7 ms·

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 yea

by jerrya 15y 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)

vitobcn 15y ago
I agree with you regarding the contents from the MBA program vs entrepreneurship (I got my mba from INSEAD). However, the whole program only takes 10 months, which in my opinion makes it definitely worth it. Note: In spite of the shorter length, it's still considered one of the best mbas: http://goo.gl/p3w4Y http://goo.gl/p3w4Y
brc 15y ago
Would you agree that most marketing case studies and texts tend to concentrate on the mass-consumer style of marketing. I found that most of it concentrating on building of large brands (ie Coke), attempting to conjure demand out of thin air (ie iPad) and a few other megacorp type activities. This is all very interesting and useful to some, but by far the majority of marketing activity (call it the long tail) is by small and mid-size companies trying to communicate with their potential clients and customers. This is not about mass brand building but more about strategies to find low cost and effective strategies to help people with 'your' problem find 'your' solution. I actually took a course on marketing for professional and smaller firms, but the whole thing was just about getting box seats at the football in order to grease up key figures in large organisations. It was beyond useless.
- GameBoyAdvance 15y ago
  This depends on the class and school, I think. It also depends on how you approach the concepts. Yes, the case studies are typically focused on mass-consumer market but concepts such as LTV are valuable regardless of market size. Granted, they don't tell you how to apply those general concepts to startups but that doesn't take away from the usefulness of the tools, IMHO.

by jerrya 15y ago

vitobcn 15y ago

I agree with you regarding the contents from the MBA program vs entrepreneurship (I got my mba from INSEAD). However, the whole program only takes 10 months, which in my opinion makes it definitely worth it. Note: In spite of the shorter length, it's still considered one of the best mbas: http://goo.gl/p3w4Y http://goo.gl/p3w4Y

brc 15y ago

Would you agree that most marketing case studies and texts tend to concentrate on the mass-consumer style of marketing. I found that most of it concentrating on building of large brands (ie Coke), attempting to conjure demand out of thin air (ie iPad) and a few other megacorp type activities. This is all very interesting and useful to some, but by far the majority of marketing activity (call it the long tail) is by small and mid-size companies trying to communicate with their potential clients and customers. This is not about mass brand building but more about strategies to find low cost and effective strategies to help people with 'your' problem find 'your' solution. I actually took a course on marketing for professional and smaller firms, but the whole thing was just about getting box seats at the football in order to grease up key figures in large organisations. It was beyond useless.

GameBoyAdvance 15y ago
This depends on the class and school, I think. It also depends on how you approach the concepts. Yes, the case studies are typically focused on mass-consumer market but concepts such as LTV are valuable regardless of market size. Granted, they don't tell you how to apply those general concepts to startups but that doesn't take away from the usefulness of the tools, IMHO.