Using An MBA To Do A Startup + The New GRE & GMAT
ApplicantLab |
October 5, 2023

In this episode of Business Casual, our hosts will discuss two important and relevant topics surrounding MBA programs today. First, they will explore the significance of MBA programs as incubators for business ideas and showcase the success of MBA startups. This discussion will encompass the diversity of ideas and the global locations where these startups are thriving. Second, the hosts will delve into the recent changes in the GMAT and GRE admission tests, with a specific focus on the shorter duration of these tests. They will also address the implications of these changes for test-takers and how the new scoring system for the GMAT may impact applicants.

Overall, this episode provides valuable insights into the value of MBA programs for aspiring entrepreneurs and sheds light on the evolving landscape of admission tests.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.210] – John

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Business Casual, the weekly podcast of Poets and Quants. I’m John Byrne, the editor of P. Q. And with me today, as always, are my co hosts, Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Maria, as you all know, if you’re listeners of this podcast, is the founder of Applicant Lab and a Harvard MBA. And Caroline is an INSEAD MBA, but also the former Managing Director of Admissions at INSEAD and the co founder of Fortuna Admissions. We’re going to talk about two things today. Number one is an MBA program, a great place to incubate a business idea. And number two, we’re going to take a look at the new accelerated shortened test for admissions, the GRE, which has now gone live and thousands of people have already taken it, and the new shorter GMAT, which will be available to be taken on November 7. So, right around the corner, and we’ll talk about what you can expect from those two tests. I want to talk about MBA startups because this past year, 19% of the graduating class at Stanford started a business which is extraordinary. More commonly, it’s something like 5% at other business schools.

[00:01:29.920] – John

Stanford has always been on the high end and every year one of the things that we’ve done for quite a few years now is to take a look at the top 100 MBA startups of the year. And we do this by going to each of the schools and asking them to identify startups that have been launched in recent years. And then we go, we find out how much money these startups have raised, largely from venture capitalists and angel investors. This year, two INSEAD startups are at the top of the list. Gorillas, which is a grocery delivery service, has raised almost $1.4 million. Cap Chase, a fintech firm from INSEAD, has raised nearly a million. In fact, out of the hundred startups on the list, INSEAD has ten and those ten firms have raised more than 2 billion dollars. So you probably know if you’re interested in starting a business and you tell someone, oh, I’m going to do it in a business school, you know what they’re going to tell you. Take your money that you would spend on tuition and use it as your seed capital to launch your business. Don’t waste the time or the money to do it in a business school.

[00:02:50.220] – John

Caroline, what would you say to that?

[00:02:53.340] – Caroline

Well, John, obviously I would say that that’s bad advice. Of course, at business school, you’re going to get a lot of knowledge and skills and network that will minimize the risk, I think, in launching your business. Although I would say I wouldn’t necessarily launch it while you’re at business school. And I know some schools discourage that because it’s just difficult to have a very intense day job as well as a very intense full time MBA program to juggle at the same time. But it’s certainly a great place to develop your plan and get feedback and have access to an incredible network that can be a fantastic resource and source of funding and so on. We often hear criticism of business schools and MBA programs, particularly coming out of places like here in Silicon Valley, and it doesn’t add value if you’re going into a startup. But I think the numbers that you have in this article really contradict that. It’s incredible to see that nearly 20% of Stanford’s graduating class now start their own venture. I mean, that’s huge, right? And also we’re looking at the number of people who start a business when they come out of business school.

[00:04:13.380] – Caroline

But of course, there are far more people who, in the longer term, start a business. Right. Not everyone is able to launch their business straight out of business school because they may need to go and work for a consulting firm or a bank or a corporate to pay off their business school loans initially. And a lot of people then go into an entrepreneurial business sort of 510 years later. So business schools are incredibly entrepreneurial communities. And I think the schools have a lot of the top schools, offer incredible programs, electives courses. INSEAD she mentioned has a wonderful entrepreneur in residence program where you can get advice from people who really have that experience in the trenches and that’s invaluable to have access to that and get feedback in a safe environment. Where you can develop your idea, maybe build partnerships, partner with people who are your classmates, and also generate ideas that you might never have thought of. One of the things that your article highlights is the value of the diversity that you get in a classroom like INSEAD and the incredible exposure you get to ideas from all over the world that you might never have thought of.

[00:05:34.620] – Caroline

So that is also something that people draw on and people start businesses that wouldn’t have been on the horizon and on their radar screen before they went to business school. It’s a wonderful environment, I think, to be able to sort of cultivate your entrepreneurial ambitions. And it’s wonderful to see how many successful startups are coming out of business school. And it’s changed a lot. Right? I mean, that was not necessarily the case sort of 1020, 30 years ago. It has grown tremendously, and business schools have really cultivated a wonderful ecosystem that supports entrepreneurs. And it’s great to see that this is being so successful.

[00:06:25.370] – John

Yeah, it really is. The top 100 MBA startups that we cite in this article have raised a combined 9.2 billion. That’s the highest number total number of amount raised in the nine years that we’ve been doing this every year since 2015. Maria, your thoughts?

[00:06:46.930] – Maria

Yeah, I agree with Caroline. I think that, first of all, business school, for people who never dreamt of becoming entrepreneurs, business school does provide a great launching pad for eventual entrepreneurship. I think the statistic is something like 50% of HBS grads eventually go on to start a company at some point in their careers. But even when you’re at school, if you’re looking in the shorter terms of launch to launch something, you might meet a co founder, you might meet someone to bounce ideas off of. You might meet someone who gives you the opposite, who stress tests your idea. And they say, well, actually, I was working at Netflix prior to business school and that’s a terrible, like, this is why you shouldn’t even pursue this idea. So sometimes even getting that sort of a feedback might save you several years worth of pain and suffering. You have this hive mind from so many diverse backgrounds which can actually be such a benefit as opposed to being if you were to join simply a startup incubator where you would be surrounded primarily by startup people and tech people. They might have a very valuable lens, but maybe one or two very specific lenses through which they look at your business idea versus at an MBA program.

[00:07:56.300] – Maria

You’re going to get people from all over with all kinds of backgrounds to really stress test that idea. And a lot of programs really offer fantastic opportunities for you to actually, in a structured way, explore a potential business idea. One of the things that I was really happy to see within the top programs or the top startups on this list were Columbia Business School and UCLA Anderson. I will routinely tell people, I will say this until the cows come home, that if you want to start a business, UCLA Anderson is actually one of the best programs you should look at. Because in their second year, they have something called the business creation option, where you can spend that entire year for course credit, starting a business. So it’s not just something you would do in your spare time through the entrepreneurship center. It’s actually a course and it’s modeled after some of the top tech accelerators. So I was delighted to see, for example, that that’s a school that I think is they always punch above their weight class, in my opinion. And I was delighted to see a number of UCLA Anderson names on the list of the top 15.

[00:09:03.330] – Maria

So I don’t know, I think that there’s always quantitative data. You might say, well, I don’t know if I feel that business school is the right path for me to start a business, but the numbers don’t lie. I mean, this $9 billion worth of funding is not chump change. So I think the market is speaking, the investment community is speaking with their dollars. And so they certainly seem convinced that these are good and solid ideas coming out of business schools. So hopefully that’s enough to convince even the most doubtful skeptic.

[00:09:35.550] – John

The other thing about them is sort of the diversity of ideas that are being generated. These are not dating app companies. They are pretty sophisticated enterprises. Six of the top 15 are in fintech. There are several in biotech, ecommerce, real estate, childcare, automotive, car sharing, consumer goods, real estate. It’s pretty amazing. The list, and I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that many business schools now are trying to connect their graduate and undergraduate students at other university departments and schools with business school students. So it’s not just a bunch of MBAs getting together and doing their own thing, but in fact they’re finding partners in schools of engineering and computer science and medicine and law and launching companies with them from a multidisciplinary point of view. So that really adds a lot. In some cases, these startups actually commercialize discoveries that have been made on campus by others and yet are just laying there for the taking. And that’s often a very big source of it. And the truth is, look, yeah, you could take the money you would save from the tuition that you pay and use your seed capital and use that as seed capital.

[00:11:06.160] – John

But the truth is, what do you know about accounting, finance, strategy, marketing, operations? What do you know about truly leading a team and getting people to collaborate with each other? Never mind not really having a natural network of people of guinea pigs even to test your idea out, or having mentors like faculty who are serial entrepreneurs who can guide you along the way and help you pivot from one thing to the next. Because oftentimes your initial idea really needs to be cultivated and nurtured along and rethought. And that’s what a great business school entrepreneurship program can, you know, just piggybacking on what Maria and Caroline said. Schools in the past quarter of a century have devoted massive resources to entrepreneurship largely because so many students are interested in it. So even among the students who don’t launch a business right away, there is always in the back of their mind, yeah, this is something I would love to do sometime in my life. And then there are many people who launch it as a side hustle where you’ll take your job, your traditional mainstream MBA kind of job, but on the side you’ll nurture along a business and see how it goes.

[00:12:24.740] – John

And if it really starts taking off, then maybe you leave your job. And one thing that Maria pointed out, of course, is even if your startup fails, and obviously the failure rate is high and much lower, probably for MBA startups, incidentally, you have the MBA to fall back upon, which is not a bad thing. Now in many of the schools have in UCLA’s case, a sort of capstone course where you can either work for a company on a consulting team or you can start your own company. So you’re getting credit for your startup, academic credit, along with all the support and help and access to funding in many cases because there are many competitions at different schools that allow you to practice your ability to deliver an elevator pitch and your ability to therefore gain access to capital to fund your business. Of the businesses that we’ve highlighted here Caroline, are there any that really caught your eye?

[00:13:28.410] – Caroline

Well I was interested to see that INSEAD had highlighted some that are addressing issues of climate change and incredibly interesting ones around the world. So for example, there’s one that it’s an aquaculture startup called Good Tom which apparently means good shrimp in Vietnamese and they’re trying to change how farming is done across Southeast Asia by empowering farmers to be more efficient, sustainable and profitable. I thought that was very interesting and actually when I graduated from INSEAD I worked with the International Finance Corporation and one of our projects was working with Seaweed farmers in Indonesia. So that really jumped out of me as an interesting and exciting business. And then there’s one that is called Prono which is a CO2 removal company. So that’s obviously a very important area to explore. We place a lot of hope in those types of ventures to save us from climate change. So I’m thrilled to see that some INSEAD graduates are focusing on that and something that I would just add as well John is so as you know my husband is a venture capitalist and what he always emphasizes when he’s assessing an opportunity is he looks at two things, right?

[00:14:54.190] – Caroline

So he’ll look at the idea and see how viable that is and then he looks at the team and the quality of the team is really important because they know that as you said, likely things will change. You may have to completely change your business model at some point, right. You have to be very nimble as a startup and the market can change very quickly or everything can you may get due to competitive pressure, you might have to change your plan very quickly. And so whilst they are looking to evaluate an idea, they know that the idea might have to change. What they care about very deeply is the team, right? And the quality of the founders and they’re backing those people as much as they are backing the idea that they’re working on. And so if you have an MBA from a top business school, those investors know that you have had a really solid education that gives you the credibility that you’ll be able to tackle pretty much any issue that comes up because you have that breadth, that really solid foundation that you’ve gained during that business school program. So it gives them some security and some comfort that you bring a lot to the table if you’ve got that top notch business school.

[00:16:25.210] – Caroline

I think when you’re thinking about showcasing your idea to potential future funders then having that credibility and that business school education can be really powerful.

[00:16:36.930] – John

Yeah, totally. Maria, any of these stand out for mean?

[00:16:42.030] – Maria

I think the diversity of topics is something that really stands out for me. But know, for me, some of the fintech ones really stood out. But one thing that I also wanted to highlight is the diversity of locations, right? I mean, up until, I don’t know, recently, there was this idea that if you wanted to build a startup, you had to go to Silicon Valley, maybe New York City for Silicon Valley. But looking at the locations for some of these, I see Berlin, Mexico City, Jakarta, Singapore. Even Lahore, Pakistan. So one of the things that I think is really exciting about this list and why I think everyone should check it out is that it shows you not just the breadth of ideas, but the breadth of geographies. And that’s very exciting to me. I think there’s an acceleration of globalization in terms of access to capital and the ability to launch your business anywhere. So I thought that was really interesting.

[00:17:33.010] – John

Yeah, definitely. So if you want to check it out, go to Poets and Quants and you’ll see our annual story on the top 100 MBA startups of the year, and you’ll have a look at some of the ideas and some of the people behind them and the challenges that they’ve had to face in launching their businesses. Now, a lot of big news here for the current applicant class, particularly those who intend to apply in round Two and Round Three, and then after that are the new admission test. GMAT and the GRE both have undergone a major revamp and are much shorter than the earlier tests that were taken. In fact, the GRE takes now almost half the time you can take it in. Really, it’s only 1 hour and 58 minutes, which is remarkable. And the new GMAT, which will be available on November 7, you can take in 2 hours and 15 minutes. The launch date for the GRE was September 22. And on that day, thousands of people took the test for the first time. And these organizations largely reduced the length that it takes to take the test by eliminating questions. So the new GMAT, for example, knocked out a whole bunch of quant and verbal questions.

[00:19:12.450] – John

Same is true of the GRE. And in fact, in some cases, the new GMAT even eliminated sections. For example, there’s no longer an analytical writing section in the new GMAT, and the new GRE reduced that section from two essays to one. So that’s how they’ve been able to squeeze the time out of the test. The new test at the GRE cost $220 to take. The new test at GMAT cost $275 to take. And the big question, really, for admission officers is how valid will the new test be? Both the Graduate Manager of Admission Council and Educational Testing Service, which administers the GRE, insist that there’s no change in the validity or rigor of the test. So what are the advantages, Caroline, you think, of having a shorter test to take?

[00:20:18.150] – Caroline

Well, I’m sure that the schools are hoping that it will be a less intimidating test for candidates and therefore encourage more people to be willing to take it. I’m sure that the test administrators have invested a lot of time and effort in making sure that the validity is still there. Right. As you say, these tests are a very important predictor of academic capacity for business schools. Of course, it’s one part of the picture, right? It’s not something that’s going to get you in or and it’s not something that will automatically get you eliminated either way, but it is still an important part of the picture for most schools. And so I think that validity is expected to be there. But the schools will definitely be very carefully tracking that right to see if there is any change in the correlation of how people have performed on those tests and then how people perform academically on the programs. But the GRE is essentially, I think it’s more or less the same test. They’ve just cut it back, so it’s not as long. And the GMAT, they’ve actually changed some of the sections, so it’s a bit more of a fundamental shift in that test.

[00:21:42.240] – Caroline

So I would imagine that the schools will be carefully monitoring those, that there’s a new section in the GMAT. They’ll be looking to see how that performs. As we’ve mentioned before, I think in some ways it’s a shame that they’ve eliminated the essay. Write at the time when artificial intelligence means that schools may be wondering to what extent candidates have actually written their own applications or not. You wouldn’t be able to get AI to write your response to an essay or I think it would be much more difficult to use that in the context of a GMAT test. So that might have been a mistake. Time will tell. But I understand that they were trying to cut it back to make it more appealing in some ways, or at least less of a huge obstacle for people to get through.

[00:22:39.330] – John

That’s true. And I should remind everyone that one of your colleagues, Caroline Judith Silverman hadera has written a piece on this called What’s Changing in the New GMAT and GRE? You should look that up on the Poets and Quants site as well to give you an overview. Maria, do you like shorter tests?

[00:23:00.170] – Maria

Who doesn’t like shorter tests, right? Come on, teacher’s pet. What kind of a question is look, I think I think the shorter test, hopefully, as Caroline said, hopefully it’s going to be a lower barrier to entry. It’s going to be perceived as it’s going to encourage more people to apply if it is perceived as being easier. I think one of my quibbles that’s happened since the first time we sort of addressed these newer tests when we first found out about them, is I just realized recently that the GMAT has issued how it’s going to be scoring its new revised GMAT. So the GRE, as Caroline pointed out, they’re just eliminating some questions. They’re taking the same test but just making a shorter version of it. And so the scoring scale is going to be the same. So presumably a 163 and quant on the old one should be equivalent to a 163 and quant on the new one. The GMAT, on the other hand, has changed the scoring in a way that for me, from a marketing perspective, god bless these people. I think the psychometricians are amazing, but I think the marketing people at GMAT are just not really capturing.

[00:24:08.990] – Maria

For those of you who don’t know. Now, instead of going in ten point increments, the scores go in five point increments and INSEAD of going so from like, say, 200 to 800, it goes from 205 to 805. Okay, so great. More granularity. Perfect, right? Who doesn’t love more granularity? It lets you really get down into the weeds and it eliminates some of the pressure of going from like a 730 to a 740. However, unfortunately, they published a new percentile ranking chart. And for example, because of this new scoring system, it’s going to become a lot harder to get a score that quote unquote, sounds good. So to give you an example, a 98 percentile on the GMAT in the past would get you about a 750 on the old GMAT exam. But now on the GMAT Focus edition, it’ll get you around a 700 flat. So I am concerned. People have been asking me, should I wait for the new GMAT? Should I take the old one? And it’s an interesting conundrum because on the one hand, the newer GMAT, because it’s an unknown quantity, there might be some lenience there, right? Because the schools have not yet had a chance to really wrap their heads around it.

[00:25:16.870] – Maria

If you’re a little bit nervous about your score, maybe there’ll be sort of a pass this year or kind of like, well, maybe they didn’t do great, but it’s a new test and we’ll just kind of look the other way. However, if you are a good test taker, I think you should take the old GMAT because a 98 percentile 750 sounds way better than, say, 695. And I’m also concerned about for generations, the GMAT score has been what a lot of people in the business world have used as a shorthand way to assess an MBA student’s academic talent. And so if I’m an older banker and I’m hiring people, new associates to join my program, and they say on their thing, well, I got a 695 on the GMAT, I’ll think to myself, that’s not terrible, but it’s not great. But that would have been a 750 before. So it’s almost like even if you are a really strong test taker, your score is going to seem lower. So the psychometrics of what the test is testing might be solid, but the psychology of what that lower score might mean to the market. I don’t know, guys.

[00:26:30.200] – Maria

I don’t think it was a great if they’re going to have a completely new test, they should have gone with a completely new scoring system. Or if anything, made it easier to get a higher score. So then that way you feel better about yourself. I’m just sort of spitballing here, but I was flummoxed when I saw the fact that a 695 used to be a 750. Am I alone? Maybe I’m just sort of railing away here in my little cubicle, but I don’t know, guys.

[00:27:08.710] – Caroline

It might cause some panic from test takers who don’t realize what’s going on here.

[00:27:13.360] – John

Yeah, I hadn’t realized that, actually. That’s really remarkable because you’re right, the magic number for many applicants over many years has been like 700. Anything above 700 and you feel really good about yourself because, after all, it’s a damn good score when the average score on the GMAT is something like, what, 546, 550, something like that. But now this kind of gets thrown out the window on some level. A lot trickier.

[00:27:47.950] – Maria

A 700 used to be 87th, 88th percentile, and now it’s 98th percentile.

[00:27:56.090] – John

Yeah. Wow.

[00:27:57.950] – Caroline

It’s kind of going against the American trend of grade inflation.

[00:28:01.440] – Maria

I know. What happens to everyone gets a trophy.

[00:28:04.430] – Caroline

Yeah. That’s not fair.

[00:28:06.890] – John

Yes, I will. You know, you raise a good point about the marketing, because that could put more people in the GRE camp more than anything else. Never mind the writing requirement that the GRE is maintaining that the GRE itself, after I interviewed them, believes is a major advantage to their test for business schools. And they claim that the new Data Insights section on the GMAT is already covered in their Quant section, and they maintain maybe they need to change the name of it to reflect that, which is what they told me. But this scoring thing is a big issue, frankly. I’m glad you raised it, Maria.

[00:28:59.830] – Maria

And it’s sad because presumably the Focus Edition was launched entirely to counter the GRE. Right. I mean, you got to imagine that that’s the main it was not. That was the main driver. So gosh g way.

[00:29:15.010] – Caroline

Maybe a bit of an own goal there.

[00:29:17.570] – Maria

Yes.

[00:29:18.850] – John

Fascinating. Now, how did you discover this? Because I missed it.

[00:29:28.870] – Maria

It’s only because I was chatting a week or two ago with a GMAT tutor. I can’t take credit for discovering this. I think people in the GMAT tutoring community, because obviously they’ve had to be keeping on top of this way more than those of us in the broader admissions field have had to. Right. They’ve been obsessively following this understandably so. And so he’s the one who brought it up and was like, this is so sad.

[00:29:57.710] – John

Wow. Yeah. I think this is a major marketing mistake, frankly. That’s fascinating. Well, there you have it, everyone. Maybe there needs to be an MBA startup that creates a third new test seriously.

[00:30:16.910] – Maria

There we go. That’s a startup we’re starting, guys. Let’s do it.

[00:30:20.260] – Caroline

Better test than a new ranking, right?

[00:30:22.700] – John

There you go.

[00:30:24.790] – Maria

New rankings and new tests. And to the moon.

[00:30:28.650] – John

And of course, I might say that because of this revelation by Maria here, you can expect a story on this over the next day or two on Poets and Quants, because I think this is fascinating. Wow.

[00:30:43.930] – John

All right, everyone, thanks for listening. It’s John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You have been listening to Business Casual.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Using An MBA To Do A Startup + The New GRE & GMAT
ApplicantLab |
October 5, 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.

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