Whether you intend to start a company immediately upon graduation, after gaining a few more years of professional experience, or perhaps you expect to take over a family business, an MBA can prepare aspiring founders for the diverse operational tasks, people skills, leadership acumen, and emotional intelligence needed to endure the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life. To secure an admission, you must persuade the admissions committee of your preparedness and potential to succeed as an entrepreneur. To earn a spot in a top MBA program, aspiring entrepreneurs must tell convincing stories about their vision, values, intentions, and goals related to their startup plans through their application essays and interviews. This blog shares some ideas about how people with entrepreneurial goals can take a strategic approach to crafting believable and relatable stories that can strengthen their MBA profiles.
What’s the Problem?
The central motivation of most entrepreneurs is to start a business in response to an unmet market need. Accordingly, you will want to be as clear as possible about the problem(s) your startup aims to solve. Be prepared to communicate how you identified this problem and how you will be able to leverage it to create business opportunities. If you expect to start your business directly after graduation, you should be able to include specifics about your intended product or service when you speak about your plans. However, if you hope to start a business several years down the road, you can explain your ideas in broader terms, with more of an emphasis on motivation. More on that below.
Know What You Need
An MBA can serve many purposes for future entrepreneurs, spanning skills growth, networking, mentorship, market entry, and more. Business schools appreciate it when applicants show strong self-awareness of their strengths and areas for improvement, so demonstrate program fit by creating a link between your needs and the program’s strengths when writing essays. Make it easy for the admission committee to understand why this program is an essential step on your entrepreneurship journey by connecting these dots.
Short-Term Goals
Your short-term post-MBA goals will go one of two ways: starting a business right away or rejoining the workforce to add vital skills and knowledge with an eye toward applying them to a startup in the long-term. Those who plan to get started on their business should describe their business plan, funding, market entry, and other aspects of the business in their application essays and interviews. This will involve pointing out strengths and existing resources as well as the areas for improvement that the MBA will solidify.
For those who expect to gain more professional experience before starting their company, it will be imperative to show a deep understanding of their intended career path along the way to entrepreneurship. For example, those who expect to start a tech business often target a product management role prior to setting off on their own venture. The reason for this is that the product manager is often referred to as a “mini CEO” because of how far-reaching their job responsibilities tend to be, and this role will require a person to learn about many different aspects of the product and the business.
Long-Term Goals
People who see entrepreneurship as a long-term goal generally fall into one of three categories: starting a company after gaining experience (mentioned above), taking over a family business in the mid- to long-term, or pivoting to work on a social cause. As a general rule, business schools look favorably on applicants who expect to be involved in their family business. These applicants may have already worked in the business and are seeking formal leadership training or have had their own career but expect to return to the family business. If you find yourself in this situation, it would be wise to talk about the state of the business, your future vision for the company, what it needs to get there, and what you need in order to augment the business in this area when you (re)join it. Common examples of this often include some form of digital transformation to modernize some or all of the existing business practices or creating new product lines.
Another possible long-term entrepreneurship outcome is a career pivot towards a personal passion or social cause. This path is often chosen by people who have successful and lucrative careers, but whose passion lies in some aspect of their lives other than their current work. A career banker or engineer might one day hope to become active in environmentalism or education or affordable healthcare, for example. When prompted by application essay questions, this is a great opportunity to highlight one’s personal values and talk about a desire to make contributions to a community or to society as a whole.
[Conclusion]
Entrepreneurship is not a career path to be taken lightly, as it involves considerable financial outlay, strategic planning, and emotional and intellectual fortitude. That’s why the MBA applicant with entrepreneurial dreams must take responsibility for proving their abilities and preparedness during the application process. Applying oneself to this task is sure to be a meaningful part of establishing one’s own company.