By David
Klein David Klein is CEO and co-founder of CommonBond . Previously,
Klein worked in consumer finance at American Express, as director of
strategic planning and business development, where he led a team that
managed a $250 million annual portfolio. Prior to American Express, he
worked at McKinsey & Company, where he advised clients in the
financial services industry. Klein graduated from Brandeis University
with a BA in politics, economics, and international business. He is an
alumnus of Wharton Business School and served on the board of the Bronx
Charter School for the Arts in New York City. @ DavidXKlein CEO and
co-founder, CommonBond @ DavidXKlein
“If I want to start a company, do I really need to go to business school?”
I get this question a lot as a CEO and co-founder who started a company from business school.
The real question, however, should be: “What do I have to do
to maximize my chances of success as an entrepreneur?” For some, the
answer will mean going to business school, and for others, it won’t. (Editor's note: The author's company funds and refinances loans for business school and other graduate programs.)
For me, business school was the right choice. It proved to be fertile ground to incubate
and accelerate an idea.
While I can’t speak for how other entrepreneurs might have
benefited from business school, here are the ways that it proved to be a
consequential stomping ground to start my company, CommonBond,
a marketplace lending platform that lowers the cost of student loans
for borrowers and provides financial returns to investors:
1. Professors with world-class esteem and perspective:
Despite my never having taken a class with him while at Wharton, professor Adam Grant
is an example of someone I have been able to lean on when heading into
an important negotiation or reflecting thoughtfully about any resistance
the company is facing. Grant is something of a burgeoning national
treasure, with the runaway success of his 2013 book Give and Take.
But before he began shaping the national conversation on how we think
about success, he was Wharton’s highest-rated professor who remembered
every one of his students’ names while citing research seamlessly into
conversation–-all of which he still does.
2. Alumni who are successful and generous:
When Warby Parker co-founder and co-CEO Neil Blumenthal came back to
Wharton in August 2011 to speak to a hungry, wide-eyed group of students
during preterm, his story strengthened and further inspired my desire
to build a company with a strong social mission. Following the talk, he
was gracious enough to accept an invitation to coffee, and we began an
ongoing dialogue. A year later, he opened up Warby Parker’s headquarters
in New York City for my company’s first offsite. I could think of no
better setting to inspire my team. Our companies share several things in
common, not least among them the fact that we have strong social missions.
3. Classmates who become co-founders:
A few months into school, I had a finished business plan but no
co-founders. I wanted to take CommonBond to the next level and thought
co-founders would allow for that. I met Mike Taormina and Jessup Shean,
who would become my co-founders, through the normal serendipity of
business school and am grateful I did. In professor Ethan Mollick’s
entrepreneurship class, I had learned that the optimal number of
co-founders when starting a company is three. I also learned that
finding co-founders with complementary skills and backgrounds can help
you build a company faster and more efficiently. I got to benefit from
both of those learnings. Business school is an incredibly conducive
place to find high-quality co-founders.
4. Clubs that connect like-minded entrepreneurs
:
Some of the smartest and grittiest people on campus were active members
of Founders’ Club, which brings together people who share the goal of
launching a startup. I first learned about the club at Wharton’s Welcome
Weekend in April 2011 from Davis Smith, who would go on to become
co-founder and CEO of Baby.com.br, one of the most respected startups in
Brazil, and is now co-founder at Cotopaxi. Hearing his entrepreneurial
story and the power of plugging into an entrepreneurial community
inspired me to join the club he founded. The Founders’ Club’s weekly
workshop-style get-togethers significantly helped me solidify my
entrepreneurial knowledge base and mindset in evaluating good businesses
from bad. On the personal side, I am fortunate to call many of my
fellow Founders’ Club entrepreneurs both good friends and continual
inspirations.
5. Practical resources to get you the extra mile:
As part of the Wharton Social Venture Fund--an organization that taught
me how to think like a venture investor--I got access to Professor
David Wessels’s ingenious ability to turn complex topics into easily
understandable pieces. It was also through WSVF that I learned about and
was encouraged to attend intensive training sessions on advanced
financial modeling and structuring. Between Wessels’s involvement in
WSVF and the intensive trainings, I probably learned more about advanced
structured finance than I did in any of my courses. A year later, my
company closed its first alumni-backed student loan fund. And just this year, we closed our first securitization.
In my experience, business school provided an insanely
fertile environment for entrepreneurship. And while business school is
by no means a prerequisite for entrepreneurship, it can provide a
valuable experience for aspiring or imminent entrepreneurs.
Michael Dell, Ben Huh, Kip Tindell & Others: Why Entrepreneurs Do Not Need MBAs
Want to enter corporate America? Then an MBA
will probably help you. But if you are not interested in climbing the
ranks of a large-scale organization, and more interested in starting
your own company, than an MBA might not be necessary. Dell CEO, Michael
Dell, The Container Store CEO, Kip Tindell, GoDaddy's Bob Parsons and
several other entrepreneurs explain why.
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