Hello, everyone. The message below is from a reader who started his career as an IT consultant and then transitioned into a role as a founding member of a start-up in his home country. Now, he’s ready to apply to business school and he has questions about how he should proceed and how to address his start-up experience during the application process.
As you’ll notice, this reader’s email goes into the long list of people who decided not to pay attention to my repeated statements of not liking crazy-long emails and, for some reason, it struck a nerve with me (probably because I’ve recently been going through the many long emails that have languished for months in my Inbox). The guy did send a follow-up email (which I’ve included below) to apologize for sending me such a long email, but, by then, 2-3 weeks had passed and a first impression had already been made. In fact, in my first draft of the response to his email, I had spit some venom at him (to the point that I looked back at what I’d written and said “daaaaaaaaaaaaaamn!!!!!”), but I softened those words quite a bit when I re-read his follow-up apology email. I guess the big takeaway here is that one never gets a second chance to make a first impression.
——
PC wrote (first email):
“Hi Marquis
First of all, I’d like to thank you for the continuous blogging and advice you give for wannabe-MBAs. I’ve seen a lot of MBAs who blog a lot during their time at bschool and stop doing so once they get into the corporate jungle, because of lack of time or maybe it no longer fits into their scheme of things. But your selfless approach really amazes me at how much time you spend reading mails such as mine and patiently reply to them, inspite of being wicked busy. Apart from what Iam asking below, I’d really like to know what makes you keep going in the blogosphere. If at all possible, and if I reach to a stage where you are, I can push myself to keep going and contribute something myself.
So, let me begin my rants. My questions are two-fold here : One, reg MBA and the other reg my career, both intertwined.
I am presently the [REMOVED --> his position at a start-up], and also a partner in the firm. It started out quite strangely. I was working as an IT consultant in the US couple of years ago and my friend, who’s the other partner, asked me to interview some guys for the software company he was starting as he wasnt technically sound but had a vision [REMOVED]. Once, I chose the right people, he wanted me to provide guidance about best-practices in development and project mgmt. The more I worked with them , the more excited I was and drawn into working with them. So I finally, I called it a day at a very lucrative career [REMOVED] and start from ground-zero last year. Becaue of his groundwork, the initial months were good with generous revenues and we grew to 12 people but it really hit us during the end of last year where our revenues dried out and we had to lay off 2 employees this Feb. We struggled a lot and currently have the company at break-even.
As I looked at what I need to learn, from the past 5yrs of my experience(1yr in the start-up), I realized that marketing, strategy, opportunity analysis and networking are key things to run a company, so I began contemplating about an MBA to reach the next-level[REMOVED --> his GMAT score]. With the money we make here, it’s not possible for me to come back after my MBA given the $150k loans. [REMOVED --> his immediate future plans]
But entrepreneurship gave a new leash of energy to my career where I want to start a company sometime down the path. I don’t dream of starting another billion-dollar firm or invent ground-breaking technology, but I want to be on my own once I have the burdens cleared. So to get there I want to lean more about product mgmt, marketing and general strategy and mgmt. So I decided to pursue a career in product mgmt or business development after my MBA (which could do good both ways – financially and career-wise) and have a start-up again down the road.
Now my questions are
1) When Iam leaving a start-up that I helped found, not come back to it and instead pursue a corporate career, the most realistic reason is that I can’t repay my loans. But how do I put it forward to the AdComs and interviewers at b-schools. What are the reasons that I can give for leaving MY start-up? Only loan payment doesnt sound to be a good argument. Could I just say what I felt when I thought of an MBA and leave out the “coming out of start-up” aside?
2) We haven’t generated millions in revenues but had a decent figure [REMOVED --> initial annual revenues for start-up] during the past year, enough for us to break-even. So, when I speak of my accomplishments, [REMOVED --> the amount in US dollars] seems to be to neglibile of a figure to flaunt about. In this start-up scenario, is the experience worth more than the numbers or the numbers still important and can prove to be decisive?
3) With my career choices, I chose to go to either Kellogg, Haas, INSEAD, Tuck or Ross. I belong to the over-crowded Indian IT male but I do have a fair share of accomplishements. With my profile(given below), am I aiming too high or are my expectations reasonable enough.
[REMOVED --> his educational and professional profile details]
Given what I myself go through daily, I do understand how busy you could be. It took me a week to compile this e-mail, so I know that answering my questions would take sometime for you. But I would be indebted to you, if you could give me some advice reg. the above questions
And just for the sake of anonymity, I would appreciate if it’s ok for your to not post the colored text( the ones enclosed in [] ) in your blog.
Many thanks for your help
–
Regards,
Proc
PS: An idea, that I wanted to spread in the blogosphere. If all bloggers of your stature and popularity who dont really rely on blogging for paychecks, sign up for Google Ads and lend that money through Kiva (www.kiva.org), it would be a great service. On one hand, you’ll not loose any money as that would come back 80% of the time, and on the other , you’ll be doing a great service to the struggling people in the third world countries.”
——
PC wrote (second email):
“Hi Marquis
Hope you’re doing good.
I’d like to apologize for sending you such a long mail that would’ve made it really difficult for you to read or reply back to. I read through some of your archives that mentioned that you no longer do resume reviews. But, I’d be grateful if you could give some advice on the situation Iam in and what would be the best step forward and ignore the resume and school selection part.
Thanks a lot.”
——
My response:
PC,
I hope this finds you doing well. I know it’s been a couple of months since you first emails, but, given the volume of mail I receive, it usually takes me a while to get through my emails. I’m just now having a chance to get to your message after a couple of months, but I figure that it’s better for me to respond late than never. Anyway, from the sound of your first paragraph, I thought you might have read through several of my old blog entries, which is why I shuddered when I saw the length of your email and the number of potentially in-depth questions that you posed.
The following line from your email was pretty telling: “It took me a week to compile this e-mail, so I know that answering my questions would take sometime for you”…come on, man…if it took you a week to compile an email to me, did you ever wonder whether you might be putting too much into it? Before addressing your questions, my first piece of advice to you is that, when you ask for advice/help from someone that you don’t know in the future, be thoughtful about your request and be respectful of the time/effort it might take to address that request. I did see your follow-up email apologizing for sending me such a long message in the first place (which was cool of you to send, by the way), but I still wanted to mention this and give you this advice anyway. It’s often said that a person can’t unring a bell and that we only get one chance to make a first impression. The last thing you’d ever want to do is to give off the impression that you don’t care about someone’s time when you’re asking him/her for help, right? Think about that one for a little while…
OK, now that I’ve got that out of the way, I’ll get to your questions. In the interest of efficiency, I’m going to give you some quick-hit answers to your questions. It took me so long to read through your email, think through it all, and consider your questions that it just wouldn’t be fair to my other readers for me to delve too deeply into your queries. There’s only one of me, so I’ve got to be mindful of how I spread my efforts around to help the most people. Anyways, let’s get to it…
—
1) When Iam leaving a start-up that I helped found, not come back to it and instead pursue a corporate career, the most realistic reason is that I can’t repay my loans. But how do I put it forward to the AdComs and interviewers at b-schools. What are the reasons that I can give for leaving MY start-up? Only loan payment doesnt sound to be a good argument. Could I just say what I felt when I thought of an MBA and leave out the “coming out of start-up” aside?
–> If I were you, I wouldn’t leave out the idea that you’re “coming out of a start-up” because that’s what makes your story interesting. Given your experiences, it adds a dynamic to you as a candidate that I didn’t have myself and that the vast majority of other MBA applicants didn’t have. Schools are looking to put together a diverse class and the start-up experiences and skills that you’ve picked up definitely qualify as “diverse”. As for your reasons for leaving your start-up, I don’t see anything wrong with you being totally honest about them. The following quotes from your email jumped out at me as your resons for pursuing an MBA:
“I realized that marketing, strategy, opportunity analysis and networking are key things to run a company, so I began contemplating about an MBA to reach the next-level”
“I decided to pursue a career in product mgmt or business development after my MBA (which could do good both ways – financially and career-wise) and have a start-up again down the road”
I don’t see anything wrong with either of these justifications and I know several people who weren’t able to articulate their reasons as well as this at the start of their application journeys. Don’t get me wrong…you don’t have to mention EVERYTHING in your applications…For example, if I were you, I wouldn’t mention the fact that your start-up has experienced struggles as of late and that you know you couldn’t return to it because of your likely student loan burden because neither of them has to be considered relevant to your “Why MBA?” response. Just be honest about why you want an MBA, weave that into your MBA story, and trust that the AdComs and interviewers will understand where you’re coming from when considering your application.
2) We haven’t generated millions in revenues but had a decent figure [REMOVED] during the past year, enough for us to break-even. So, when I speak of my accomplishments, [REMOVED --> the amount in US dollars] seems to be to neglibile of a figure to flaunt about. In this start-up scenario, is the experience worth more than the numbers or the numbers still important and can prove to be decisive?
–> Oooooh, this is a tough one to answer because I’ve never worked in an MBA admissions office and I’m not 100% sure of how one would look at your start-up experience. As such, I’ll just tell you how I would look at it if I were reviewing your profile. I’d say that the actual experiences that you picked up in working with your start-up are more important than the numbers. Through that experience, you’ve learned a tremendous amount about what it takes to build a company from the ground up, which is something about which most of us can only speculate. Besides, the vast majority of entrepreneurs fail at least once in starting companies and your start-up didn’t even fail…your numbers just aren’t off the charts yet. Just focus on what you did in that start-up setting and what you learned in the process. In terms of your B-school apps, I wouldn’t trip too much about the numbers of the company for the time being because it sounds like it won’t be the last start-up venture of your career. This is a topic that you should discuss with other MBA-related folks though because what I’m saying here is my own opinion only.
3) With my career choices, I chose to go to either Kellogg, Haas, INSEAD, Tuck or Ross. I belong to the over-crowded Indian IT male but I do have a fair share of accomplishements. With my profile, am I aiming too high or are my expectations reasonable enough.
–> Based on what you provided about your profile, you seem like a strong MBA applicant, but, as you mentioned, you’re coming from a tough demographic for the B-school process. I wouldn’t say that you’re aiming too high in your target set of schools though. The challenge ahead of you is to find some way to differentiate yourself from the “over-crowded Indian IT male” group and the best way you can do that is to develop a knockout MBA story. I’ve written a LOT about this on my blog, so I’ll leave it to you to hit my archives to find some extensive advice in this area. You seem to have an entrepreneurship streak in you, so that could serve as the foundation of your MBA story and then you’d just build around it based on your experiences and future career goals.
—
I hope you’ve found the above responses to your questions to be helpful. I imagine that you were looking for more details in my thoughts, but, as I mentioned above, it would have taken me too long to provide detailed responses to all of those questions. So, I thought it would be more useful for me to give you a little something on all of them instead of leaving a couple of them blank. If you need additional information and/or perspectives, you might want to approach other MBA graduates to get their answered to your questions. Once you’ve pulled together a broad set of perspectives, you should be able to step back and make an informed decision about how to proceed in your MBA journey. Take care and good luck with your business school applications.
Marquis
P.S. I’m really glad you mentioned Kiva.org in your email because I’m a huge fan of their organization. Kiva’s founder, Jessica Jackley, is a friend of mine from business school and she’s been putting in work on the organization for years. Recently, she’s finally getting the recognition that she so rightfully deserves for her work in getting funding into the hands of people in third-world countries who need it to back their businesses. Hopefully, the readers who see your email posted on my site will hit up Kiva’s website and do what they can to spread the word about it. Regarding your specific suggestion of signing up for Google Ads, I actually am signed up for it, but I’ve never generated any revenue from it so lending those proceeds to Kiva wouldn’t move the needle much at all.
As you’ll notice, this reader’s email goes into the long list of people who decided not to pay attention to my repeated statements of not liking crazy-long emails and, for some reason, it struck a nerve with me (probably because I’ve recently been going through the many long emails that have languished for months in my Inbox). The guy did send a follow-up email (which I’ve included below) to apologize for sending me such a long email, but, by then, 2-3 weeks had passed and a first impression had already been made. In fact, in my first draft of the response to his email, I had spit some venom at him (to the point that I looked back at what I’d written and said “daaaaaaaaaaaaaamn!!!!!”), but I softened those words quite a bit when I re-read his follow-up apology email. I guess the big takeaway here is that one never gets a second chance to make a first impression.
——
PC wrote (first email):
“Hi Marquis
First of all, I’d like to thank you for the continuous blogging and advice you give for wannabe-MBAs. I’ve seen a lot of MBAs who blog a lot during their time at bschool and stop doing so once they get into the corporate jungle, because of lack of time or maybe it no longer fits into their scheme of things. But your selfless approach really amazes me at how much time you spend reading mails such as mine and patiently reply to them, inspite of being wicked busy. Apart from what Iam asking below, I’d really like to know what makes you keep going in the blogosphere. If at all possible, and if I reach to a stage where you are, I can push myself to keep going and contribute something myself.
So, let me begin my rants. My questions are two-fold here : One, reg MBA and the other reg my career, both intertwined.
I am presently the [REMOVED --> his position at a start-up], and also a partner in the firm. It started out quite strangely. I was working as an IT consultant in the US couple of years ago and my friend, who’s the other partner, asked me to interview some guys for the software company he was starting as he wasnt technically sound but had a vision [REMOVED]. Once, I chose the right people, he wanted me to provide guidance about best-practices in development and project mgmt. The more I worked with them , the more excited I was and drawn into working with them. So I finally, I called it a day at a very lucrative career [REMOVED] and start from ground-zero last year. Becaue of his groundwork, the initial months were good with generous revenues and we grew to 12 people but it really hit us during the end of last year where our revenues dried out and we had to lay off 2 employees this Feb. We struggled a lot and currently have the company at break-even.
As I looked at what I need to learn, from the past 5yrs of my experience(1yr in the start-up), I realized that marketing, strategy, opportunity analysis and networking are key things to run a company, so I began contemplating about an MBA to reach the next-level[REMOVED --> his GMAT score]. With the money we make here, it’s not possible for me to come back after my MBA given the $150k loans. [REMOVED --> his immediate future plans]
But entrepreneurship gave a new leash of energy to my career where I want to start a company sometime down the path. I don’t dream of starting another billion-dollar firm or invent ground-breaking technology, but I want to be on my own once I have the burdens cleared. So to get there I want to lean more about product mgmt, marketing and general strategy and mgmt. So I decided to pursue a career in product mgmt or business development after my MBA (which could do good both ways – financially and career-wise) and have a start-up again down the road.
Now my questions are
1) When Iam leaving a start-up that I helped found, not come back to it and instead pursue a corporate career, the most realistic reason is that I can’t repay my loans. But how do I put it forward to the AdComs and interviewers at b-schools. What are the reasons that I can give for leaving MY start-up? Only loan payment doesnt sound to be a good argument. Could I just say what I felt when I thought of an MBA and leave out the “coming out of start-up” aside?
2) We haven’t generated millions in revenues but had a decent figure [REMOVED --> initial annual revenues for start-up] during the past year, enough for us to break-even. So, when I speak of my accomplishments, [REMOVED --> the amount in US dollars] seems to be to neglibile of a figure to flaunt about. In this start-up scenario, is the experience worth more than the numbers or the numbers still important and can prove to be decisive?
3) With my career choices, I chose to go to either Kellogg, Haas, INSEAD, Tuck or Ross. I belong to the over-crowded Indian IT male but I do have a fair share of accomplishements. With my profile(given below), am I aiming too high or are my expectations reasonable enough.
[REMOVED --> his educational and professional profile details]
Given what I myself go through daily, I do understand how busy you could be. It took me a week to compile this e-mail, so I know that answering my questions would take sometime for you. But I would be indebted to you, if you could give me some advice reg. the above questions
And just for the sake of anonymity, I would appreciate if it’s ok for your to not post the colored text( the ones enclosed in [] ) in your blog.
Many thanks for your help
–
Regards,
Proc
PS: An idea, that I wanted to spread in the blogosphere. If all bloggers of your stature and popularity who dont really rely on blogging for paychecks, sign up for Google Ads and lend that money through Kiva (www.kiva.org), it would be a great service. On one hand, you’ll not loose any money as that would come back 80% of the time, and on the other , you’ll be doing a great service to the struggling people in the third world countries.”
——
PC wrote (second email):
“Hi Marquis
Hope you’re doing good.
I’d like to apologize for sending you such a long mail that would’ve made it really difficult for you to read or reply back to. I read through some of your archives that mentioned that you no longer do resume reviews. But, I’d be grateful if you could give some advice on the situation Iam in and what would be the best step forward and ignore the resume and school selection part.
Thanks a lot.”
——
My response:
PC,
I hope this finds you doing well. I know it’s been a couple of months since you first emails, but, given the volume of mail I receive, it usually takes me a while to get through my emails. I’m just now having a chance to get to your message after a couple of months, but I figure that it’s better for me to respond late than never. Anyway, from the sound of your first paragraph, I thought you might have read through several of my old blog entries, which is why I shuddered when I saw the length of your email and the number of potentially in-depth questions that you posed.
The following line from your email was pretty telling: “It took me a week to compile this e-mail, so I know that answering my questions would take sometime for you”…come on, man…if it took you a week to compile an email to me, did you ever wonder whether you might be putting too much into it? Before addressing your questions, my first piece of advice to you is that, when you ask for advice/help from someone that you don’t know in the future, be thoughtful about your request and be respectful of the time/effort it might take to address that request. I did see your follow-up email apologizing for sending me such a long message in the first place (which was cool of you to send, by the way), but I still wanted to mention this and give you this advice anyway. It’s often said that a person can’t unring a bell and that we only get one chance to make a first impression. The last thing you’d ever want to do is to give off the impression that you don’t care about someone’s time when you’re asking him/her for help, right? Think about that one for a little while…
OK, now that I’ve got that out of the way, I’ll get to your questions. In the interest of efficiency, I’m going to give you some quick-hit answers to your questions. It took me so long to read through your email, think through it all, and consider your questions that it just wouldn’t be fair to my other readers for me to delve too deeply into your queries. There’s only one of me, so I’ve got to be mindful of how I spread my efforts around to help the most people. Anyways, let’s get to it…
—
1) When Iam leaving a start-up that I helped found, not come back to it and instead pursue a corporate career, the most realistic reason is that I can’t repay my loans. But how do I put it forward to the AdComs and interviewers at b-schools. What are the reasons that I can give for leaving MY start-up? Only loan payment doesnt sound to be a good argument. Could I just say what I felt when I thought of an MBA and leave out the “coming out of start-up” aside?
–> If I were you, I wouldn’t leave out the idea that you’re “coming out of a start-up” because that’s what makes your story interesting. Given your experiences, it adds a dynamic to you as a candidate that I didn’t have myself and that the vast majority of other MBA applicants didn’t have. Schools are looking to put together a diverse class and the start-up experiences and skills that you’ve picked up definitely qualify as “diverse”. As for your reasons for leaving your start-up, I don’t see anything wrong with you being totally honest about them. The following quotes from your email jumped out at me as your resons for pursuing an MBA:
“I realized that marketing, strategy, opportunity analysis and networking are key things to run a company, so I began contemplating about an MBA to reach the next-level”
“I decided to pursue a career in product mgmt or business development after my MBA (which could do good both ways – financially and career-wise) and have a start-up again down the road”
I don’t see anything wrong with either of these justifications and I know several people who weren’t able to articulate their reasons as well as this at the start of their application journeys. Don’t get me wrong…you don’t have to mention EVERYTHING in your applications…For example, if I were you, I wouldn’t mention the fact that your start-up has experienced struggles as of late and that you know you couldn’t return to it because of your likely student loan burden because neither of them has to be considered relevant to your “Why MBA?” response. Just be honest about why you want an MBA, weave that into your MBA story, and trust that the AdComs and interviewers will understand where you’re coming from when considering your application.
2) We haven’t generated millions in revenues but had a decent figure [REMOVED] during the past year, enough for us to break-even. So, when I speak of my accomplishments, [REMOVED --> the amount in US dollars] seems to be to neglibile of a figure to flaunt about. In this start-up scenario, is the experience worth more than the numbers or the numbers still important and can prove to be decisive?
–> Oooooh, this is a tough one to answer because I’ve never worked in an MBA admissions office and I’m not 100% sure of how one would look at your start-up experience. As such, I’ll just tell you how I would look at it if I were reviewing your profile. I’d say that the actual experiences that you picked up in working with your start-up are more important than the numbers. Through that experience, you’ve learned a tremendous amount about what it takes to build a company from the ground up, which is something about which most of us can only speculate. Besides, the vast majority of entrepreneurs fail at least once in starting companies and your start-up didn’t even fail…your numbers just aren’t off the charts yet. Just focus on what you did in that start-up setting and what you learned in the process. In terms of your B-school apps, I wouldn’t trip too much about the numbers of the company for the time being because it sounds like it won’t be the last start-up venture of your career. This is a topic that you should discuss with other MBA-related folks though because what I’m saying here is my own opinion only.
3) With my career choices, I chose to go to either Kellogg, Haas, INSEAD, Tuck or Ross. I belong to the over-crowded Indian IT male but I do have a fair share of accomplishements. With my profile, am I aiming too high or are my expectations reasonable enough.
–> Based on what you provided about your profile, you seem like a strong MBA applicant, but, as you mentioned, you’re coming from a tough demographic for the B-school process. I wouldn’t say that you’re aiming too high in your target set of schools though. The challenge ahead of you is to find some way to differentiate yourself from the “over-crowded Indian IT male” group and the best way you can do that is to develop a knockout MBA story. I’ve written a LOT about this on my blog, so I’ll leave it to you to hit my archives to find some extensive advice in this area. You seem to have an entrepreneurship streak in you, so that could serve as the foundation of your MBA story and then you’d just build around it based on your experiences and future career goals.
—
I hope you’ve found the above responses to your questions to be helpful. I imagine that you were looking for more details in my thoughts, but, as I mentioned above, it would have taken me too long to provide detailed responses to all of those questions. So, I thought it would be more useful for me to give you a little something on all of them instead of leaving a couple of them blank. If you need additional information and/or perspectives, you might want to approach other MBA graduates to get their answered to your questions. Once you’ve pulled together a broad set of perspectives, you should be able to step back and make an informed decision about how to proceed in your MBA journey. Take care and good luck with your business school applications.
Marquis
P.S. I’m really glad you mentioned Kiva.org in your email because I’m a huge fan of their organization. Kiva’s founder, Jessica Jackley, is a friend of mine from business school and she’s been putting in work on the organization for years. Recently, she’s finally getting the recognition that she so rightfully deserves for her work in getting funding into the hands of people in third-world countries who need it to back their businesses. Hopefully, the readers who see your email posted on my site will hit up Kiva’s website and do what they can to spread the word about it. Regarding your specific suggestion of signing up for Google Ads, I actually am signed up for it, but I’ve never generated any revenue from it so lending those proceeds to Kiva wouldn’t move the needle much at all.
