You may think I am a hypocrite.
And I can see why you might think that. On this very blog, I have criticized the idea of ”The Path”. The idea that our career should be charted out linearly moving from one step to the next. That there is a “right” way to get into a particular field and that you need to accomplish a certain amount of prerequisites before you are qualified to do something important with your life. I’ve argued that many of these ideas are holdovers from the way the world worked when our parents and their parents were coming of age. That the pieces of advice given to us by career counselors are relics of a time long past.
I’ve argued that the path is a lie in the modern world.
And all that time, I’ve been following one myself. And that is why I am excited to announce that I will be leaving my current job at Rev1 Ventures in the coming weeks to pursue my MBA at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
My Path
I’ve always wanted to get my MBA, and more than that, I’ve always wanted to get it from Wharton. I’ve got rational reasons why that is, but also some that are less calculating. You see, my dad also attended Wharton. And I got to see first hand what a massive positive impact it had on his career. He ended up starting the business that he has now run for over 20 years with another Wharton graduate. His buddies from school are successful entrepreneurs and executives at everything from startups to public companies. When my parents told stories about college, they didn’t tell stories about their undergraduate experience. They told stories about Wharton and the time they spent in Philadelphia. Growing up we would go on vacations with my parents’ grad school friends and their families. Some of my dad’s fellow alums have been key mentors to me in both life and my career.
I know that graduate school is a means to an end. A stepping stone towards bigger and better things. But if I am being honest with myself, getting my MBA at Wharton has always been a goal unto itself. I remember talking to my college counselor as a sophomore in high school and telling her that it didn’t really matter where I went to undergrad because I knew where I was going for graduate school. One of the reasons I first started looking at William & Mary was because it was a top 10 undergraduate school for sending students to top 10 graduate school programs. A niche statistic that I am sure very few spent as much time paying attention to as I did during my college search process.
Getting my MBA at Wharton is something I have worked towards for as long as I can remember. It has been something I thought about whenever I evaluated a job or took out time to plan career moves.
Wharton isn’t THE destination for me, but if I am being honest, it has always been A destination.
FAQ
Why are you getting your MBA?
First of all, because it is something I’ve always wanted to do for as long as I can remember. And when you get the opportunity to do something you’ve always wanted to do for as long as you can remember you should probably do that thing.
More than that I am going to Wharton for three main reasons:
To build my network
The number one reason I, and most people, get there MBA is for the network. In my career, I have always tried to optimize for learning. Putting myself in a position where I could learn as much as possible. As a colleague once told me, you need to spend time in the “learn” part of your career before you can start spending time in the “earn” part of your career. I believe optimizing for learning is absolutely critical, but one of the things I didn’t properly take into account is how much learning comes from simply working next to smart, ambitious people. I’ve been able to see how much of a difference this has made in my wife’s career working at a AAA high growth startup and I would be lying if I said it wasn’t something that I was hoping to get out of grad school. There aren’t many places where you can find such a high concentration of smart, ambitious people as at a top MBA program. Now I have worked with some fantastic people in my career so far, but I haven’t pushed myself out of my comfort zone the way I believe I am about to and I could not be more excited to see what comes out of it.
To learn as much as I absolutely can
I love the academic environment. I love learning and being in class and doing homework and just being surrounded by others pursuing knowledge. It is something that I also didn’t fully appreciate until after I had graduated from college. I cannot wait to be back in the academic setting and to just devour as much information as I possibly can.
To build my (internal & external) resume
Credentialing matters. Maybe not as much as it used to, but it still does. I fully expect that Wharton will open doors for me that I might not be able to open otherwise. It’s a part of what justifies the cost of the experience. But more than just a golden stamp on the resume, the credential matters to me. It’s kinda hard for me to put into words but getting into (and hopefully excelling) at a school like Wharton proves something to me. Maybe it’s that I belong in the room with the smartest of the smart. Maybe it’s that I have learned how to play and win at the game we call life. Whatever it is, I know that Wharton will be an incredible opportunity for internal growth. Internal strength and confidence is the credential I am most excited to build over the next two years.
Is an MBA necessary for the things you want to pursue?
Not really. There are less and less career paths where an MBA is required. In the tech/startup world, it is even less common. About 50% of VCs have an MBA. If I was absolutely certain of a particular career path, it may make more sense to solely optimize around getting into that career. But an MBA is a fantastic opportunity to explore different industries and figure out what might be the best fit for me. It is also something that, while likely not a prerequisite to anything I want to do, will definitely be an asset to whatever I want to do. I am willing to bet that increasing my education, network, and confidence is going to be something that will have huge dividends no matter what I end up doing.
How is school going to work in a post-COVID world?
A good question that I have found myself asking frequently over the last few months. Every school is taking a bit of a different approach around what the fall could look like and it has been evolving in real-time. I am really pleased with how Penn has handled the less-than-ideal cards they have been dealt. Penn is moving forward with plans to have a hybrid model in the fall that will incorporate both virtual and in-person learning. There will be opportunities for those who feel comfortable to opt-in to in-person education, but every class will be available online for any who do not. The school is requiring students to abide by a bunch of common-sense precautionary measures including limiting gatherings to less than 25 people, wearing a face mask while on campus, limiting non-essential travel, getting tested before starting class, and checking into a contact tracing app every day to state if we are experiencing any symptoms.
It’s definitely not the ideal situation for a major life transition, but you could say the same thing about everything these days. Who knows how long this global pandemic will continue or what the permanent impacts will be. Right now feels like the right time for me to go to school so that’s what I am doing. And I am provided solace by the fact that I will be attending with a bunch of super-smart, highly motivated people who will all be focused on coming up with creative solutions to get to know each other.
Is an MBA still worth it?
The short answer is “Yes.” A longer answer is “Hell Yes.” A longer answer that actually includes some nuance is “It probably depends where you are getting it from.” I definitely believe that both primary and higher education could do with a rationalization. Too many people are taking on too much debt and not getting nearly enough value. But I believe there are schools where that isn’t the case. Wharton is one of them. As mentioned above, being in a partially online environment isn’t 100% ideal but nothing is these days. I am confident that any hindrances to the experience will be equally offset by the “trial by fire” that we will all be going through and that this shared hardship will bring us even closer together.
What will happen to the blog?
First of all, thank you for your concern for the blog. I am well and truly touched 😭😭😭. In the short term, the answer is “not much.” This blog is the way it is because it is the format that I have found most sustainable for writing regularly over the past 2+ years. With so much else changing in my life, I am hesitant to try to change the blog too much in addition. I am going to try to continue with weekly posts and see how that goes. This blog is a reflection of the things going on in my life, the things that interest me, and the things I care about. As such, I wouldn’t be surprised if I share some of my experiences from school. Hopefully, that is as interesting to you as my ramblings on how Arsenal’s left-back situation relates to startups in Kentucky or whatever else I usually cook up.
What’s Next?
The million-dollar question. The number one question I have been asked when I tell people about my impending transition is what I will do on the other side. The truth is that I don’t know. This is where the sidewalk ends. I’ve meticulously planned up to this point and no further. And that excites me every bit as much as it scares me. The north star I’ve oriented myself around throughout my career has been my desire to build great companies that make a meaningful impact by solving important problems. Whatever I end up doing will have to satisfy that in some way, shape, or form but, luckily, that gives me a lot of real estate to work with. I expect that I will continue to be involved in some aspect of the world of technology/startups/entrepreneurship/venture capital even if I am not exactly sure where. I am hoping to use the MBA experience to get some exposure to the operating side of the startup world. Maybe I will love it. Maybe I will hate it. But I don’t know what I don’t know and even if it doesn’t work out I think it will only make me a better investor having tried operating.
Last week, I spoke about the positive power of identity. Core to my professional identity is two things: I believe I was born to be a builder and a leader. There are a lot of ways to satisfy these core attributes, but those are the two lenses I will be looking towards as I evaluate potential opportunities going forward.
I started this post pointing out the inconsistency between my stated lack of belief in a path and the actions I have taken to follow one. But I don’t believe my following a path and not believing in the idea of “The Path” amounts to some sort of cognitive dissonance. Yes, I’ve always had a path that I’ve followed. But that path only went so far. I could not be more excited about the experiences and relationships that the next two years will bring.
But I am just as excited for what comes after.
For life without the Path.
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