What they teach you in business school does NOT help you running a software business. In fact, it probably cripples you.
The good news, sort of, is that most businesses are run by b-school principles and values, if not actually by b-school grads. So as a b-school grad running a software business, you won’t be a stand-out; you’ll be limping slowly along with the rest of them.
But what if you want to excel? Hit it out of the park? Then, I suggest, it would be worth your while to go against the grain, ignore the mainstream “wisdom,” learn what makes a software business different from other businesses, and execute on it.
Software CEO’s
Forget about what academics say. Let’s look at some prime examples.
Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison is a co-founder and CEO of Oracle. He’s one of the richest men in America. He didn’t graduate from college, but worked as a programmer. No formal business training.
Bill Gates
Bill Gates is a co-founder of Microsoft. He’s the richest person in the world. He started programming in high school, and didn’t graduate from college. No formal business training.
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg is a co-founder and CEO of Facebook. He’s very, very, seriously rich. He started programming in middle school, and dropped out of college. No formal business training.
And so on
I could go on and on.
Enter the MBA
For some of these companies and many others, MBA types eventually enter and run the company. If you’ve gotten really big and successful and just want to coast along, it’s not a bad idea to hire a fancy-pants nanny to come in and keep your children from getting into too much trouble. Why not? You’ve earned it!
But to start the company? Do you hire the nanny to sleep with your husband to get pregnant so “you” can have kids? Not on purpose, anyway! Starting the company, innovating, doing the heavy lifting of hiring and leading the team and building an exciting new company is not something you hire out to an MBA. What’s worse, the MBA has all the wrong skills and applies inappropriate “management techniques” to getting this crucial job done.
The anti-MBA techniques
It’s far easier to be a programmer and figure out the best methods for building a software company on your own than to somehow un-learn, one at a time, all the stuff you learned in business school that just doesn’t work. In addition, you have to have the discipline to just shelve all the lessons you’re dying to apply that are probably good for most businesses – but are somewhere beyond the left-field fences in terms of a software business.
This is a BIG subject … and I’ve written a book about it! Which I’m going to publish! Soon! Yes, I’ll let you know…
Update: It's available. See here for a description, and here for the book.
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