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AUGUST 30, 2001 MBA JOURNAL: INTRODUCTION Sucharita Mulpuru: Who I Am and Why B-School is for Me "The thought of all the baggage of grad school drove me crazy: giving up a great job (the opportunity cost!), readjusting to school (the stress!), and paying for the whole thing (the debt!). Why would I want an MBA?" "No way, Jose. Not for me. I don't need an MBA-I'm already doing everything I'd be doing anyway with the degree." "Come on. Just do it. An MBA keeps your options open," retorted my boyfriend (a recent Berkeley/Haas graduate himself.) "You know, he's right. You really should get a graduate degree," my parents chimed in, seemingly in conspiracy. "It's an insurance policy...for the rest of your life!" It was killing me that no one saw my predicament: I was the first employee at a successful, venture-backed start-up, I was managing a team, I was responsible for my own projects, and I was working with super smart people. The thought of all the baggage of grad school drove me crazy: giving up a great job (the opportunity cost!), readjusting to school (the stress!), and paying for the whole thing (the debt!). Why would I want an MBA? I'll tell you my story shortly, but fast forward to the conclusion. After months and months of cajoling and convincing, I was persuaded to capitulate. I broke down and applied. And that concession will be taking me to Stanford's Graduate School of Business this fall. The Back Story I was born in India 27 years ago, grew up in the States (specifically West Virginia), graduated from Harvard with a BA in economics, and then started working at the Walt Disney Company in Burbank, California in the Corporate Strategic Marketing Group. I loved my job-I had a plum analyst gig where I worked with senior executives, had exposure to high-level projects and had, most importantly, a generous expense accounts that made me feel much more important than I was. I supervised focus groups, did market research and wrote reports on everything from Disney's new cruise line to Disneyland Paris to waning Asian markets. But make no mistake, while this was a great job for someone out of college, I was still on the lowest corporate rung. My work was a phenomenal training ground in marketing at a large multinational consumer company, but the analyst track lasted only a few years before we were passed on to business school, much like the two/three year programs at management consulting firms and investment banks. We were, of course, all welcome to return to Disney, but in the name of resume diversification, or, more frequently, to meet the more philistine end of making more money (an ever more enticing goal due to a newly acquired load of MBA debt), most former analysts sought options outside the House of Mouse, a notoriously frugal company on the compensation scale. So, in preparation for my imminent departure from Disney, I took the GMAT with the rest of my analyst class, but somewhere along the way, my independent streak got the best of me. I realized I didn't really want to go back to school just yet and that I should take some time to decide on my next professional move. So, I took a break from the job world to embark on an existential Gen X Trek Around the World. Coincidentally, several of my friends happened to be abroad that year and the old 'this-is-the-best-obligationless-time-between-jobs-time' argument prevailed. After several months of globetrotting, I was ready to come back home and start another job hunt. By chance, I was checking e-mail at a cybercafe in Jerusalem when I received a note from one of my old managers at Disney. E-commerce excess was in full swing and she wanted to jump on the dot-com dash of the late 90s--she'd just finished raising her first round of funding to create estyle.com--a maternity and baby online shopping site. "So you want to join?" she asked. I quickly came back to be one of the first employees--who could turn down the prospect of becoming the next twenty-something millionaire? To make a long story short, the market tanked before we could go public, but there have been plenty of other perks to the job: I became a director of the site's content and marketing, I learned how to launch a business, I helped build a team, I saw what it took to bring in revenues, and I got to hang out with some famous people along the way (like Cindy Crawford, who was our spokesperson). Plus, I was helping build what we believed would be a sustainable business--we had raised lots of money early on and had been spending it gingerly--and that ultimately was a more valuable learning environment than shooting out of the gate but quickly fizzling, like so many of our Internet counterparts. The Thickening Plot And B-school? It just didn't make any sense to leave my job. Estyle was thriving, our competitors were slowly dying and we were poised to capture the top position in our space. The company was doing well and I only stood to gain personally and professionally by staying. Then I had My Epiphany. One of the entrepreneurial professors at Harvard Business School decided to write an Internet case on one of his former students. That ex-student was my boss. On the day of the initial presentation, all the founders of estyle, including me, attended various classes to spar with the first-years on the solidity of our company's business plan. To my great surprise, I had a ton of fun! I forgot how stimulating and exciting a classroom environment could be--especially the interactive free-for-alls that business school courses are. The clincher was when I met other students who already had their own business plans and were building teams and working on ways to make their own ideas a reality--which was ultimately what I had hoped to one day do. Sure, I'd helped hatch and grow a business, but I didn't have the sense of ownership I wanted. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to hedge my bets and keep my options open, I started thinking. Business school I quickly realized was an invaluable stepping stone, even better than estyle, to where I wanted to be. Estyle was great, but my scope within the company was limited and I probably wasn't going to spend the rest of my career in the baby/maternity space. If I wanted to start my own venture soon and pitch investors, I needed a better, more credible story for myself-that meant more experience, more business knowledge, more contacts-everything that B-school is about. I started two applications--one for Harvard because it was my alma mater and the other for Stanford because of its strong entrepreneurial curriculum. I finished both applications just in time for the second round deadline in early January. In the few weeks I was formulating my answers to questions like "Why business school?" I realized just how much I had real reasons to go. While I had a taste of starting a business, there was still so much I had to learn in the other areas --operations, technology, finance, accounting and yes, even in starting a business. Furthermore, I realized I was thinking narrowly in my self-assessments. I did only have exposure to two industries--entertainment and retail--and the breadth of backgrounds of classmates and professors would enlighten me in ways that work couldn't. Business school would teach me to think much longer-term and broader than I had thought up to now. I dropped my applications in the mail in early 2001, my point of view having completely changed. If I really wanted to go, what was I thinking only applying to two schools-and two of the most competitive ones at that? Oh well, it's too late now. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. The Conclusion The reviews were mixed--I got a thick envelope from Stanford and a thin one from Harvard, which suited me fine as Palo Alto was my first choice. It's in the heart of Silicon Valley and the startup spirit. I'd already done the Harvard thing anyway--onward and upward! I wiped my brow that at least one of my choices worked out. In retrospect, I think I may have stood a better chance at Harvard if I had applied earlier. To anyone looking for advice, that would be mine: APPLY EARLY. Many schools have their first deadlines in October, and I have consistently heard that competition only increases further along the process. Which brings me to the present. I've spent the last several weeks before Stanford's official start date in late September grilling all the recent grads I know from the GSB, packing up my Los Angeles apartment and hunting over the Internet for a new place up north. I'm also wrapping up my projects at estyle, meeting classmates via e-mail, brushing up on first semester classes like accounting and statistics, reading up on the Bay Area. I'm already anticipating all the super things school will enable me to do: working with professors, entering a markedly new milieu, perhaps even beginning my own business. How fortunes change in just a mere few months! Stay tuned for the next episode. 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