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The CEOs of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services all have MBAs. There are also lots of examples of MBA founders. This has happened despite the fact

The CEOs of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services all have MBAs. There are also lots of examples of MBA founders. This has happened despite the fact that historically most MBAs have gone to banking and consulting. With MBA grads shifting toward tech, we should expect that many more tech CEOs and founders will have MBAs. edit: added Apple.

kumarm 8y ago
Selector Bias? 2 out of the 3 are Indian Immigrants. Does that mean Most CEO's are going to be Indians too? [With business school grads increasingly shifting toward tech] They are Engineers who also went to business school.
- mathattack 8y ago
  Good point. Not all MBAs are created equal. Undergrad degree and pre-MBA experience matters a lot.
nostrademons 8y ago
"CEO" and "founder" are very different job descriptions. An MBA can be very useful for a peacetime CEO [1]. It is basically useless for a wartime CEO or founder (all of whom are wartime CEOs). An MBA basically teaches you how to apply rational analysis and best practices to the running of an existing business unit. This works great during normal times, when your company has a competitive advantage, you know what it is, you have a large and growing customer base, and you are making a profit on every transaction. It works terribly when the default outcome, if you follow all the best practices and do everything you're supposed to, is that you'll fail miserably. This is the situation most founders are in - if their market opportunity were obvious to someone with an MBA, then someone with an MBA working for a big company with lots of resources would already have done it. [1] https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo-2/ https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo-2/
- WisNorCan 8y ago
  That is a really strange theory. It is also demonstrably false. Many of the founders of the top unicorns have MBAs (Grab, StitchFix, CloudFlare, etc) [1] Also, I wouldn't categorize building AWS from scratch as a "peacetime CEO" job. 1. https://poetsandquants.com/2016/02/24/38-mba-founded-unicorns/3/ https://poetsandquants.com/2016/02/24/38-mba-founded-unicorn...
  - mdorazio 8y ago
    Not sure how it's incompatible with your stats. If the degree is useless then you would expect MBA holders to have no advantage over non-MBA holders in founding companies. Not that MBA holders wouldn't sometimes be successful. You're missing a data point showing that MBA holders are more likely to succeed at founding startups, which I have yet to see anywhere. Realistically, an MBA can be helpful to a startup founder if that founder lacks basic business acumen from prior education or experience (basic accounting, financial planning, marketing, etc.). It can also be a hindrance because MBA coursework tends to trivialize many of the core skills needed to be successful at starting a company in favor of the higher-level thinking and planning needed for large corporations (you won't learn how to make your first sale, for example, or how to hire your first employee, setup a billing system, etc.).
  - bsder 8y ago
    And quite a few of the CEOs who have presided over some of the biggest business disasters have MBAs.
- nradov 8y ago
  That depends on the MBA program, and on the electives each student takes. Some focus heavily on innovation and entrepreneurship. There's a lot of variation. https://www.scu.edu/bulletin/graduate/leavey-school-of-business/Chapter%206/mba_curriculum.html#entrepreneurship-and-new-venture-creation https://www.scu.edu/bulletin/graduate/leavey-school-of-busin...
- hef19898 8y ago
  I think it comes a lot more to the individual person and not the academic background. A little bit like the meme that engineers make better managers of manufacturing companies. That nobody mention that with very few exception the whole VW management where engineers, Winterkorn being a professor with a eingineering PhD.
deleted 8y ago
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kumarm 8y ago

Selector Bias? 2 out of the 3 are Indian Immigrants. Does that mean Most CEO's are going to be Indians too? [With business school grads increasingly shifting toward tech] They are Engineers who also went to business school.

mathattack 8y ago
Good point. Not all MBAs are created equal. Undergrad degree and pre-MBA experience matters a lot.

nostrademons 8y ago

"CEO" and "founder" are very different job descriptions. An MBA can be very useful for a peacetime CEO [1]. It is basically useless for a wartime CEO or founder (all of whom are wartime CEOs). An MBA basically teaches you how to apply rational analysis and best practices to the running of an existing business unit. This works great during normal times, when your company has a competitive advantage, you know what it is, you have a large and growing customer base, and you are making a profit on every transaction. It works terribly when the default outcome, if you follow all the best practices and do everything you're supposed to, is that you'll fail miserably. This is the situation most founders are in - if their market opportunity were obvious to someone with an MBA, then someone with an MBA working for a big company with lots of resources would already have done it. [1] https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo-2/ https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo-2/

WisNorCan 8y ago
That is a really strange theory. It is also demonstrably false. Many of the founders of the top unicorns have MBAs (Grab, StitchFix, CloudFlare, etc) [1] Also, I wouldn't categorize building AWS from scratch as a "peacetime CEO" job. 1. https://poetsandquants.com/2016/02/24/38-mba-founded-unicorns/3/ https://poetsandquants.com/2016/02/24/38-mba-founded-unicorn...
- mdorazio 8y ago
  Not sure how it's incompatible with your stats. If the degree is useless then you would expect MBA holders to have no advantage over non-MBA holders in founding companies. Not that MBA holders wouldn't sometimes be successful. You're missing a data point showing that MBA holders are more likely to succeed at founding startups, which I have yet to see anywhere. Realistically, an MBA can be helpful to a startup founder if that founder lacks basic business acumen from prior education or experience (basic accounting, financial planning, marketing, etc.). It can also be a hindrance because MBA coursework tends to trivialize many of the core skills needed to be successful at starting a company in favor of the higher-level thinking and planning needed for large corporations (you won't learn how to make your first sale, for example, or how to hire your first employee, setup a billing system, etc.).
- bsder 8y ago
  And quite a few of the CEOs who have presided over some of the biggest business disasters have MBAs.
nradov 8y ago
That depends on the MBA program, and on the electives each student takes. Some focus heavily on innovation and entrepreneurship. There's a lot of variation. https://www.scu.edu/bulletin/graduate/leavey-school-of-business/Chapter%206/mba_curriculum.html#entrepreneurship-and-new-venture-creation https://www.scu.edu/bulletin/graduate/leavey-school-of-busin...
hef19898 8y ago
I think it comes a lot more to the individual person and not the academic background. A little bit like the meme that engineers make better managers of manufacturing companies. That nobody mention that with very few exception the whole VW management where engineers, Winterkorn being a professor with a eingineering PhD.

deleted 8y ago

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