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MBA Skills that Add Value to Your Startup main image
In my previous blog posts, I have discussed the two main benefits from doing an MBA at a top business school for the purpose of starting your own business – reputation and network. This post will focus more on the specific skills, techniques and lessons that I learned during my MBA Iand found just as valuable while developing my startup, Flat-Club from an idea to a growing company.
Business Time Management
This post will focus more on the specific skills, techniques and lessons that I learned during my MBA that Iand found just as valuable while developing my startup, Flat-Club from an idea to a growing company.
The hardest challenges of running a startup are deciding what to focus on, and also deciding what you should not focus on. There are so many good ideas to pursue, but not enough resources, so choosing what to do and what not to do is a key skill.
Similarly, an MBA is a very intense program.You need to select which events to attend each day, how to allocate time between course assignments and recruitment, as well which of the many events you’ll attend (including networking events, company presentations, club activities etc.). In my first term I had, on average, three events to choose from every evening. Making these choices and learning how best to utilise utilize my time turned out to be a key skill in managing Flat-Club.
Soft Skills
In my finance career, there were certain skills that I had not needed as much before I launched my startup. These included things such as speaking and negotiation, which were outside of my comfort zone. Doing an MBA allowed me to improve upon these skills through my participation in one-on-one workshops with top professionals.
Another skill we looked at was negotiation. As you can imagine, negotiation skills are essential for running a business so learning and then honing my technique has definitely added quantitative value to Flat-Club and will do so again in the future.
These are just two examples of the soft skills that, while in the process of learning them, took me outside my comfort zone. Not being phased when you are expected to perform some new action for the first time can be invaluable especially alongside a desire to learn and improve. These are lessons that can be learned just like riding a bike or driving a car, and once they have been acquired, they will always be there for you to use when you need them.
Marketing for Startups
Having a good idea is only the beginning of the journey. After that it's all about the execution and ensuring that you have the right marketing plan. This is especially important when challenging well funded competitors. At this point some important business school lessons can be very useful. For me, the following two simple frameworks were particularly beneficial:
Segment – Target – Position
This classic business school marketing framework helped me discover the Flat-Club opportunity. Looking at the short-term accommodation market it appeared that there was very little room for new trends and innovation -- there are well established and even better funded competitors. However, having divided the market in to the different segments I identified a key target market – alumni and students of top universities. Here I felt I had a significant advantage and there seemed to be an unfulfilled need. From there, it was important to develop the right positioning, and suddenly I had an interesting opportunity. I had discovered a niche market which is large enough to be attractive and which has key specific needs, marketing channels and differentiators.
The second framework I used and am still using everyday is:
Who is my customer? How would they hear about me? Would they use the product?
Every day I ask myself these questions and encourage the team to do so too. It's important to focus. We’re not targeting the whole world; we know exactly who our customer is. Therefore every day, with everything we do, we need to think first about if it is going to target our customer. Secondly, we need to think about where our customers are and what current channels we can use to market our product. And lastly, would they use the product? We constantly ask for feedback so that we can improve the service.
Is it necessary to go to business school to study this? Probably not, it's all freely available on Wikipedia and online resources, but the thing is that most people will never read it, and of those that do, how many are using it while getting feedback from experienced professionals? The ability to make mistakes in the classroom, rather than with your first business, cannot be underestimated. Starting your own business is enough of a learning curve on its own, so to have already learnt the first few lessons gives you a great boost from the beginning.
About Nitzan Yudan
Nitzan Yudan, 33 years old, lives in London, graduated with an MBA at London Business School, and has 12 years’ experience in finance, IT, and tourism. Nitzan is the founder of Flat-Club – short term renting within social networks. Flat-Club helps alumni and students of top universities find short term accommodation (from 1 night up to 6 months) with others they trust from their existing networks Flat-Club was founded in November 2010 with 5 flats in London and within its first year grew to 2,000 rooms and apartments in 20 cities and a team of 15 from 12 nationalities as part of the London Business School Incubator.
This article was originally published in
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It was last updated in
MBA Skills that Add Value to Your Startup
By QS Contributor
Updated UpdatedIn my previous blog posts, I have discussed the two main benefits from doing an MBA at a top business school for the purpose of starting your own business – reputation and network. This post will focus more on the specific skills, techniques and lessons that I learned during my MBA Iand found just as valuable while developing my startup, Flat-Club from an idea to a growing company.
Business Time Management
This post will focus more on the specific skills, techniques and lessons that I learned during my MBA that Iand found just as valuable while developing my startup, Flat-Club from an idea to a growing company.
The hardest challenges of running a startup are deciding what to focus on, and also deciding what you should not focus on. There are so many good ideas to pursue, but not enough resources, so choosing what to do and what not to do is a key skill.
Similarly, an MBA is a very intense program.You need to select which events to attend each day, how to allocate time between course assignments and recruitment, as well which of the many events you’ll attend (including networking events, company presentations, club activities etc.). In my first term I had, on average, three events to choose from every evening. Making these choices and learning how best to utilise utilize my time turned out to be a key skill in managing Flat-Club.
Soft Skills
In my finance career, there were certain skills that I had not needed as much before I launched my startup. These included things such as speaking and negotiation, which were outside of my comfort zone. Doing an MBA allowed me to improve upon these skills through my participation in one-on-one workshops with top professionals.
Another skill we looked at was negotiation. As you can imagine, negotiation skills are essential for running a business so learning and then honing my technique has definitely added quantitative value to Flat-Club and will do so again in the future.
These are just two examples of the soft skills that, while in the process of learning them, took me outside my comfort zone. Not being phased when you are expected to perform some new action for the first time can be invaluable especially alongside a desire to learn and improve. These are lessons that can be learned just like riding a bike or driving a car, and once they have been acquired, they will always be there for you to use when you need them.
Marketing for Startups
Having a good idea is only the beginning of the journey. After that it's all about the execution and ensuring that you have the right marketing plan. This is especially important when challenging well funded competitors. At this point some important business school lessons can be very useful. For me, the following two simple frameworks were particularly beneficial:
Segment – Target – Position
This classic business school marketing framework helped me discover the Flat-Club opportunity. Looking at the short-term accommodation market it appeared that there was very little room for new trends and innovation -- there are well established and even better funded competitors. However, having divided the market in to the different segments I identified a key target market – alumni and students of top universities. Here I felt I had a significant advantage and there seemed to be an unfulfilled need. From there, it was important to develop the right positioning, and suddenly I had an interesting opportunity. I had discovered a niche market which is large enough to be attractive and which has key specific needs, marketing channels and differentiators.
The second framework I used and am still using everyday is:
Who is my customer? How would they hear about me? Would they use the product?
Every day I ask myself these questions and encourage the team to do so too. It's important to focus. We’re not targeting the whole world; we know exactly who our customer is. Therefore every day, with everything we do, we need to think first about if it is going to target our customer. Secondly, we need to think about where our customers are and what current channels we can use to market our product. And lastly, would they use the product? We constantly ask for feedback so that we can improve the service.
Is it necessary to go to business school to study this? Probably not, it's all freely available on Wikipedia and online resources, but the thing is that most people will never read it, and of those that do, how many are using it while getting feedback from experienced professionals? The ability to make mistakes in the classroom, rather than with your first business, cannot be underestimated. Starting your own business is enough of a learning curve on its own, so to have already learnt the first few lessons gives you a great boost from the beginning.
Nitzan Yudan, 33 years old, lives in London, graduated with an MBA at London Business School, and has 12 years’ experience in finance, IT, and tourism. Nitzan is the founder of Flat-Club – short term renting within social networks. Flat-Club helps alumni and students of top universities find short term accommodation (from 1 night up to 6 months) with others they trust from their existing networks Flat-Club was founded in November 2010 with 5 flats in London and within its first year grew to 2,000 rooms and apartments in 20 cities and a team of 15 from 12 nationalities as part of the London Business School Incubator.
This article was originally published in . It was last updated in
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