveraged my network and got introductions to the partners from people they trust.

    Phineas Barnes
    Principal, First Round Capital phin@firstround.com | @phineasb | sneakerheadvc.com

  • Josh Densen

    You killed it.  Nice post.

  • Ryanmettee26

    This is a glorious post. I didn’t go get an MBA fom undergrad because I jumped right into a small business incubator and coaching startup right after undergrad and never looked back. This was my passion, not my stepping stone. Love this post. Great work.

  • Jeff_Turk

    I also had the good fortune to once attend a good business school. I also met a lot of lost souls – bankers who wanted to manage, managers who thought they wanted to be bankers, and so on. But one person really rose above and put things into crystal clear perspective. In frustration one day he explained the concept of taking one job to reach another as a ‘bank shot.’ he simply said “If you want to be a banker be a banker. If you want to be a consultant be a consultant. If you want to be a manager be a manager. But don’t think you’re going to become a manager by being a consultant. If you play hockey, you know that you can’t count on the bank shot. You have to go right at the net.” The person was Jeff Immelt.

  • Jeff_Turk

    I also had the good fortune to once attend a good business school. I also met a lot of lost souls – bankers who wanted to manage, managers who thought they wanted to be bankers, and so on. But one person really rose above and put things into crystal clear perspective. In frustration one day he explained the concept of taking one job to reach another as a ‘bank shot.’ he simply said “If you want to be a banker be a banker. If you want to be a consultant be a consultant. If you want to be a manager be a manager. But don’t think you’re going to become a manager by being a consultant. If you play hockey, you know that you can’t count on the bank shot. You have to go right at the net.” The person was Jeff Immelt.

  • http://www.sneakerheadVC.com/ phineasb

    And he seems to have done ok…

  • http://www.sneakerheadVC.com/ phineasb

    And he seems to have done ok…

  • AD

    Couldn’t agree more! I am 5 years out of undergrad, no MBA, did ibanking for 2 years and now running my own start-up! Doing “banking” to gain the necessary skill set is a waste of time! Unfortunately, way too many ambitious and smart people go into banking thinking it’s a stepping stone towards something bigger, better, bolder, and then just get sucked into the system. 

    Today I work more than I have ever worked in banking and get paid only $1 as a salary, but it’s all worth it! The rush, the passion, the ups and downs, pitching VCs, getting turned out, getting offers, negotiating terms, turning them down, negotiating partnerships with CEOs of leading companies in the industry, working on presentations and making copies till 4am, personally responding to customer service calls on my cell at 7am, spending countless hours sifting through PR contacts, sending emails, tracking data…. this all is 100x more exciting than sitting in a cube with a green banker lamp at 4am, eating nasty seamlessweb food and hating life :)  

    In the words of Steve Jobs: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”  

  • http://knudge.me Tam Le

    *slow clap anyone?*

    Cosigned.

    I’m a 2nd year MBA at the University of Texas. I’m also diving head first into the world of entrepreneurship. I recently started a company and have learned more from striking out on my own than at any of my previous startup experiences (where I was an employee). 

    This post really hits home because, while I have no entrepreneurial success (yet), I advise 1st years on the matters of entrepreneurship and it’s difficult to explain that working at a startup is not the next step to starting/help starting a company. I’d argue that unless you’re a founder, working at a startup is actually a step backwards. 

    People believe what they want though.

    Thank you for this. I’m off to show this to everyone I know who is afraid to make the leap. 

  • http://www.sneakerheadVC.com/ phineasb

    Congrats on not settling

    Phineas Barnes
    Principal, First Round Capital phin@firstround.com | @phineasb | sneakerheadvc.com

  • http://www.sneakerheadVC.com/ phineasb

    Have them take the grit test too!

    Phineas Barnes
    Principal, First Round Capital phin@firstround.com | @phineasb | sneakerheadvc.com

  • http://knudge.me Tam Le

    haha – if this is a real test that I can administer, please let me know. 

    Honestly, I do my best to dissuade them from being entrepreneurs by telling them stories of how little I sleep, how much I’ll be getting paid upon graduating (zero), and how there’s no real safety net. 

    That tends to stop most people’s interest.  

    As you implied Phineas – this is a game of heart.

  • http://qwang.net qwang

    She’s checking boxes.

    That’s the same technique one would use to get into a top-tier undergrad, she’s just applying the same pattern against getting into other elite positions.

  • http://twitter.com/cmicon Craig Micon

    Love it! It can be very tough to fight the NPV urge, but striving for long-term happiness as opposed to $ has truly changed my life.

    I worked for a startup in college my junior and senior years and loved it.  Then I did the “smart” thing and went into management consulting for 2-3 years after graduating.  I just moved out to SF to work for a startup again where I’m at the bottom of the totem poll, but couldn’t be happier!