We did a series of tweets this weekend with real-time comments we were giving on essays, and a theme developed about starting a company as your long-term goal. Here’s one that sparked a lot of pushback interest: https://twitter.com/EssaySnark/status/376084079302545408 Someone asked us about it on GMAT Club. And by coincidence, we also mentioned this in a…
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Nomiracle* says
Good insight!
essaysnark says
Cool, glad it helps!
CelerIP says
When schools DO ask about long-term goals (like Kellogg does on its application form), what time frame should we keep in mind, if 15 years is too long?
Thanks!
CelerIP
essaysnark says
@CelerIP: Half that would be good. It really depends on what you’re pitching (how ambitious, how much of a stretch from here) and how you present it (what your background is and the intervening steps you need to take). Remember that you’re not even going to start the S/T goal until 2016 so keep that perspective in mind.
shreiisc says
Nice insight!
You are right about start-up as a ST goal if one really wanted to be entrepreneurial. But many do not have the experience and resources ( funding, plan) ready by the time they graduate. Shouldn’t it be fine for hesw people to have the start up as a LT goal provided they weave their story accordingly?
But agreed on your point that there would be many trying to portray this!
essaysnark says
Provided they weave their story accordingly.
DanaJ says
Just throwing out my two cents in here, as someone working for a pension fund, i.e. the people who would give an applicant the money for an investment fund:
Unless you are looking to raise a fund with below $5m of external capital, it will be nearly impossible for you to raise a fund. It used to be possible back in the day (2007?), but now investors are a lot more discerning. You will have to explain your strategy, describe your team/organization and, crucially, present a very good track record. You may have finished HBS, Stanford GSB and Wharton all at the same time, but that doesn’t make your potential investors fall in love. Sure, it helps, but unless you have the track record that convinces investors to give you their cash, it won’t happen.
I actually recently worked on two first time private equity funds, raising over $400m each. Those two firms managed to raise this kind of capital because they had a clear strategy that made sense and a solid team already in place (i.e. a spin off) or very nearly completed. What was essential, though, was that the founders of those firms each had more than 12 years of private equity experience.
So bottom line: if you want to raise a fund, that’s all fine and dandy, but you’ll have to build to that for a long time, probably longer than the generally accepted “long term goals” timeframe 🙂
essaysnark says
@DanaJ – THANK YOU! Maybe now these BSers will believe it!!! 😀
Totally useful contribution, greatly appreciated!
EssaySnark
CoreyK says
Hi EssaySnark my situation is somewhat unique.
A bit about my history: I was a product manager and 4th employee of a startup building a media recommendation app for 3 years until we ran out of money. I turned down job offers to try and start my own company. I worked on launching a mobile payments app for a few months before abandoning it and launching a clothing company about a year ago.
My short term goal is to get into venture capital and my long term goal is to found a company tackling a more ambitious problem than making comfortable clothing. Those are my truthful goals but should I just stick with saying founding a more ambitious company for both short term and long term goals? Is it a more appealing narrative for admissions than saying I want to get into venture capital?
essaysnark says
Hi CoreyK – thanks for the question! It sounds like you’ve definitely got interesting experiences to pull on for your MBA apps. We can see how those will easily be leveraged to justify your long-term goals on starting a company, but honestly we are nervous about so much more of what you’ve shared. Not only is VC a very tricky field to target from bschool (especially if you have no pre-MBA experience) but there’s also all sorts of questions that come up when you say that you’ve got an active venture going already. What’s going to happen with this clothing company that you started last year? Depending on your answer for that, then we’d likely have a dozen other different questions come up. So this is nothing except complicated! Lots of moving parts and you’re going to need to handle it carefully. It also depends to some extent on which school you’re talking about, and definitely on how all this is depicted on your resume.
So we would be remiss in issuing a blanket blessing to this; there’s just too much going on for us to be definitive. Yes you’re the type who can totally support an entrepreneurial goal (we actually have another post scheduled to go up on this sometime in the next week or so), and sure, we can see it being potentially viable in different timeframes, and you’re right to be concerned about how a VC goal can be credibly pitched…. BUT! We still come back to our standard advice which is to pitch what you actually plan to do. We most typically see those be successful who are upfront and honest about their actual plans, who aren’t trying to outmaneuver the adcoms by overdeveloping goals that “sound good”. Obviously the goals need to make sense and be viable so frequently some retooling is in order – but the goal of that is to make them more viable, not to try to trick the adcom into going along with something just to give you an admit. So we’re concerned with the question about “more appealing narrative” – we fully appreciate where you’re coming from with that but we do get nervous (tail wagging the dog kind of thing). And we can’t greenlight any of these ideas in a vacuum since there’s so much going on with the entirety of your background and how it will be presented. We can say that yes, you have more options than we often see from wanna-be entrepreneurs (since you’re more than a “wanna-be”) which is awesome, and that means you have choices. But the presentation is all-important and that clearly needs to be watertight and carefully executed.
Not sure that helps…? We are, though, encouraged that you should have plenty of raw material to work with, to fashion a compelling pitch out of, so that’s certainly a very big plus!
EssaySnark
CoreyK says
Thanks so much for the reply! I appreciate it. It sounds like you guys strongly feel that honesty is the best policy even if it isn’t the most appealing.
To answer some of your questions:
I am applying to Booth and Kellogg. Booth has a feeder program into venture capital firms in the Chicago so I don’t think it will be a surprising goal. I have talked to a few VCs that have taken this route through Booth.
Ill be shutting down my current venture when I run out of inventory. I think I can make a nice business out of it, but I have come to the realization that I don’t want to be in the apparel industry for the next 10 years.