Curious Case of MBAs Entrepreneurship Execution

By Larry Chiang I’m tired of the tirade of people making fun of MBAs! Guy Kawasaki said, as a VC, that startups should get penalized $1mm for every MBA. The abuse of and at tier one, elite schools perhaps is MBAs fault. Entrepreneurship is about the execution and we as MBAs are guilty of ADMINISTERING versus executing. Remember, they call the hapless org: “Small Business Administration.” They don’t call it Small Business Execution or the Jedi of Business Execution. Lets learn from the JBA, Larry Chiang, the way MBAs can execute MORE BETTER FASTER -1- It isn’t about dignity. The first casualty of starting a startup is not MISSING NETWORKING MIXERS. (LOL, skipping Foam parties on Tuesdays does suck because NO CLASS ON WEDNESDAYS!). The very first casualty of entrepreneurship is your DIGNITY. Congrats you and your Asian parents got a dignity uptick when you got admitted. Bad news, if you don’t swallow your pride, read and master 10 of my iPhone-composed blog posts… You’re screwed. And you know the impending doom. There is no dignity. There is no nobility until you sell something or execute something! Heck, there isn’t nobility then unless you (much later) lie and subterfuge about how you started your startup. Obfuscate the truth by muddying how all y’all got the first few steps out of the entrepreneurship batter box, en route to first base. Set aside your dignity now to jump ahead of your MBA classmates who suffer in silence quietly as the market massacres us :-I -2- No meeting. No funding. No catch 22’s. An MBA is notorious for wanting to do what MBAs do (meetings, networking and strategy hash sessions)…. Sorry, low blow. Remember, just like how Stanford Law School preps you to be a judge (not a lawyer!), Harvard Business School teaches all y’all to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company in the late 90s. Plot spoiler, 25% of the F500 aren’t around 10 years later. It is dying faster and cycles are getting faster B-school doesn’t teach us how to get the first 14 steps out of the startup batter box*, en route to first base** (get it?! Fourteen steps is a solid single where you’re rounding first base. Or it is almost a home run where you only get notified that you’re out AFTER rounding first base.) *GSB now does ** Stanford Engineering does (d-School does to) What They Don’t Teach You at Business School is how to unlearn what you know. What They Don’t Teach You at Business School is how to *not* use every tool and every VIP intro to book meetings and meet VCs (who all we’all have as alums to email ;-)) -3- Ok, Larry Chiang. So why should I listen to a guy that never got an MBA? You know that I’m installing “Larry Chiang live action, business case studies” right?! Right now, case studies are antiquated. Well, the new way to do b-school case studies is LIVE ACTION. Think of it as a live look into an NFL huddle (yes, I’m a 6′ 5″ QB LINK HERE) For example: Duck9. It is Sept 21, 2013. The “live action business case study” method takes you back to Nov 2007 (Zopa launch), July 2009 (Prosper SEC Re launch under SEC) The idea of live action business case study is to look a couple years back, and then bring in the founders. All business case studies, currently, involve pointing a telescope towards a rear view mirror. The “Larry Chiang Live-Action Business Case Method” (no TM!) is a rear view mirror revealing the near-present. IT (Larry Chiang Live-Action Business Case Studies )helps us with decisioning and actioning with active businesses. Active startups. QUESTION: This article has been SO SELF PROMOTIONAL. Where is the value? WHAT are the ways we MBAs can execute better? LARRY CHIANG ANSWER: I made a video THERE IS A SEQUEL TO THIS VIDEO JUST FOR MBAS AT WHARTON IT IS BIT LY SLASH buster14512w It looks like https://bit.ly/buster14512w (right now it is Sept 21, 2013. Geoffrey Moore has not written CROSSING THE CHASM FROM THE RIGHT IT IS HIS MASTERPIECE BECAUSE HE DJ’S ALL HIS BOOKS TOGETHER I’d like to thank my mentor, Tom Kosnik. It was in his class that I came up with the “Larry Chiang Live-Action Business Case Method” I’d like to thank Mark McCormack. He wrote What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School. I’d like to thank Steven Zumdahl. He was my chem prof. I set the highest starting salary out of engineering school at a Fortune 500 because of his passion for teaching acid base titration. #chelates When I sold three major accounts my first day of sales, all I did was nerd-out the Steven Zumdahl way. Plant managers bought from me based on energy. CEO of Duck9 Stanford University Entrepreneur in Residence, Emeritus Duck9 = “Deep Underground Credit Knowledge” 9 125 University Avenue/ 100 Palo Alto CA 94301 https://www.duck9.com/ass 650-566-9600 650-566-9696 (direct) 650-283-8008 (cell) **************** Editor of the BusinessWeek Channel “What They Don’t Teach at Business School” https://whattheydontteachyouatstanfordbusinessschool.com/blog CNN Video Channel: https://ireport.cnn.com/people/larrychiang Read my last 10 tweets at https://www.Twitter.com/LarryChiang Author, NY Times Bestseller https://whattheydontteachyouatstanfordbusinessschool.com/blog/?s=Ny+times+bestseller “What They Will NEVER Teach You at Stanford Business School” comes out 11-11-14 https://www.fastcompany.com/embed/c0d4562ea2049 52 Cards. Two Jokers. What They DO Teach You at Stanford Engineering Emergency swings and cutting deals as an 9 year old ########## Duck9 is part of UCMS Inc. https://www.ucms.com 630-705-5555