Desautels MBA Entrepreneurs To Get Funding Boost

Business school students at Desautels Faculty of Management in Canada will receive millions of dollars in funding to support their startup ventures.

A C$2 million donation from the John Dobson Foundation, which supports entrepreneurial activities in Canada, will help fund a new initiative to help entrepreneurs at the business school and wider McGill University. 

The McGill X-1 Accelerator program is an intensive summer program which accelerates later-stage startups toward investment and launch. This year’s program includes eight McGill science or technology businesses.

The donation comes as many business students shun corporate careers in favour of creating their own business ventures. A recently-published survey of MBA alumni by the Financial Times found that nearly one-quarter of MBAs at 50 top-ranked business schools had created startups within three years of graduation. At Stanford GSB and MIT Sloan, more than one-third of MBAs had founded companies.

Leading business schools increasingly are investing in entrepreneurship infrastructure. Harvard Business School (HBS), for example, has more than 20 different courses in entrepreneurship, 30 teaching faculty who specialise in the subject, a startup incubator and a business plan competition that provides US$300,000 annually to student entrepreneurs.

“Fifty percent of our alums will start a business 5-15 years after graduating because they have got the experience and the industry expertise, and can see a problem that no one is addressing,” said Jodi Gernon, director of the HBS Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.

Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou, dean of Desautels Faculty of Management, said that the $2 million donation would “catalyze our community of innovators and entrepreneurs”. The McGill Dobson Centre for Entrepreneurship has offered mentorship to more than 2,200 McGill entrepreneurs, and launched more than 125 successful startups that today employ over 1,200 people and have raised over $100 million in venture funding. 

Professor Gregory Vit, director of the Dobson Centre, added: “Many recent McGill startups have had an important impact on the economies of Montreal and Quebec. This significant gift made by the John Dobson Foundation will ensure that we continue to serve the vibrant entrepreneurship culture at McGill University.”

MBA students making unicorns real

Some business school students are using these support mechanisms to build hugely successful businesses. Grab, the Uber rival in southeast Asia, this week raised US$2.5 billion in investment. The company, now reportedly valued at US$6 billion, was founded by two Malaysia HBS classmates, Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling, in Singapore.

According to analysis by NextView Ventures, a venture capital firm, overall, MBAs have founded 38 ‘unicorns’ — companies valued at or above US$1 billion.

Entrepreneurs have in the past queued up to question the value of a business school education. But many founders trumpet the connections, capital and courses accrued at business school.

Grab’s Tan said in an interview with The Financial Times, that he was heavily influenced by entrepreneurship classes and meetings with people such as Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube, and Eric Ries, the lean startup guru, which opened his eyes to new business opportunities. The money raised from a HBS business plan competition was his “whole bank account”.

Such quotes highlight the fact that an MBA degree is a ticket to a diverse range of careers, entrepreneurial or otherwise.