Are Stanford MBAs Really Worth More Than A Quarter Of A Million?
Maria |
February 2, 2023

In this episode, our hosts John, Maria, and Caroline are going to talk about something that might motivate you more to pursue an MBA:  Stanford’s recently released employment report shows that their Class of 2022 set records for Year 1 starting salary, expected performance bonus, and total compensation – the average of which now exceeds a quarter of a million dollars!

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.290] – John

Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to Business Casual, the weekly podcast of Poets and Quants. I’m John Byrne of Poets and Quants, and I have my cohost here, Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich Villa. Caroline, as you all know, is the former Director of Admissions at INSEAD, who is a co founder of Fortuna Admissions and Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab. So we’re going to talk about two things today. One is something that’s a real wow, and that is the latest compensation numbers to come out of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. They are a new record not only for Stanford, but for all business schools in the world, the median total compensation. Now, this means your salary, your sign on bonus and your expected performance bonus in year one now exceeds a quarter of a million dollars for a newly minted Stanford MBA. That is just remarkable. The actual number, incidentally, is $257,563. Now, that’s one thing we want to get into. The other thing we want to get into is for all of you people who want to make that kind of money, should you apply in Round Three to an MBA program, and particularly to Stanford, where you can apply in round three?

[00:01:38.990] – John

As many of you will know already, Harvard does not have a round three. Maria, would you pay a Stanford MBA if you were in a hiring role at a company? Would you pay a Stanford MBA $257,000 to start?

[00:01:57.000] – Maria

If they’re going to make my company $3 million or more in profit, then sure.

[00:02:01.700] – John

She’s doing the multiple.

[00:02:07.690] – Maria

The market go capitalism, right? Supply, demand. If these employers are willing to pay that much, it’s presumably because these graduates are providing a minimum that much value, but presumably much more value than that to whomever is employing them. So, great. Good for them. Haza, haza.

[00:02:31.550] – John

Now, the base salary, what this comes down to is 182,272 for base salary. Sign on bonus, about $34,000, and then the expected performance bonus. And this could be an optimistic number because you never know what can happen is $91,000, up from 78 the year before. So a really big jump in that number. There was also an increase in the actual salary number as well. Caroline, what do you make of this? Why do you think Stanford MBAs make much more than MBAs from any other school in the world? Why?

[00:03:09.800] – Caroline

Well, Stanford is in the heart of Silicon Valley and it attracts a lot of people coming from venture capital and private equity and a lot of people who plan to stay in that industry or who are looking to make a career switch into private equity or venture capital. Right. This is the sort of mecca for those people that career focus. So I don’t think it’s that surprising that they are ahead of the game in terms of average salary for graduates. And also, it’s a very small class, right, compared to some other programs like Harvard Business School. So Harvard actually may be placing more people in terms of actual numbers into private equity and venture capital overall, but it just happens to be a high percentage of the Stanford class and therefore that pushes the average up. So I think it is largely driven by that particular industry.

[00:04:11.550] – John

Yeah, that’s really true. The interesting thing about that, and this bears on admissions, is that in most cases you can’t get a PE job or VC job out of business school unless you’ve had prior experience in the field or at least experience in investment banking. So this also suggests that admissions on one level is favoring people who come from private equity or venture capital because there’s no other way that 26% of the class, more than one in four of the graduates are going into one of the two fields. And the three most lucrative fields that MBAs can enter are private equity, venture capital and hedge funds. And in all three of these there are usually very large year end performance bonuses that are given to everyone who works on those teams. And that is really the secret of why these numbers are so big. And you look at even Wharton, Columbia and Chicago schools that historically are well known for their finance programs and tend to put a lot of people in finance jobs, their numbers come not close at all to the numbers at Stanford and private equity investor capital. Harvard’s close. 22% of the latest graduating class at Harvard went into PE and VC, but no one’s at this kind of level at 26%.

[00:05:39.840] – John

And that’s really the secret behind the big numbers here over the years. Caroline, have you noticed that people who do come from these backgrounds have any kind of advantage in admissions at Stanford? Because I can’t imagine they can place this number of people without an actual concerted admissions policy. I know I’m creating a conspiracy theory here, but I just don’t think it’s possible that you can put one in four people out of your graduating class into those two fields without admissions focused on this.

[00:06:15.610] – Caroline

Right. Private equity and venture capital notorious for favoring people with a very relevant background for recruitment. So it’s not always easy for people to switch into those industries. Post MBA people do do it, but it’s one of the tougher career switches to make. And so I’m not sure what percentage of the incoming class is coming from that industry. But I think that it’s not just Stanford. I think that young professionals coming from those industries typically do pretty well across the board with admissions to the top schools. I saw that at Incyed. I think that’s also the case at Harvard Business School, and it’s partly because there are fewer people right, with those backgrounds than there are, for example, investment bankers or management consultants. So it’s not such a common profile that it has become so ridiculously competitive as it has for some other typical pre MBA feeder profiles.

[00:07:19.630] – John

And here’s another interesting thing about the employment report, one that you might not expect given what’s happening to the tech sector right now. More Stanford MBAs went into tech in 2022 than in previous years, making more money, and many more started their own tech ventures. Now, one wonders, when the pink slips are given out, how many of them will go to Stanford MBA? I tend to think that if you land a Stanford MBA, you don’t want to let a Stanford MBA go. Maria, am I wrong or is it just a dollars and cents calculation for a company that’s wanting to reduce expenses and they don’t really care?

[00:08:01.870] – Maria

I mean, I don’t want to give the same answer twice to the questions that I’ve been asked, but if that Stanford MBA shows up and they knock it out of the park, no, I’m not going to lay them off. But if they show up and they’re like, I have a Stanford MBA and I’m just going to sit here and stare at a wall and not do anything, then of course I’m going to lay them off. I think once you get out into the re real world and you’re working your work itself, your work performance itself is what dictates whether or not you’re on the chopping block or not. I think going back to the topic of, yeah, a lot of people are getting into venture capital and private equity, but that’s because a lot of them already had it. I would say that I have definitely seen that, and I think specifically, it’s not just simply having a job at a venture capital firm or any job at a PE shop. I think the people who are having a lot of success, in my mind, they’re sort of a hierarchy. And if you want to get into, say, a Stanford or a Harvard from the Pevc world, it’s not just enough to simply be working in it.

[00:09:03.570] – Maria

I think you have to have been for example, you have to have evidence that you’ve been driving portfolio decisions, that you have had an impact on the investment committee where you work. The people that I have worked with who have had the most success at the very elite schools, for example, they have convinced their private equity fund to invest in a new sector that they were not previously considering, or they take over a portfolio company for six months and they turn it around. So just as a heads up, when we’re talking about the fact that these people have this experience in order to get into the higher the higher the school is, the higher that Bar is for not just simply saying, well, I work at firm X or firm Y, but actually having that track record of impact. And so then if you think about it, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Because if I accept the people in the applicant pool who have been who were the temporary COO or whatever of a portfolio company. And during those six months, they turned the company around. Of course, then those people will command a higher salary when they graduate because they have an actual track record of saying, look, we raised our second fund and I helped divert some of that.

[00:10:14.800] – Maria

We were going to invest more in, I don’t know, cryptocurrency. And I said, no, let’s instead do something else. And that turned out to be a really good bet. And I was able to turn this company around, this portfolio company around, in other words, because these people have these achievements. The sorts of achievements that get them into Stanford to begin with are the sorts of achievements that I believe firms are and should be willing to pay for, assuming that they can replicate that track record of success and in fact, build upon it, given that they now have the MBA education in their pocket. So I do think that the school does select for those people. So it does become a self fulfilling prophecy.

[00:10:57.570] – John

Yeah, exactly. So if you’re out there and you’re thinking, oh my God, if I go get an MBA, I can make not only more money, but a lot more money. In fact, I can graduate and get a job and earn a quarter of a million dollars in my first year out. Think twice, if not three times about that, because we are really talking about exceptions in special circumstances. And with the economy going the way it is, I would expect that we’re not going to see record compensation for the graduating class of 2023. If anything, we’ll see a little setback probably, don’t you think?

[00:11:41.330] – Caroline

Yeah, I think that’s likely. But in any case, for someone who’s thinking about going to business school, I wouldn’t take the short term trends into account because it’s a long term project. Right. Or at least it’s a medium term project heading to business school. So someone applying now is going to be graduating the earliest in a couple of years, and the economy may well be very different then. So no one has a crystal ball and can predict exactly when is the perfect time to head off to business school, so that when you graduate, you are at the peak of graduate salaries. And in any case, right, these things, I think they sort of iron out over time. So if you do happen to be coming out into the market when there is a terrible recession, maybe you won’t get your first choice job or employer, but people find ways to take additional steps and maybe make that career transition a year down the line or two years down the line. The MBA is something that serves you in the long term. So it’s not just about landing that immediate post MBA job, but it’s about equipping yourself to manage your career effectively in the long term.

[00:12:53.550] – John

Yeah, very true. Which leads us to round three. These are the deadlines that at many schools are the final deadlines for admission in the fall of this year and 2023. And most of them are in late March and early April. In fact, on April 11 is the deadline day for round three at Stanford, Chicago, Yale, MIT and Cornell. April 5. It’s Kellogg. March 27. It’s Dartmouth Tuck. March 20. It’s Wharton. But we also know that Round Three tends to be the smallest round, and it’s the round where admission officers often are looking for people who fit a certain profile to help the diversity of the class. Is it worth even applying in Round Three? And I’m imagining that there will be many people who could apply in Round Three, given the extent and the lateness of many of these tech layoffs, where you have a lot of young people who may not have a graduate degree and this could be a perfect time for them to apply. Maria is round three sensible.

[00:14:09.090] – Maria

Normally I tell people to not even bother with round three, that at this point you might as well just wait the extra six months and apply in round one, mostly because I feel like most of the seats on the bus have already been given out, and so it’s basically standing room only by the time you get to round three. However, I do think that this year has been a very strange year. And we keep saying that every year it’s like, oh, this year is an even stranger year. But what’s been strange about this year is that the quote unquote end of COVID last year and there was the end of COVID so to speak, and the war for talent and employers were throwing all kinds of money at people to get them to stay and to get them to come back to the office. And so I think in the earlier part of the admission season, that is mostly Round One and even into Round Two, I think a lot of young people were thinking, well, I’m just going to stay at my job and make this money and have a nice life. And now with the layoffs that have started really taking off in sort of November, December, and even now into January, I think admissions applications, I think applications for domestic candidates have been down this year pretty significantly.

[00:15:19.660] – Maria

And yet I think that they are they might pick up all of a sudden very quickly. And so I think the schools themselves are signaling to us that they are, that this round three is not like other round threes, because the schools have started saying things like, well, maybe if you’ve been laid off, maybe you don’t need a GMAT. Maybe we’re willing to overlook certain things and we’re willing to roll out the red carpet and extend the deadlines for you. And I don’t think the schools would be making any of these concessions and certainly not signaling these concessions if they themselves were not looking at this Round Three in a very different way than they normally do. So I do think that this Round Three, especially for domestic US candidates applying to US schools, I do think that this is a rare time. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I do think that Round Three is a viable round this year.

[00:16:08.710] – John

Yeah. Just in the past week or so, Dartmouth Tuck announced that they’re offering GMAT and GRE waivers for laid off workers. And not just tech workers, but workers of any industry who have laid off for their full time program through March 1. Kellogg has extended its test waiver through Round Three, basically continuing its overture to laid off tech workers. What do you say about all this, Caroline? I think you are less than they say. Or about round three.

[00:16:41.120] – Caroline

Yeah, I totally agree with Maria that this year is different with the top US schools. I think that they’ve been disappointed with the application volume that they’ve seen so far. And they anticipate that as we head into a period of perhaps a recession or at least an economic greater economic uncertainty and with more layoffs, they anticipate that the following season is likely going to be much busier for them. Right. So they’re expecting that probably there’ll be higher application volume for Rounds One and Round Two in the next season. So the fall of 2023 and spring of 2024. And so they’re trying to pull some of those candidates forward exactly to apply now. I would certainly encourage candidates to give that a shot, especially if now is the right time for them to go to business school. And if they have been laid off, it’s not ideal to have to wait until the fall to apply and then they would be heading off to business school 18 months from now. Right. So that would be a very long time to wait if you are not sure what you’re going to do in the meantime. So I think it makes a lot of sense for those candidates to apply now.

[00:18:01.000] – Caroline

I would imagine that with a school, it’s not going to be a magic formula for getting into, for example, Stanford, right? Perhaps there will be a couple of extra slots and some people will be lucky. But it’s still going to be very competitive. Right. It doesn’t mean that there’s now some sort of magical backdoor to get into business school. A lot of people will have the same idea. But still, I think that now may be a better time to apply than in the following season for many candidates. Sorry, I was just going to say, having said all that, I think it is very much a phenomenon with the top US schools that Round One and Round Two are particularly competitive. With the international schools. That is not so much the case. And many of them have more than three rounds rather than four rounds. Some of the other international European schools have five or six rounds or rolling admissions, so that it just gives you more options for when you can apply. And those could be great options for candidates who are thinking, right now, I’d really like to head off to business school later this year and not have to wait for another full year.

[00:19:16.450] – John

Right, exactly. And I think another point that we have made already in earlier podcasts was the sense that we felt admissions officers were putting a lot more people on waitlists because they didn’t know how each round would fall, given the decline in domestic applications. And if that’s true, it would indicate that there’s a little bit more room in the available classroom seats for Round Three candidates, because there are probably too many on the waitlist from Round One and Round 02:00 A.m.. I right on that.

[00:19:55.860] – Caroline

Yeah. I think there may be some movement on the waitlist now. You’re right that there has been a lot of weightlifting this season. I think it’s an uncertain period and likely rounds one and Round Two were a bit disappointing, so they’re sort of hanging on to some candidates to see what else they get coming through the pipeline now.

[00:20:17.830] – John

Right. If you apply in Round Three, should you apply differently in any meaningful way from someone who would apply in Round One or Round Two? I can’t imagine that you would, but maybe I’m missing something.

[00:20:29.820] – Maria

Maria, I think the fundamentals of your application would be the same. However, you may want to explain why now, why are you applying now in Round Three? If you were laid off and business school wasn’t originally something you were considering or you were only mildly considering it? I do think that explaining the circumstances to why you’re applying in round three, I would address that probably in the optional essay, just to make it clear that what your thought process has been and why now is the time for you to apply. Because it is uncommon to apply in round three for the US schools. So that’s the only difference. But everything else I would do exactly the same.

[00:21:08.780] – John

And I imagine there can be no better justification than, I just got laid off, I was intending to get an MBA all along, but I wasn’t going to do it until next year. But because I’m laid off, it’s just a great opportunity for me to take the time out, to develop more skills and to go for it now. Isn’t that right?

[00:21:27.580] – Maria

Exactly.

[00:21:28.570] – Caroline

Yeah, I think so. And just from experience of reviewing candidates in the final round, it is yet it is more common and that’s probably why schools allocate far fewer places to their final round. It is true that there is more variable quality in that final round, so you tend to get more candidates applying in the last round who have just, you know, they’ve prevaricated, they haven’t got their act together and they’ve sort of thrown things together at the last minute. The average quality is typically higher in the early rounds because then you get the candidates who are really well prepared and have been planning this for perhaps years in advance and have really thought very carefully about their timeline. So you want to make sure, if you are applying in a final round, that you make it clear that you’re not one of those sort of last minute candidates who has thrown things together in haste. Right? So I think it’s always important, as Maria said, to put together a strong application and do a thorough job. But perhaps even more important in the final round, just because the schools are so used to seeing candidates who are somewhat slapdash apply in that final round that you can stand out if you submit a really well, thoroughly thought through application.

[00:22:58.090] – Caroline

And just be careful to make sure that you haven’t made any careless errors in your submission, because they do see that more frequently in that final round.

[00:23:07.310] – John

So this could very well be the case where the late bird gets the worm, right?

[00:23:14.080] – Caroline

Absolutely.

[00:23:15.150] – John

So that old proverb, the early bird gets the worm, one who rises first is the best chance for success, may, in fact, not necessarily be true this time, particularly because of all the layoffs and the different sort of waiver policies and extended round three deadlines that we’re seeing schools offer right now. And given the decline in domestic applicants, So even if you don’t can’t get in, I also think in round three, what it is to me is practice. Practice for round one next time, if in fact you don’t get in. Because if you’re doing an application now and a standardized test this late in the game, you may not be able to put your best foot forward, let’s face it, but you’ll be laying the groundwork for a really good application around one of the following time and that’s worth something as well. So for all of you out there, good luck on your MBA journey. Maybe you will get into Stanford, maybe you will be among the stats next time, earning a quarter of a million dollars to start. We hope you are. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Thanks for listening. Thank you.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Are Stanford MBAs Really Worth More Than A Quarter Of A Million?
Maria |
February 2, 2023

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] John Byrne: Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. We have a really cool story to relate to you today. Me and my co host, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, are going to talk about the most disruptive MBA startups of the year. Every year, Poets& Quants invites the top schools all over the world.

To submit nominations for ventures with what we call the greatest potential for lasting beyond business school. So what we want to do is acknowledge MBAs who have launched really cool companies that are paving the way for the future. And this year, we have 41 student startups that we have honored in what is the sixth annual list of the most disruptive MBA startups.

And they come from all over. We got nominations from Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, MIT, INSEAD, London Business School and others. And, uh, I think what the basic list shows is that entrepreneurship is alive and well in business schools are a lot of great ideas. A lot of them are powered by AI. No surprise there.

They involve every imaginable industry. There’s a good number of these in the business of health as well as in beverages, consumer products and things like that. And I wonder, Caroline, if you have a favorite among this group, and I bet you it’s going to be an INSEAD startup.

[00:01:30] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah, I have a few favorites, and definitely INSEAD is on my list, although I’m going to start with a London Business School one.

Um, and there were a few international ones that I thought were really interesting. I like the story from kiro, which is a fintech startup, coming out of London Business School, founded by LBS student Alicia Chowdhury. she secured 200, 000 in funding, and it’s the first AI powered financial coach, which is designed to help,

Gen Zed, as I would say, or Gen Z, as you would say. and young adults, get personalized financial guidance. So that’s something that jumped out to me, given that I now have a young adult among my children and trying to teach her financial literacy is somewhat challenging, so I can definitely see the need for that. And she tells a really interesting story about how financial literacy was something that she had struggled with and realized that there was a gap in the market, right? There’s a lot of great financial information out there, but it’s not necessarily tailored and communicated well to young people. And she ended up working in finance before business school.

she doesn’t have a tech background, but she did. Teach herself the fundamentals of AI and machine learning, and she assembled a technical team to work with her. And I thought it was really interesting as well, how she leveraged the LBS resources. And I think a lot of the stories that you have in this article really tell a great deal about the power of business school experience in helping people launch a company. And of course, there’s often a lot of criticism about the value of going to business school. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, there’s no point going to business school. And I think that this article really debunks that. so for example, this is how she benefited from LBS.

She was a finalist in the LBS Launchpad. She completed the LBS Entrepreneurship Summer School. She joined the LBS Incubator. She led the LBS Entrepreneurship Club. And then, of course, she benefited greatly from a lot of the courses that she took at LBS. I got a lot of great advice from LBS faculty, as well as the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital.

I think a wonderful story about how a student had a vision of something that she wanted to do and saw a gap in the market and really went after it, leveraging that wonderful ecosystem that you get at business school and she’s got a VC group backing her. So that’s one of her investors and Aviva Group is a huge financial company.

I think it sounds very promising. So congratulations to Alicia.

[00:04:11] John Byrne: Yeah, you’re right. One of the things that comes through here is the support that students get from the schools. And their classmates and their professors, it’s a real terrific thing.

As you said before, a lot of people say, hey, if you want to start a company, instead of paying a school tuition, just use that as your seed capital and you’re going to be better off, but the truth is that a business school you’re surrounded by really smart colleagues and people who’ve been through this before and mentorship from professors and seed money from the many venture challenges that occur at different schools can make a very big difference and shift the odds in your favor of success. Maria, do you have a favorite?

[00:04:53] Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah, my favorite.

startup was Cell Mind, which is out of the Johns Hopkins business school. This one really hit home for me personally. What they are trying to do is they are trying to maximize access to a type of cancer therapy called “Car T”. And I have indirectly lived this. We have a good friend from business school who has been battling cancer for several years, and last year there was a complete rollercoaster around  this car T therapy. And I apologize to any doctors if I’m butchering this. But basically, my understanding is that if it works for you, it essentially can cure your cancer or cause it to go into remission. But, if for whatever reason, if your body is too weak at the time that you receive it, it can actually kill you. Unfortunately, it can cause something called a cytokine storm, I think.

And so, the decision of whether to go or no go is obviously one that is very fraught with a lot of, emotion and risk. And so, we actually had a friend who last year was approved for CAR T. But then in the weeks right before they were going to give it to her, they then disapproved her because she had gotten weaker … it was this whole roller coaster.

And so any sort of startup that is doing something to figure out, which patients actually are likely to do well with this therapy? Can we expand our doctors being perhaps understandably a little too cautious because they’re concerned about the negative side effects, perhaps being worse than the.than the cancer itself.

Anything that can help expand access to this is why they were number one in my book. And as you guys were just talking about. Because Johns Hopkins is one of the best, if not the best medical school in the world, this is a great example of a business school student or group of business school students leveraging the resources and the expertise at that overarching institution, trying to find ways to commercialize it, and just make the most of those resources.

I really loved that story.

[00:06:40] John Byrne: Yeah, and that’s what you increasingly find. it’s not a bunch of MBA students doing their thing. It’s reaching out and having these really entrepreneurial collisions with students from other departments, other schools where they have deep expertise in computer science or engineering or medicine or law or public policy or environmental sciences teaming up with MBAs to launch things. which really give them extra power.

One of my favorites comes out of, uh, Chicago Booth. And, it’s sort

a really interesting idea where, first off, it’s called Encore, and it’s a marketplace for high end collectibles. Now, you think, how could that really be a cool thing? What they’ve done is they’ve combined TikTok style videos. With the traditional eBay auction format, to create a really engaging experience for people who want to shop for these collectibles. But what’scool is the MBA who’s behind this. His name is Will Enema, at first thought he shouldn’t apply to Chicago Booth, new venture challenge, because he had already raised a pre seed round and thought that Encore might not be good for that traditional, giving money out kind of program. But, he entered it after he was urged to by a number of professors at Booth. The idea placed second in the competition. He won $350, 000 to help launch his company, but here’s the real kicker:

Within two weeks of that competition, a venture capitalist who participated in the judging agreed to lead their seed round. So it just shows you how, incredible things can happen, in the environment of a business school.

Now, Caroline, I’m sure you have others that you really thought were really cool. Name another one.

[00:08:29] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah. So my second one is of course, an INSEAD startup and it’s called faceflow. ai. And I really liked this one because it’s an AI powered skincare platform. So again, relating it to my personal experience of having four daughters who are constantly clamoring for the. latest ridiculous beauty product that they’ve seen on Instagram.

I think this is a fantastic idea.

What it does is it actually gives you scientifically based product recommendations, right? So they have for the two founders, Daniel Patel and Simon Zhang, Patel had previously founded a marketplace for international skincare brands. So he knew the skin, the beauty industry, skincare products.

And then his partner, Simon, is an experienced AI engineer, and so they’ve combined their expertise to bring AI to skincare recommendations. And it’s underway. I checked out their website. I have signed up already. The product is not yet available, but I’m looking forward to when it comes through.

And they won the INSEAD French competition and, talk about how they’ve benefited from the very entrepreneurial environment at INSEAD,

I really enjoyed reading about their experience and I’m excited to learn more about their products.

[00:09:49] John Byrne: Yeah, absolutely. And now

Maria, I know there are 2 Harvard startups on the list from your alma mater. did you pick 1 of them as your 2nd choice?

[00:10:00] Maria Wich-Vila: It was not necessarily my 2nd choice, but there was 1 called Vulcan Investments. This is a little bit out of my, Wheelhouse. So I think we all tend to gravitate towards something we know or something we have experience with, but it’s trying to figure out how to solve the rare earth magnet problem. Right now. A lot of these rare earth materials that are powering modern technologies are coming from China, which poses several challenges, especially should relations with that country not go well in the future. So this is trying to solve for that issue. I think that was a really interesting one.

But actually, my second choice was one that again, I have indirect personal experience with, albeit in a different way. It was called Yogger. What they’re trying to do is, I believe it’s taking your phone to watch you as you perform exercise then give you feedback on, your gait, your form, et cetera.

And this was really interesting to me, not so much because of exercise, although I wish it were (ha ha) (though: side note, my dad was a track and cross country coach for decades and I totally forgot about that in the moment, but I should have mentioned that!!! D’oh!!!), but who knows, maybe this will motivate me to jog more (har har har).

In the interview with the entrepreneur. he talked about how you can do things like a gait analysis right now, in other words, tracking how your legs move when you are running or jogging, and then providing an analysis, but these sorts of things are very difficult to get to. It’s expensive. You need to be set up with, they put a whole bunch of sensors on all of your joints. and I have a friend who has a child with cerebral palsy and they’ve had to do these, go to actually Hopkins (this is not a Hopkins based startup, it’s from Tuck, Dartmouth Tuck), but they’ve (my friends, I mean) had to go to Hopkins and actually have these, it’s a day long thing to set up your child with the different sensors. And so the thought of using something as simple as an iPhone app, perhaps, machine learning, et cetera. all that good stuff to analyze your gait and make this accessible. It’s not only I think useful for casual exercise enthusiasts, but I think it could also have ramifications and uses even in other areas. For example, kids with special needs. So I was really excited about this one.

John Byrne:

MIT Sloan has three startups on our list this year.

That’s more than any other school. And one of the really cool ones is called Vertical Horizons. This is an incredibly ambitious startup. It’s all about commercializing high density, high efficiency power supplies for AI computing. Essentially, it’s a semiconductor company. and you might not think that an MBA would be involved in actually creating a semiconductor company.

But it’s founded by Cynthia Allen, an MBA in the class of 2024 at Sloan and one of her professors. So it’s a good example of where university develop some sort of new technology or new insights. And then needs to commercialize it. And in this case, you have an MBA coming along, who has a great interest in this, and is helping to commercialize it. The actual idea of it has 4 million in research grant funding to develop the technology. So there’s a good amount of money behind this very ambitious idea.

I think, stepping away from the individual startups, what I think this says about, the ability of people who want to go to business school and use that experience as an incubator to launch a startup, it’s alive and well, it’s a great way to launch a company because it does take a lot of risk off the table and these startups, these 41 startups that these different business schools really give you a great insight into what different people are doing.

Caroline, I’m sure, and Maria as well, you probably meet a number of people in your practices, that want to use an MBA to do a startup. Do you think they’re ready to take full advantage of these experiences?

Caroline Diarte Edwards:

Yeah, I certainly hear from a lot of candidates who are hoping to launch a venture. Some of them want to do it as soon as they graduate and for some of them it’s more of a longer term ambition because of course financing can be a challenge.

Especially if you’ve invested a lot in taking on a lot of debt with your MBA and a lot of the themes that I hear, candidates are interested in come through in your article as well. So it’s noticeable that there are quite a few startups in your list that address, healthcare issues as Maria highlighted, also education, environmental challenges. And I think those are three areas that I hear a lot about from candidates in terms of where they would really like to have an impact.

And I think, something else that is noticeable is that a lot of them are really trying to have a positive impact on the world as well. They’re really trying to address,  fundamental societal challenges, many of them, which I think is wonderful from health care, mental health issues, pollution. et cetera. There’s a lot of really interesting, and important issues that are being addressed by some of these startups. and, I think it’s wonderful that we have this young generation, going through business school who are ready tackle these challenges that that they have inherited from our generation.

John Byrne:

Yeah. And these ideas are going way beyond, some of the earlier ideas of five, 10 years ago, hookup apps and match.com, uh, wannabes and things like that. some of these ideas are remarkably sophisticated and elegant as well.

Maria, last words.

Maria Wich-Vila:

I think that this article not only is very optimistic in terms of these amazing ideas that are out there, but I also like that it shows that there are so many different paths to entrepreneurship through the MBA that first of all, number one, the NBA is valuable for entrepreneurship, which, as you noted a second ago, is often a stereotype that that exists that, oh, I don’t need this. but also there are so many different MBA programs out there. Look at the range of schools that are creating these amazing startups. Look at the fact, one of the, Stanford ones, the student was not an MBA student. They were an MSx student.

Sometimes I’ll meet people who are a little bit on the older side who are applying and they’re like, I have to do the two year program and I’m like, no, you can… you just need to get your foot in the door and even if it’s that MSxs program, it’s one year versus two years. For example, you can, you just need to get to a university that’s going to teach you the things you need and give you the resources and then you can take it from there.

So I, the other thing I really appreciate about this article is showing the breadth of programs and the breadth of students and the breadth of backgrounds of these students who are creating incredible new companies.

[00:16:37] John Byrne: Yeah, check it out. It’s called most disruptive MBA startups of 2025, and it’s on the Poets& Quants website.

If you are interested in doing a startup, I think you’ll learn a lot about how business school can help you make it a reality. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

Maria

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