Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley is home to many of the most famous venture capitalists
Finding An MBA Program For VC Career
Venture capital and private equity are notoriously difficult fields to enter.
Having a foundational education in these fields, however, can help.
Ilana Kowarski, a reporter at US News, recently wrote about how applicants can select an MBA program that can teach solid fundamentals for a career in in VC and private equity.
The Name Matters
Experts say when it comes to these fields, prestige of your school matters—a lot.
“The challenge in today’s market with many of the venture capital firms or private equity firms, when they go out to do their recruiting, is they’re trying to recruit from top business schools,” James Cassel, co-founder and chairman of investment banking firm Cassel Salpeter & Co, tells US News.
Crunchbase News analyzed roughly 4,500 US and Canadian investment partners (individuals associated with a particular investment firm who have made at least one investment on behalf of those firms) and found that VC professionals tend to be affiliated with “elite and exclusive” schools.
Check out the numbers below from Crunchbase News.
Among the top 10 feeder schools to the investment partners career path, seven out of the eight Ivy League schools are included. Other prestigious schools, like Stanford, MIT, and University of Chicago, are also represented.
While attending a prestigious school isn’t a sure path towards VC, these numbers show that it definitely helps.
Diversity In Business Disciplines
Having a solid foundation in finance and accounting is fundamental to VC, but experts say applicants should seek out schools that excel in multiple business disciplines.
“I think being well-versed across a spectrum of industries and problems is very, very helpful,” Patrick Mullane, the executive director of HBX, the online education portal of Harvard Business School, tells US News.
In an article for Inc., six VC’s outlined essential skills one should demonstrate in order to be considered for a partner role. They included:
- Being able to raise money.
- Solid networks of Limited Partners.
- Domain experience (and with any luck, in a sector the VC partners find exciting).
- Prior investing track record.
- Strong access to high quality deal flow.
- Relationships with seasoned, all-star serial entrepreneurs.
- Ability to help portfolio company founders with their biggest operational challenges.
- Understanding if a company has the ability to grow and scale given its team, the marketplace, the financial composition and the vision for the product or service.
- Commercial judgment and the ability to find an exit.
- Reputation in both the founder and investor communities.
- Long-term vision and ability to see opportunities and gaps in the market.
Learn How To Successfully Expand A Company
Outside of coursework, it’s crucial to demonstrate experience in growing a company. At the same time, it’s essential to have work experience that is relevant to VC.
“Startup experience is definitely relevant,” Kelly Hoey, Angel investor, speaker, and strategist, writes for Inc. “Corporate or startup or accelerator experience could be relevant but it depends on the VC firm. Different firms have a different ‘lens’ through which they would judge their interest in such work experience and some of it all depends on what ‘gaps’ the partner team at a VC fund believe they need to fill. A non-investor role with angel group or family office is least relevant unless it’s for an administrative position. Corporate roles are relevant only to later stage investors.”
Linda Darragh, a clinical professor of entrepreneurial practice at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and the Larry Levy Executive Director of the Kellogg Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, says—above all—students should get some experience learning how to actually grow a company.
“At Kellogg, we focus on a growth and scaling track,” she tells US News. “While much media hype continues to focus on ‘launching’ new ventures, real value is created in actually ‘growing’ them.”
Sources: US News, Crunchbase News, Inc.
Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman
MIT Creates New College For AI
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology just landed a huge donation to fund a new college of artificial intelligence.
The new MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing is backed by a $350 million foundational gift from Schwarzman, who is the CEO and co-founder of Blackstone, a leading global asset manager, Forbes reports.
“As computing reshapes our world, MIT intends to help make sure it does so for the good of all,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif notes in a statement. “In keeping with the scope of this challenge, we are reshaping MIT. The MIT Schwarzman College of Computing will constitute both a global center for computing research and education, and an intellectual foundry for powerful new AI tools.
A Hub For Artificial Intelligence
The Schwarzman College of Computing will serve as an interdisciplinary hub for work in fields like computer science, AI, data science, and other related fields.
According to MIT, the college will “reorient MIT to bring the power of computing and AI to all fields of study at MIT, allowing the future of computing and AI to be shaped by insights from all other disciplines.”
Additionally, the college will create 50 new faculty positions—nearly doubling MIT’s current staffing in computing and AI.
More importantly, however, this donation is a statement.
“With the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing’s founding, MIT seeks to strengthen its position as a key international player in the responsible and ethical evolution of technologies that are poised to fundamentally transform society,” according to a press release. “Amid a rapidly evolving geopolitical environment that is constantly being reshaped by technology, the College will have significant impact on our nation’s competitiveness and security.”
The Largest Single Donation From Schwarzman
Schwarzman’s contribution represents the single largest single donation he’s ever made. Schwarzman, who is 71, has an estimated net worth of $13.6 billion, according to Forbes.
Schwarzman has made a number of contributions over the years including a $100 million donation to fund a Rhodes Scholar-like program at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The program, Schwarzman Scholars, will educate future global leaders in China.
He has also donated $150 million to Yale University, his alma mater, to fund the Schwarzman Center, a world class campus center that is set to open in 2020, according to Yale.
Reif, MIT’s president, says the donation will help to educate students in hopes of creating a better world.
“Just as important, the College will equip students and researchers in any discipline to use computing and AI to advance their disciplines and vice-versa, as well as to think critically about the human impact of their work,” Reif says in a statement. “With uncommon insight and generosity, Mr. Schwarzman is enabling a bold agenda that will lead to a better world. I am deeply grateful for his commitment to our shared vision.”
Finding A Program In Operations Management
If you’re looking to get into fields like management and consulting, you might want to consider specializing in operations management as an MBA.
Ilana Kowarski, a reporter at US News, recently spoke to some experts on why operations management is crucial and how applicants can identify a strong operations management program.
Why Operations Management is Critical
Operations management, according to Investopedia, is “the administration of business practices to create the highest level of efficiency possible within an organization.”
In other words, it’s about taking materials and labor and converting them into goods and services that can delivered as efficiently as possible with maximum profit.
And it’s a job that’s critical to nearly every company.
“Operations are critical to ensure firms’ ability to deliver value, thus lying at the core of all firms’ strategies,” Soo-Haeng Cho, an associate professor of operations management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, tells US News.
For MBA students, skills in production-oriented operations management can be highly marketable to large firms.
“No organization can survive in the long term if it cannot supply its customers effectively,” Mehmet AKARCA, a production section manager at TEMSA—one of Turkey’s leading automotive companies—says in a LinkedIn article. “And this is essentially what operations management is about – designing, producing and delivering products and services that satisfy market requirements. For any business, it is a vitally important activity.”
Find A Program That Teaches How To Manage
When it comes to finding a program in operations management, it’s important to seek out ones that teach you how to manage people and not just how to crunch numbers, experts say.
“Many people might think that you’re just dealing with things and machines, but really it’s all about the people,” Elliott N. Weiss, a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, tells US News.
According to Thomas Roemer, executive director of the Leaders for Global Operations program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, operations management is all about “effectively advocating for a product or process improvement ideas.”
To do that, operations managers need to learn how to “create buy-in with both senior management and labor,” Roemer tells US News.
In that way, it’s especially important that students seek out programs offering project-based learning opportunities with real companies to get hands-on experiences.
Data Is Everything Now
Another important quality of an operations management program is a curriculum that teaches artificial intelligence, machine learning, and business analytics.
With companies, like Apple and Google, rolling out new technology in industries like automated driving, it’s crucial for operations managers to have a solid understanding of artificial intelligence.
“Everything is measured all the time, and there is a wealth of data there that we need to start exploring,” Roemer tells US News.
Knowledge of Intellectual Property
Experts say a strong program in operations management will include some discussion of intellectual property issues too.
Intellectual property can be especially helpful in protecting aspects such as trade secrets or business ideas as an operations manager, Bill Elkington, the chair and president of the Licensing Executives Society, says.
“It’s important to realize that 80 percent of the equity value of a publicly traded company today is in intellectual capital,” Elkington tells US News.
Sources: US News, Investopedia, LinkedIn
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