Up and Running:

I received an intriguing e-mail today, well-written and thoughtful, from someone considering going for an MBA degree and asking my advice about it. Here’s a portion of it (quoted exactly):

I’ve been thinking about developing some actual products for sale; but basically I have about a million ideas and as I trudge forth, I am realizing how little experience I really have when it comes to the nitty gritty. Things like accessing risk, being a better sales person, managing and dealing with potential employees, it’s all new to me. And the more I read about it and learn about business, the more interested and passionate about it I become. But reading only gets you so far. I feel like I’m at a stopping point and I need a shove to get over it.

I’m very against just going to back to school because I don’t know what to do or I’m bored or whatever other reason people cook up for avoiding real life. I don’t NEED an MBA. I wouldn’t be going for the degree, I would be going for the experience of it. Which makes me think maybe it would just be better to try to get a mentor and learn by doing, but at the same time… I think it might make me much for successful and give me the confidence to go big. And then of course, do I really want to “waste” 2 years in school when I could be running a business, and I would absolutely need scholarships to get me through.

Great question. I want to answer it. I’ve been posting about this a lot on my main blog (link here). I think it’s an important subject, and I’d like to spread the discussion to this blog. But I need to answer with a somewhat disorganized collection of points. I’d rather have a clearly worded, simple response, but it’s a complex question.

1. Do you like school? Rank yourself from 1 to 10 where 1 is “I hated every minute I ever spent in a classroom or doing homework” and 10 is “I love school as long as it’s a good teacher, and if it weren’t for needing the money, I would just be a full-time student forever.” If you aren’t above a 7, or maybe a conservative 6, you’re going to regret going back to school.
2. An MBA degree from one of the top 10 (or so) schools gives you special job-seeking powers, bragging rights, and, probably, more money. It’s awkward to say in print, but I always say “Stanford MBA” instead of just MBA, and so do the MBAs from Harvard and Wharton and a few other schools. Probably this also means you get a swollen head and swollen ego. But when people stop appending the school name to it, it doesn’t do as much for the job power.
3. I loved my two years back in school getting an MBA degree, starting when I was 31, ending when I was 33. School was exciting. I liked what I learned, I liked studying, I liked the classes and the professors and my classmates. It was a great time. My wife and kids and I lived in family housing on campus, which was a lot like paradise. Even though I consulted full-time to make ends meet while I also studied full-time, I loved it. It kick-started my business career and taught me tons and made a huge difference to the rest of my life. But it was two years on campus.
4. You refer to experience when it comes to the nitty-gritty, and I’m afraid few if any MBA programs give you that experience. Life does, work does, entrepreneurship does, but school doesn’t. School gives you perspective and analytical tools,  deep background, vocabulary, understanding of principles of finance and marketing and all. But not nitty-gritty. Background: this post on five things the b-schools can teach, and this one on five things they don’t.

One final point, one that I’m pulling out of the list for emphasis: Don’t quit working and get an MBA degree full-time for the money. There’s an odd chance, a small chance, that the extra money you generate in your career might compensate for the money you lose in two years of not working; but that’s only if you’re in one of the really top schools, in my opinion, and even then, it’s only a chance. You’d better do the MBA degree because you want to, because you want to spend two years in school again, and you’re interested in the subjects they teach. Otherwise you’ll be disappointed.

Cornell University is celebrating a new online product design and development certificate program with an inauguration event contest on this blog awarding the best story about “your biggest challenge when launching a new product or service.” The winner and, for that matter, any other good entries, will appear on this blog as long as it or they are good reads (and I will edit). And the winner will also appear at the www.ecornell.com website.

Contest rules: Tell your story. Send it to me using this form on my timberry.com site. Aim for no more than 300 words (”aim for” means don’t sweat it if you have 325, OK?), give me some web addresses so I can see for myself (if possible). Do it within the next week (from the day this appeared: August 3, 2009).

Nothing confidential: Remember, please, that I’m a blogger. If you don’t want your story posted where anybody can see it, then don’t send it.

Why enter? Just for entering you get $100 off of $3,000+ tuition for this certificate program. The winner gets 10 percent off tuition. Tuition is either $3,750 or $3,375 for early enrollment. I choose the winner.

What do I get out of it? Stories to tell. Nothing more. Organizers asked me to use my blog to do this, and I said yes. There’s no money involved.

Legal stuff: This isn’t a drawing or a lottery. Entry is free. You don’t have to buy anything. The prize is a 10 percent discount off of the certificate program’s $3,750 (or $3,375 if you enroll early) tuition to the winner. And Cornell offers a $100 discount off of that tuition to everybody who enters, just for entering.

The program itself, brainchild of Cornell’s systems engineering professor Peter Jackson,

“. . . takes entrepreneurs through an eight-step methodology and structured process for taking an idea or product to the point where it can be handed off for completion.”

That’s from the Cornell press release about the new program. A “certificate program” means what it sounds like. If you take this course and complete it, you earn a certificate from Cornell saying you did. That’s not a bad thing. Education is nice, and certification makes it even nicer. You can go to this page for enrollment and more detailed information.

And while I may be partial to the schools I have degrees from, this is Cornell. That’s a great logo to have on your office wall.

Do you have a start-ups group where you live? I think it’s a pretty good idea. I’ve watched how three interested people got one going where I live, I’m seeing it working now, and it’s definitely a good thing.

Specific example: Yesterday around 5 p.m. I went over to a local hotel where we had our Eugene (Ore.) Smart-ups group meeting. There was some milling around, then some welcoming, a talk about an upcoming local angel investor contest with $150K to the winner, then a panel discussion on bootstrapping–with two people who are up and running as bootstrapped ventures–a presentation on basic financials and then, at the end, two five-minute elevator speeches chosen from business cards drawn out of a hat.

While this may be of specific interest to you if you’re in the lower Willamette Valley area of Eugene and Corvallis in Oregon, I post it here because you might want to look at your own local groups.

If you don’t have one, start one.  What’s interesting to me is that Smart-ups is the kind of thing you could do in a lot of different places. Here’s how they did it here in Eugene:

1. Smart-ups was started a couple of years ago by a small group of people who missed having a start-ups organization where they could get together every two or three months and hear experts, watch presentations, share experiences and keep up with what’s going on in the local area.
2. They connected with the local chamber of commerce, which has been a strong supporter, by talking to the chamber leaders. The chamber has helped them organize meetings, offered online registration, speakers and organizational help.
3. They set up a group name and a website. They started talking about what kind of events they could do.
4. They connected with the local Small Business Development Center by talking to the SBDC leaders. The SBDC has become a supporter in a number of ways.
5. They started with events, which they called “pub talks,” including some start-up presentations, workshops, etc.
6. Then they connected it to a statewide entrepreneurs network and a statewide software association, by talking to the leaders of those groups.
7. By now they have connections to both the University of Oregon and Oregon State faculties (one in Eugene, the other in Corvallis).

Last night they had a full room at the local hotel, maybe 150 or more people, and a good program. So Smart-ups is up and running, the local area is better off, the organizers are proud, and people are looking forward to the next event.

If you’re looking at a new web startup these days, you have to make a choice. You can aim for money or aim for traffic. Ironically, it’s hard to do both.

Whose business is Web 2.0? You update on Facebook and Twitter, post to your blog, comment on everybody else’s blog, and put your pictures on Flickr. What do you own? How do you make money? It’s your life on Facebook, but who gets the money for the ads?

How much is your content worth? How much is it worth to you? How much is it worth to the rest of the world? And who makes money with it? Given that it’s your life, your opinion and your picture, will other people pay for it? Can you make them pay for it?

In her post Is Facebook Turning us Into Digital Sharecroppers, Anita Campbell makes a very serious, concrete suggestion:

I think there’s a way you can participate in social sites such as Facebook and not be relegated to a digital sharecropper. That is: You should have your own websites or blogs that you own. Or write books, develop DVDs or author academic papers. Whatever methods you use for developing content and intellectual property that you own, you should do it. In other words, create the majority of your work on a venue or in a form where you own it and can benefit from it.

I know I’m just one example, but I think she’s absolutely right; and that this strategy, or my variation on it, has been working for me for years.

I’m probably too certain about this one, in an age when certainty is usually a sign of not understanding the problem. Still, I am. There is no “best major” for a college student who wants to be an entrepreneur. The best major is whatever you want to study.

I got to this yesterday on Twitter, with somebody referring me to this site–not particularly impressive, to be honest–where a freshman is asking that question.

In the meantime, I’d been meaning to post here about Fred Wilson’s post One Thing You Don’t Need To Be An Entrepreneur: A College Degree, on his A VC blog. I like his work a lot, and I recommend it a lot, too. It’s on my blogroll here.

Still, Fred is answering the wrong question–or at least, we could say, a different question. He says you don’t need a degree to be an entrepreneur. Not like for a doctor or lawyer, he explains. And I don’t disagree with that; it’s a plain fact. But given the whole range of his writing, I’m willing to bet he’d agree with me that having a degree is much better for you than not having it. Even Bill Gates, the world’s richest dropout, agrees with that–and he now has several.

So the question isn’t whether or you need a degree to be an entrepreneur. It’s do you want one. And the answer to that is yes. Education makes your life better. If you have to drop out to support your ailing grandmother, so be it. But for the record, I practice what I preach. I earned two graduate degrees after marriage, the second one after marriage and kids, and my wife and I paid for both. I worked while getting a Stanford MBA degree, and we’re still married.

But that isn’t the question the student asked, either. He wanted to know what to major in. So here’s my answer to that one:

You should major in whatever you want to study, what you like. The best advice I got was to choose your major as if you were going to die at graduation.

And I’m an entrepreneur, not entirely just guessing. I studied literature first, because I liked it–and I ended up in software.

If you study what you like, that will help you figure out what to do when you’re on your own. My literature led to Journalism, business writing, MBA and then starting companies. And I was always better off for studying what I liked when I was in college.

Business skills are easier to get than straight education.

If business is what you’re really interested in, that’s cool. You can learn a lot about entrepreneurship, marketing or finance. But if you’d rather study art, literature, history, anthropology or math or science, do that. Your business career won’t suffer. The best career path there is heads toward what you like to do.

A couple of weeks ago I spent the bulk of a Friday night talking to a room full of engaged and involved entrepreneurs about business plans, starting up, and getting funded. They gave me a lot of good questions, thoughtful discussion and the feeling, afterward, that something very good was going on.

This was at a business boot camp. On three weekends, each about three weeks apart, they meet from 5:30 6 to 10 9:30 p.m. Friday and all day Saturday. When they’re done they’ve had almost five full days of an intense workshop setting, different speakers and different topics, all on how to start a business. They paid $250 apiece. They had readings, homework, a well-organized list of discussions and speakers, and a whole lot of quick learning.

I was impressed. If you’re serious about starting a business, and you want to get a quick head start with some expertise on lots of related topics–the planning, marketing, financing and so on–this seems like a great way to do it. I hadn’t had experience with this before, but it does offer a compromise among other learning methods, such as night school, junior college and SBDC classes, books, conferences, software, and lots of websites. This one pulls you in so you spend the time and move things forward quickly.

The group, and the interaction with group members, seemed like the best part. It’s a big time commitment for three weekends, but very intense and very focused, and they get a whole lot done.

The boot camp I spoke at was on the campus of Oregon State University, organized by John Sechrest of the Corvallis-Benton Coalition, leading up to an angel investor event this May.

This particular boot camp is out of the question now, with only one weekend remaining. If you’re curious, you can click here to see its setup and schedule. More useful, though, is to use a good Web search (here’s a Google search to get you started) to see if something like this is available somewhere near you in the future.

Interesting post by Ryan Healy on Employee Evolution, A Bad Economy Is the Perfect Time to Start Over. Things were exciting during the barest startup days, he says, then got too easy after his company got financed.

But once you get funded, the headaches just begin, and it starts to feel like a “real job.” It’s easy to get comfortable, to forget about all the hard work you put in before there was cash in the bank. And strangely enough, you end up wishing you could go back to the beginning or sell your company and start a new one.

Ryan is one of the co-founders of Brazen Careerist, a Generation Y-oriented career site that, I gather from this post, has had its ups and downs. I’m aware of that blog because my daughter Megan posts on it occasionally, too.

Apparently Ryan’s too-much-success problem went away very quickly when the crash hit.

Then, before we even realized what was happening, the market crashed, investors pulled back, and we didn’t have salaries anymore. The whole company had gotten too comfortable; we weren’t prepared to handle the downturn.

But oddly enough, three months later, things are going really well. We made a decision to switch up our business model and bring in revenue any way possible. Every dollar we make is treated like gold, we’ve managed to cut our burn rate by nearly 50 percent without losing any productivity, and we’ve realized just how many ways there are to make money without begging someone for a multimillion-dollar investment.

He comes to a well-written and well-thought-out conclusion, which I’m happy to pass on. It seems particularly appropriate to the world of startups during tough economic times:

I’ve learned a lot from this whole experience, both personally and professionally. Difficult situations are the best learning opportunities; when things are good it’s very difficult to see how you can improve. But when times are tough, you have the opportunity to make difficult, life-altering decisions. Great businesses and great leaders embrace difficult situations and thrive when times are tough.

Well said.

If you’re around the San Francisco Bay area on these dates, Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Week has been a very useful event in the past. This year it’s Feb. 18 through 25. That’s Wednesday to Wednesday.

I was happy to see the news release this morning, about Rice Alliance of Rice University’s entrepreneurship center winning the USASBE (United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship) annual award for the outstanding specialty entrepreneurship program. No, I’m not an alum there, but yes, I’m proud to say I’ve visited twice in recent years. I participate in the annual venture competition there, and it’s a great program.

I’ve met the professors, talked to the students, done some guest speaking, and had enough time to see what I’m talking about. There’s a very nice international mix there, and interested, interesting, and engaged students. Plus the Alliance, which is one of the best links between community and academic entrepreneurship anywhere.

My congratulations to Brad Burke, managing director of the Alliance, and Philana Diaz, director of the annual business plan competition. Well deserved.

Here’s an interesting upturn even during a downturn. Amid all the bad news on investment banking, Goldman Sachs has a special program to train women in entrepreneurship in developing markets. The World Bank has a $100 million program for commercial credit to women.

This was in a Dec. 26 report in The New York Times: Businesses See Opportunities in Empowering Women. Here’s a quote:

Many corporate programs employ microloans, grants or gifts to promote business education. Goldman decided to take a different approach after its research showed that per-capita income in Brazil, China, India, Russia and other emerging markets could rise by as much as 14 percent if women had better management and entrepreneurial skills.

“It’s not only philanthropy they’re after,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, president of the International Center for Research on Women. Goldman “had the idea that investment in women means a return on the gross national product of the country, and on household income.”

The Goldman Sachs initiative is called “10,000 Women.” The story also mentions an AT&T donation to create a foundation for training women from developing nations.

I posted here last week about Myrtle Creek, Oregon, a town of 3,500 about 90 minutes south of Eugene and half an hour south of Roseburg, where the city government decided to help small business by investing in business planning.

It ended up being a very interesting and productive evening, a roomful of interested people, a good discussion and, I hope, a new angle on practical development in the Main Street world the presidential candidates talked about a lot during the recent campaigns.

I arrive about nightfall to find city manager Aaron Cubic, a man in his mid-30s (I think), dressed in a suit, setting up chairs and tables in the unassuming community center just a few blocks from the main street, which is named Main Street. Cubic was easy to like, seemed to know everybody as people streamed in, and appeared happy with the whole affair.

The room filled with a wide range of people, some running existing businesses, some looking to start new businesses, all with real questions and concerns.

The city had copies of Business Plan Pro available for participants, who only had to fill out an application to get the software. And I had been asked down to talk about business planning for a couple of hours. Of course, it was my view of business planning, based on my Plan-As-You-Go book, starting with plans only as big as you need to run the business better.

I talked afterward to a man concerned with what inventory to carry in his fly-fishing store and a woman looking to start up a nonprofit. She’d been convinced when she arrived that doing a business plan would be too hard, but left intending to do one the next day.

I am very happy with the whole event. It feels like something real, tangible, that one town is doing to help its community. All the politicians talk about helping small business, but how many concrete things can they really do?

I hope Myrtle Creek becomes Oregon’s next boom town.

Are you a student or recent graduate building a business around a new technology or invention? Take a look at the National College Inventors & Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) at nciia.org. Pay special attention to NCIIA’s 2009 Venture Well program, because it’s about finding mentors and money.

It’s also about doing some good. Specifically:

“…designed to provide venture development and seed investment to emerging university entrepreneurs creating scalable, market-oriented solutions to social and environmental problems.”

This program kicked off last Friday and is focused on a March 21, 2009, event called the Forum in Washington, D.C. Teams will be invited to connect with investors and advisors.

Here’s more detail:

Venture Well is now taking applications from student teams. All selected teams will be eligible for investment by the NCIIA and will receive training and ongoing support from Venture Well advisors as well as NCIIA’s nationally recognized Invention to Venture (I2V) mentoring program.

Interested teams must apply to the NCIIA by December 19, 2008, at www.venturewell.org.

Venture Well focuses on low-cost and highly scalable solutions for both Western and “Bottom of the Pyramid” consumers in fields of health, wellness and the environment.