The Intelligent Entrepreneur: How Three Harvard Business School Graduates Learned the 10 Rules of Successful Entrepreneurship
For the college entrepreneur, being accepted to the the Harvard or Stanford Business Schools is the Holy Grail of Opportunity. Each year, thousands apply and only a few are accepted into these elite programs. The graduates are assured lucrative job offers and contacts for which others would kill. This book follows three HBS graduates who chose another popular route, entrepreneurship. These three turned down the six figure salaries for the opportunity of making something big on their own.
I picked up this book in the hopes of gleaning some information to feed my desire of someday having my own company. What I came away with was unexpected discouragement. I am sure this wasn’t what the author went for, but after tracing the route of these three Harvard graduates, I got the distinct impression a) I could only make it if I attended the Harvard Business School and b) if I didn’t create a multimillion dollar company in three years, I wouldn’t be a successful entrepreneur. The stories were interesting, the advice pertinent, but the loftiness unattainable.
The three chosen subjects each started Internet companies: The Ladders, Military.com and Bluemercury (an online cosmetics retailer). Each were successful through the tenacity and strength of their founders. Each survived through their contacts made at HBS. In fact, one of the lessons I learned from the book, intentional or not, is the value of high-powered contacts, both for advice and cash. It is discouraging to anyone who hasn’t gone to the elite schools to ever hope of meeting these kinds of players.
The chronicle of their respective business startups was very educational and interesting. The book is very engaging, the stories very well written. It is obvious Murphy is a reporter. His style and experience shows through – I cared about their problems and successes. I cheered inwardly as Marla made the shift from sinking online retailer to successful brick-and-mortar boutique. I applaud the success they achieved and grumbled at the poor people management decisions and bad behaviors.
I came away from the book with a fresh look at the hyper-charged life of the successful big entrepreneur, with multimillion dollar investments and even larger payoffs. What I didn’t find was much value for the small entrepreneur. It felt that the message was “if you want to be successful, you better go to Harvard or Stanford”. That just isn’t an option for me, so I was left wondering if I had any business even considering starting my own business. That wasn’t what I was hoping to find.
I think what the Harvard degree does is convince you to become a bigger gambler. Yes, they got access to big amounts of cash, but then they needed to be all that more successful in order to break even. I can speak from experience that it’s a lot easier to meet a $7000 monthly operating cost than a $7,000,000 monthly cost. They may be able to go big, but they have to take on a much bigger risk–and they have to get a bigger pay-off, because they have to pay off those loans from GOING to HBS. I sometimes wonder if these “top-notch” business programs include moral desensitization and ego inflation, because I don’t think I’d be able to sleep playing with such large amounts of other people’s money.
The bottom line, though, is that you need three things to build a successful business: 1) a viable business model and plan, 2) the funding to get started, and 3) the ability to execute successfully on that model and plan. I suspect that some sort of business school will help you with #1, going to a prestigious business school will help with #2, and the ability to start bigger will help make sure you have enough people on hand to succeed with #3.
However, we’ve all seen people who never even paid any attention to #1, managed to squeak out #2, and through sheer strength of will manage #3, and yet became successful. So obviously you don’t need to graduate from a big, prestigious school to succeed in business. I think going through some level of business training increases your chances of business success. But the only reason to go to a Harvard or Stanford is to prepare to be successful in business at a much higher level.
You or I probably couldn’t successfully tackle a multi-million dollar startup, but not just because we lack that Harvard education. We might be capable of it, but our risk tolerance is too low, and our goals in life are, frankly, incompatible with that sort of endeavor. But there are many smaller business opportunities we could successfully take on and succeed at. The trick is finding one that matches our particular circumstances and priorities, and then having the patience to get all the pieces in place to begin.
It sounds to me like this book, however interesting it may be, failed. The cover, if I make it out correctly, promises to teach you how following the 10 Rules of Entrepreneurship can make you successful. Since you make no mention of that, it sounds like they spent too much time on following the stories of these entrepreneurs and not enough time discussing those 10 Rules. If you didn’t come away knowing the 10 Rules and how they can help any size of business, then the author was too much of a reporter and not enough of a teacher/analyst.
Excellent analysis, as usual. You hit it right on the head. I couldn’t remember one of the ten rules other than be open to changing direction, as illustrated by Marla when she switched from an online only retailer to a brick-and-mortar only store when the competition got too tough on the Internet. Thanks for the insight, Thom.