# Why I need an MBA to be a startup founder

*Permalink: https://www.emmalawler.com/posts/why-i-need-an-mba-to-be-a-startup-founder*

*Published: 2021-12-14*

People with MBAs have a bad reputation in the world of tech startups. Elon Musk [devalues the skillset](https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/364969) (“they don’t know how things work”).  Peter Thiel famously [pays young people to drop out of school](https://thielfellowship.org/) to start companies and [doesn’t like to hire MBAs](https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-ama-2014-9) (“extremely herd-like thinking and behavior”).   
  
The world’s most successful tech founders [never even finished their college degrees](https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-steve-jobs-tech-executives-never-graduated-college-dropouts-2019-5). Just to list a few: Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook, James Park: Fitbit, John and Patrick Collison: Stripe, Jack Dorsey: Square and Twitter, Steve Jobs: Apple.  
  
An MBA is not a requirement for any career, and it’s even frowned upon if you’re aspiring to be a tech entrepreneur. I knew this, and I still applied to business school with the sole focus of being a startup founder after graduation.  
  

![](https://a.postcard.page/rails/active_storage/blobs/proxy/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBBbU1oIiwiZXhwIjpudWxsLCJwdXIiOiJibG9iX2lkIn19--e04c381a41004b86d9898ab02ec4697f993fb907/514386f6-089a-4149-bb52-2b2eb0dd0c89_1600x600.png)
  
  
What patterns do you see in that [list](https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-steve-jobs-tech-executives-never-graduated-college-dropouts-2019-5) of entrepreneurs who dropped out of school to find huge success in tech? They’re all men, and most still had the pedigree of being accepted to a school like Harvard or Stanford.   
  
When I started researching women who made it to a similar level of success, the pattern was slightly different. Most finished college (yes, there’s still a strong Harvard contingent), and many have Master’s degrees or MBAs. Sheryl Sandberg: Facebook and LeanIn, Jennifer Hyman: Rent the Runway, Katrina Lake: Stitch Fix, Anne Wojcicki: 23andMe, Michelle Zatlyn: Cloudflare.   
  
It’s also just harder to find examples of successful woman entrepreneurs since only [2% of Venture Capital funding goes towards female founders](https://www.fastcompany.com/90655295/why-arent-more-women-starting-vc-funds).   
  
—  
  
After my co-founder and I sold Moonlight in 2020, I decided business school was next.  I spent the next year working as a technical product manager, taking online business classes, learning GRE/GMAT math, and hustling to get enough scholarships to offset the risk of my entrepreneurial plans.  
  
Chicago Booth offered me a spot in their full-time class of ‘23 along with the Herman Family Fellowship for Women Entrepreneurs. I gratefully accepted. Their flexible curriculum is more amenable to entrepreneurs than other schools, and includes the opportunity to compete in the New Venture Challenge with investment of up to $1M for winning startups. Companies like Simple Mills, GrubHub, and Braintree had come out of the program.  
  
One quarter in, I’ve learned invaluable lessons I wouldn’t have prioritized on my own time. I used learnings from entrepreneurial discovery, microeconomics (this required teaching myself calculus 😭), and statistics classes to validate or disprove each of my startup ideas. I learned the math of insurance prices, how it serves as income distribution in some ways. I understand more about credit card fees, the cost of calculated consumer risk. I got access to Nobel Prize-winning economists, world-renowned entrepreneurs, and meaningful experience as a VC investor while interning at Chicago Ventures.   
  
More than anything, I’m gaining access to a prestigious world I’ve never had access to in the past. I’m spending my time with world-class investors, executives, academics, lawyers, consultants, bankers, and aspiring politicians. I can feel the doors of access and privilege opening up around me.  
It would have been easier to stay in my comfortable bubble. I could have kept my job, skipped the rigorous MBA vetting process, then coded and launched a lean business in my free time. But I believe the humility of resetting as a student, the time away to truly learn, and the access unlocked by a top business school will lead to a more impactful long-term outcome for me as a founder.  
  
I intend to increase the 2% of Venture Capital funding that goes towards female founders as an entrepreneur myself, and eventually as an investor. I expect to report back that this MBA was one of the things that increased my chances.