The Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision
Maria |
July 13, 2023

In this episode of Business Casual, our hosts will discuss the recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down affirmative action in higher education admissions. They explore the impact of the ruling on business schools and the challenges they face in maintaining diversity. The hosts highlight the underlying discrimination in the education system and the need for a more equitable approach. They discuss potential alternatives to race-based admissions, such as income-based or first-generation status, while acknowledging the limitations and potential legal challenges. 

Our hosts remain hopeful, urging schools to proactively promote diversity and encouraging minority candidates to persist despite this ruling, underlining the critical importance of equal opportunities for all.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.690] – John

Well, hello everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co host Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich Vila. We are in the aftermath of a very big decision by the Supreme Court which struck down affirmative action in higher education admissions. This is a big ruling with a lot of impact. We’ve written a series of stories on this ruling. I would say that most business schools have come out with statements that basically say they are in favor of diversity and that it’s important to the learning experience in their schools, but have been rather vague as to how they’re going to proceed in the wake of this Supreme Court decision. And some schools have had to deal with this for some time. For example, in California, affirmative action has been banned for a number of years and even an attempt to reverse that by a vote had failed. So Caroline, what’s your immediate reaction?

[00:01:14.290] – Caroline

Well, I understand that the legal arguments are very complex and that there is a good argument to say that it is unconstitutional in that affirmative action is discriminating against some group. So I certainly understand that argument and I understand the frustration of certain groups like Asian Americans who feel frustrated that the bar has been higher for them. On the other hand, I think that there’s a bigger issue here of underlying discrimination that is built into the education system and without some sort of affirmative action at some point or at many points, that will continue to be perpetuated and racial injustice in the US. Will continue to be perpetuated. And as the dissenting justices said, the US. Is not a race blind society. And you can’t pretend that education can’t pretend that we live in a race blind world. And California and Michigan have banned affirmative action. And when that went through, there was a drop in enrollment of underrepresented minorities. And despite tremendous efforts to turn that around right, I think California has spent about $500 million on outreach to underrepresented groups to try to drive enrollment upwards for underrepresented minorities. In the universities of California, the most selective university campuses still remain very unrepresentative of society at large.

[00:03:04.970] – Caroline

It is frustrating because I think it is a worthy goal to try and have a diverse school campus. I think it’s true that everybody benefits, right. One of the things that there’s a couple of things that shocked me as a foreigner moving to the US. Eight years ago, and I now have American nationality, but I came here after living in several different countries and originally from the UK. And a couple of things that relevant to this discussion that really shocked me was how segregated the US. Is still, right? And neighborhoods are very segregated still, and therefore schools are still very segregated, and that’s not the case in other countries that are also ethnically diverse. I think the US. Has done a bad job of integrating its population. And so that does affect the education system and it affects outcomes. And another thing that really shocked me, and I think is quite disgraceful is the huge disparities in the public education system. So because I live in a nice neighborhood where my public schools have really generous funding, my kids basically get pretty much like a private education. But in a public school, they have small class sizes, they have different length foreign languages, they have great arts programs, they have great music.

[00:04:35.110] – Caroline

If I drove an hour down the road, I could find schools where the budget is about a third of what my kids benefit from. Right. And they don’t have any of those things that I’ve just mentioned. I do not understand how that is legal in this country. I don’t understand how that is accepted. And of course, therefore, because of that segregation by neighborhood and the disparities in the public education system, the odds are stacked against kids from a very early age. And so colleges are trying to adjust for that. But it should have been done much earlier on, right?

[00:05:20.070] – Caroline

If we had a level playing field throughout the public education system from K through twelve, then the onus would not be so heavily on colleges to try and try and address the imbalance. But that’s a whole different discussion. Trying to address the inequalities in K through twelve.

[00:05:41.790] – John

Yeah, true. Maria, your thoughts?

[00:05:46.200] – Maria

I mean, I’ve been trying to find some silver linings in all of this. And I think one of the positive things is that once affirmative action is effectively removed, then when people complain, when people who have this sense of privilege, this sense of no less obligation, in the sense of, like, well I’m a white, upper class person, and I didn’t get into the college of my choice. And so I’m going to blame it on some quote unquote, less qualified minority. My hope is that that argument will no longer be as valid because now I do think that schools will be able to take things like adversity and things of that nature into account, but it won’t be as obvious. So I think the one silver lining, because I’m just trying to think of a silver lining, is that at least hopefully it will make it a little bit less acrimonious. There will be less of the sense of, okay, well, you minority person are here. This automatic assumption that you don’t, quote unquote, deserve to be here, which is something I have personally encountered. And this idea of like, yeah, you took a spot from someone else who deserves it more.

[00:06:56.150] – Maria

So I’m hoping that at least if we eliminate the formal affirmative action, then hopefully that’ll start eliminating, hopefully some of these things. Although I’m sure that people will always find reasons to be biased against others. But I think Caroline made a really good point. I mean, the, the higher education system has been trying to for generations now, atone for the sins of the public education system and the K through twelve in the US. Right, which is primarily driven by property taxes. So the reason why the better neighborhoods get the better schools is because they have more property taxes. For the most part. That’s usually how it works. And so it’s really kind of sad that when someone is born, it has nothing to do with their effort or their desire. It’s just if they’re born into a lower income to the lower income family, that means they’re probably living in a lower income community, which means they’re probably going to a school that has less funding. And so how do you even escape the gravitational pull of that stratum that you’re born into? And I do think that the US. As Caroline said, they have done a really bad job of trying to truly remedy that.

[00:08:10.010] – Maria

And so I do think that schools are going to need to try to find other ways to account for diversity. One thing that I thought was interesting was that when California banned affirmative action, one of the medical schools, I believe, tried to put in place something that I think they called like, the Adversity scale. And so they weren’t allowed to ask you about your race or your ethnicity, but they weren’t allowed to ask you things like what was your parents household income, perhaps, or what was their level of education, or were you working to provide for your family’s income? These sorts of different variables that get at without asking about race overtly that get at. What obstacles have you overcome? And if you have overcome obstacles, then it’s only fair. If you’re working 30 hours a week at the supermarket to try to augment your family’s income, then obviously those are 30 hours a week that you don’t have to take the AP courses or to study for the SATS. So I do think that we definitely need to, regardless of someone’s race, we’d have to look at what obstacles have they faced? And if those obstacles have had a material impact, an undue material impact on their academic performance, then we cannot judge simply on academic performance alone.

[00:09:25.200] – John

Yes. And this is another area that is gathering more and more attention income. So, Scott Galloway, who we know is a fairly provocative professor at NYU, stern noted after the Supreme Court decision that affirmative action is broadly unpopular. It’s highly vulnerable to legal challenges, it disproportionately helps upper middle class students of color, it pits working class people of different races against one another. And his argument is that financial aid and admissions preference should be given based on income, because, after all, poor students do have a more challenging time applying and achieving high test scores that are so instrumental in admissions in higher education. In fact, there was a survey out that found that one in three Americans supports income based admissions to higher education institutions. And then there was another survey that showed those who agree with income based admissions 68% strongly or 37% somewhat agree that colleges should implement a quota system based on accepting a certain percentage of economically disadvantaged applicants each year. And then there are some people who say, well, if you’re a first gen college student, you should be given a preference over others. So both these other measurements, whether you’re first gen or what your income is, could in fact achieve the same diversity goals.

[00:11:09.370] – John

Of course, they could also be subject to legal challenges in the future, because if they’re mere substitutes for race, as I bet you, some people will be able to show, you’ll have yet another legal challenge to this. And it’s worth noting that the legal challenges were largely brought to light by Asian Americans who felt greatly disadvantaged in the admissions race more than any other, and who really challenged it. What do you think of income or first gen status as a piece of the admissions puzzle?

[00:11:50.270] – Caroline

Caroline well, I think it could be a proxy. My concern is that the US. Is still majority white country, I believe, and the majority of poor people are still white. And therefore it’s not going to be a perfect proxy, right? There’s still more poor white people than poor black people in the US. As Pete Johnson, my colleague Pete Johnson wrote in or contributed to your article. John, the UCS have have tried to incorporate diversity using different methods without being able to use the tick box approach right, to encourage diversity. And I don’t think there is any ideal proxy that will generate the same mix. And as you said, I think that there are going to be groups that are hostile to race based admissions that are going to monitor things very carefully, and they’re potentially going to make life very difficult for admissions officers. There’s potentially going to be litigation, right. If they see that the mix doesn’t change, if they see that the diversity that the schools have currently, if that doesn’t change over time as a result of this decision, then they may bring court cases against the admissions office. And so to what extent then, can the admissions office really seek to maintain diversity if that’s they’re facing legal challenges?

[00:13:26.380] – Caroline

I think that the admissions officers are potentially in a very difficult situation.

[00:13:32.790] – John

And even though this decision was widely anticipated, I mean, no one really thought that this conservative court would uphold affirmative action. It it feels like many schools are caught a little bit flat footed only because the responses have been fairly vague and basically exploratory. At the Kellogg School, Francesca Corneli, the dean, said, basically they’re going to be work to determine how we will comply with a decision while continuing our work to advance diversity, equity and inclusion on our campuses. But determining how and figuring out what to do seems difficult, let me put it that way. Right. I understand that Kellogg and other schools are committed to having diverse classes of an important part of what any graduate education is about. Because after all, people are going to be working in diverse cultures with lots of different kinds of people who share different kinds of or don’t share their own cultural values and bring them to work. And they’re very different in learning how to work with people across the variety of these cultures, languages and beliefs is a crucial part of being effective in the world of work. Maria, what do you say? Is there a substitute to race to ensure diversity?

[00:15:11.330] – Maria

I wish there were, because that would certainly make things a lot easier for all parties involved. I think the one thing that becomes a little bit tricky with using only something like income as a substitute is that the reality is, as any statistic about something like, say, police brutality against African Americans shows, that the color of one’s skin does, unfortunately, impact even one’s ability to move freely and walk down the street minding one’s own business. In some cases, sadly enough, and so someone’s income is not going to whether someone is if someone is white, they are not going to face that sort of automatic, visceral discrimination that I think people from different races might face. And so in that case, the income level, while certainly a pretty strong proxy for Adversity, is not the only proxy. And because I think it’s such a shame, right, because the United States has just sort of kicked the can down the road for 200 years now of, okay, what are we going to do? Well, the next generation will figure it out. And so now all of these ghosts of our country’s past are coming home to roost.

[00:16:28.580] – Maria

And because things were not done aggressively to squash some of these things generations ago, now we find ourselves in the situation where we are. So I definitely think that income is a great place to start, right? First gen. Absolutely great place to start. But I don’t think that it captures fully some of the challenges that people from different racial groups face.

[00:16:50.720] – John

Yes. And it should be pointed out that this Supreme Court decision is occurring at a time when overall minority numbers have declined at four of the top ten MBA programs and at 20 of the top 30. We have a story on this as well, which you can look at. So even before the decision, you have minorities deleting US MBA programs falling. In fact, two thirds of the top 30 have reported declines. So it’ll be interesting to see in the data a year or two from now the full impact of the decision. I’m assuming that it will basically accelerate the decline as it has in Michigan and in California, where these bans had been in place for years. Which is sad news, really, because everyone deserves an equal opportunity to get a great education and to move forward. We do think that higher education is an equalizer of sorts and a real great tool to climb the socioeconomic ladder. And being denied the opportunity to go to a great school and get a great education will have a meaningful impact on generations of people, really. So I am also hopeful that schools will figure out a way around this.

[00:18:17.220] – John

Right. Caroline?

[00:18:18.850] – Caroline

Something that I think is quite interesting, John, is that when you look at the Supreme Court, three members of the Supreme Court were beneficiaries of affirmative action. Right. And Justice Sotomayor has been very forthright about that in her proclaiming that she was a beneficiary of firmative action and that she got into Princeton despite not having equivalent scores to some of her classmates, and yet she graduated top of her class. Right.

[00:18:50.320] – Caroline

So case in point of somebody who might not have got in otherwise and was clearly in the right place at the end of the day. I also thought it was very interesting that they’ve carved out military schools. Right. So the fact that military schools are not subject to this ruling means that they do recognize that diversity in leadership is critical. Right.

[00:19:19.960] – Caroline

So why is that critical for the military, but it’s not critical for government or for business or for any other institution or function, right. As one of the justices says, well, clearly the court has decided that affirmative action is okay for underrepresented minorities as long as they’re destined for the bunker and not for the boardroom. I found that rather bizarre that they’ve carved that out, because that is clearly a recognition of the importance of diversity in in leadership roles.

[00:20:00.350] – John

Yeah, that’s very true. That’s ironic, in fact.

[00:20:04.510] – Caroline

Yeah, it’s it’s very ironic. So so I hope that schools will find ways to continue to promote diversity. I think that schools will end up having to invest a lot more in their outreach efforts. And as you said, California spent vast sums of money on these outreach efforts to try to generate more applications and bring in candidates from underrepresented groups. And so I think that schools will end up having to do the same.

[00:20:34.880] – Maria

Right.

[00:20:35.070] – Caroline

They’re going to have to put a lot more money into that.

[00:20:39.340] – Maria

I’m so glad that Caroline brought up the example of Sonia Sotomayor, because it got me thinking about my own story. And it was so interesting, because when I was in high school, I thought I had prepped for the SATS. I had maybe looked at a couple of practice questions, and I think relative to perhaps perhaps some of my peers, perhaps I had studied more when I got to Princeton and I met everyone else, and I realized, oh, my gosh, I had been so naive. Right. I had had no idea just how much time and effort and how many resources had gone into preparing everyone else. So what happened was that later, when I applied to business school, now, this time, I entered that process with a lot more sophistication. And this time I actually really studied and I took practice tests and I would quiz myself and take I would do little problems on my morning commute and my evening commute to and from work. And so the result was that when I was applying to college, my SAT scores were below the average, but marginally below the average. Marginally below the average. And yet when I applied to business school, my GMAT scores were notably above the average, at least for the class at the time.

[00:22:03.770] – Maria

And so one of the things about my own personal story here that is so chilling to me, that is so scary to me, is that in both cases, it was the same me, it was the same brain, it was the same raw intellectual horsepower. The only difference was one of savviness and understanding what was required. And so one of the things that I think is kind of chilling about the argument that, well, these admissions should only be based upon test scores is that I personally am an example of the difference that a little bit of, I don’t know sophistication or knowledge of the process can make. And second of all, I think on this podcast we have spoken so many times about how MBA admissions is a holistic process. And there’s a reason for that. It’s not just because it sort of sounds politically correct to do, but because business schools are trying to admit people who are going to go out into the world and do well in some sort of leadership or managerial capacity and the skills that are needed. There might be some overlap, obviously, between being intelligent and being a good leader, but it’s not a completely overlapping circle, right?

[00:23:28.450] – Maria

And so we’ve all met people, I think, who are very good at academic settings or are very skilled at filling out multiple choice scantron forms. They don’t do scantrons anymore, but you know what I mean. And yet these are some people who are geniuses, perhaps by that metric, but then they go out into the business world and they cannot work with others. They are very bad teammates. They argue with everyone and everything around them and so they get fired time and time and time again. I think we’ve all seen examples of that. And so that’s why the business schools have long used a holistic process, because they know this. And perhaps one of the upsides about COVID was that because those initial at home tests were so buggy, it led to perhaps probably, I think for the first time, test scores being either optional or you can get a waiver for the test and sort of making that more of an accepted way to run your admissions office, hopefully in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. That is a trend that will now continue because now there’s been it would not be an experiment to do it that way right now.

[00:24:44.970] – Maria

There’s been at least some sort of precedent where admissions offices have let in people perhaps without a test score or with some other metric submitted in lieu of a test score, and they’ve seen how those people have succeeded in the programs. And so my hope is that that is just a trend instead of just being a temporary thing because of COVID Perhaps that is something that will continue.

[00:25:09.650] – John

Going forward and even beyond the actual effects of the decision. You also wonder, to what extent does a ruling like this discourage minority candidates from even trying to apply to an elite business school or an elite school of any kind? There is this. The psychological impact of it could be as great as the actual impact. If you’re out there and you’re a minority student, don’t be discouraged. If anything, be motivated to go and go for it more than ever before, because that’s really important. You don’t want to see even fewer people in the pool to begin with who can have a great education and really benefit from one.

[00:25:58.150] – Caroline

And we’re already getting those questions from candidates who are from those backgrounds and are asking, is it going to make it hard for me to get in?

[00:26:05.820] – Maria

Right.

[00:26:06.140] – Caroline

So those concerns are already being expressed.

[00:26:10.630] – John

It will discourage a lot of people and persuade them not even to try, which is a shame. Really is a shame. And I’m glad. Of the three justices that you mentioned before who were beneficiaries of affirmative action, you didn’t mention Clarence Thomas. Thank you for not doing that.

[00:26:33.550] – Caroline

Good old Clarence Thomas. He’s not your favorite justice, John.

[00:26:39.230] – John

No, I’ve never met him at one of the elite clubs that he’s a member of.

[00:26:43.250] – Maria

Yeah.

[00:26:43.890] – John

Never really given him any money or allowed him to stay in one of my homes. But hey.

[00:26:51.330] – Maria

I find that when it benefits somebody else, it’s unfair affirmative action. But if you manage to achieve an elite position, it’s because you did it on your own merit.

[00:27:02.670] – John

Hallelujah.

[00:27:05.110] – Maria

Sure is interesting how someone’s judgment and perspective changes as to whether or not it’s benefiting them or someone else.

[00:27:12.360] – John

So true. So there you have it. I think the takeaway here is we’ll see how schools actually deal with this. I do suspect that they’ll put other measurements in place to try to at least maintain or at least diminish the impact of the ruling on their efforts to craft a diverse class of candidates in their programs. And again, I’ll just say it again, if you are in this minority class, do not feel discouraged. Apply. Be motivated to apply. You deserve to apply and to be considered fairly. And you shouldn’t be dissuaded from doing so because a conservative court ruled against affirmative action. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
The Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision
Maria |
July 13, 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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