What kind of work experience is required prior to pursuing an MBA in India? Should he take up a job in the field he wants to do his MBA? Should he try different industries to determine the best fit?
Thanks for A2A.All genuine questions ... but perhaps not the real question that you should be asking yourself before doing MBA.I will try and answer all of them ..1. Yes relevant work experience is always better than non-relevant work experience. 2. Trying different things at young age never hurts. What really hurts is not being able to convey it on your CV or in the interview appropriately.3. Working in bank is not completely necessary. Corporate Finance or Financial consulting are equally relevant. Ofcourse, back office functions that are completely non-related to finance wont help either.4. 95+ is not a strong CAT score. 98+ (with consistency across sections) is. And, no one expects a fresher to have a a management job role before MBA.5. NGO volunteering is a bit of hoax. And interviewers make that out if its done recently only. I would suggest that learning a new language is a better CV booster and a real asset for the future.6. Well, to bluntly answer prima facie ... the private bank. However, it would all depend on the real job profiles.7. Elite MBA programme in my mind is IIM A, B and C and ISB (only a personal opinion). The requirements are pretty simple for IIMs ... crack the CAT and the interviews. Work experience counts .. but has a smaller weightage. Unless, you work at a brand, it doesnt really count at the IIMs. For ISB, crack the GMAT and have a strong work ex of over 3 years. It helps to have a well-rounded CV. Build ur profile with languages, travelling, sports, etcHope this helped.Now, I would just venture to say that these are very defensive questions. Not the real questions that help you take a decision. The real question is "Why do you want to do an MBA?" This requires a lot of thinking. Be brutally honest to yourself. Answers could be :1. Genuine interest in learning about "business" 2. Meeting 100-400 young intelligent exciting people3. Getting a big dream job4.Taking a break to explore yourself over a period of 1 - 2 years 5. Social prestige6. Proving something to your family members7. Doing it because everyone is doing it etc etc etc ...Be brutally honest. Once you have the master question answered, all other questions are just derivatives. You will answer all the 7 questions you asked differently every single time if your main motive to doing a MBA is different !Hope this really helped ! All the best !
Is it worth studying business at a university?
This is a very subjective question and largely depends on the target country where you are looking to work in future or start your business. I can give you examples from India and Europe because I am aware of these places. In India, where business schools are in plenty it is mandatory by peer pressure to study business at a University (Premier ones) to start or succeed in Business. Moreover, with a business degree on your CV you earn trust that “he is a B school grad, he must be doing it right”. There are few exceptions who have done good in Entrepreneurship without a business degree but that ratio is small. Moreover studying in a business school helps you to make contacts with like minded people and it helps in future. Sometimes people help you even without knowing you just because you are from the same college or were a contemporary but in another department.In Europe, It really doesn't matter having a business degree till you know your business well. Learning on the job is given more weight than having a degree. So you can either get a business degree or learn on the job and then start your Entrepreneurship. And if you can get both it will be icing on the cake. People don’t judge you in Europe for the lack of a Business degree.I would suggest you to do a profile research of successful entrepreneurs in your target area on LinkedIn. See if they have a degree and from what college. Sometimes you just need to imitate successful people to be successful.All the best!
For those with a business degree, was it worth it?
Yes, it is. Sure you could learn everything outside of college. You can study with mentors, or learn through trial and error. But the value of a college education provides you is a leapfrog effect from not going to college.Specifically for a business degree, I believe it is important to specialize in business. Not just say I am going to learn everything about everything there is to know about business but to focus on finance or operations or marketing or some sub-specialty. Taking the deep dive into a specific business degree will be beneficial in the long run!
Have you ever filed a patent? If so was it worth it?
A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE ABOUT PATENTSI personally filed some 15 patents and extended 5 in a few important countries. I used the service of patent attorney. This cost me a lot of money. Even more because I had an affair in Court concerning one of these patents. My competitor had signed a non disclosure agreement, applied for its own patent on the same subject and hijacked the national defense markets that I had initiated.Though it infringed my rights, its patent was delivered: my competitor was a big company. We had a technical competition related to Tempest requirements between its prototype and mine at the labs of the Ministry of Defense. They had grants I had none. They completely messed up their device. We won the competition (10/10). But our product was rejected.We lost the first step before tribunal. A new action was opened against us for unfair competition. After 10 years of procedure, the appeal court “convinced” the big company to accept a mediation.We agreed on a compromise. I received a sum representing the money that I had personally invested. My shareholders received nothing. My 15 years of work were never paid. I had to close my company. The new technology could not be developed on the market. It would still be of interest today.Unbelievable, but true. The facts here reported are fully documented. Our system needs to be improved both from the point of view of justice and economy
What are the best finance courses?
Finance is one of the most important sector, and everyone wants to know the financial management, whether you are from finance or non-finance background. Finance courses are broadly divided into two main categories one for financial professional and other for non-financial professional.Most of the time financial professional join courses to enhance their skill and improve the chances of employability. Here, are some of the most useful courses that every financial professional must join to move their career to next level. These are long-term courses.Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) certificationCertified Public Accountant (CPA) certificationChartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designationCertified Financial Planner (CFP) designationFinancial Risk Manager (FRM) certificationFinancial Modelling & Valuation Analyst (FMVA) certification from CFIFor those who are looking for short-term courses, can enroll in following courses -Good Finance ManagementDebt vs Equity: The Secret Ingredient to Successful Business FinancingFinancial Risk ManagerFinancial Modelling and Investment Banking ProgramsGlobal Finance and Accounting ProgramChartered Financial Analyst ProgramThese courses are specially designed for both finance and non-finance professional to provide the financial literacy. Learno listed some of the best finance courses with the motive to train individual and professional on finance and accounting aspects with the high quality instructor-led and self-paced courses. These courses improve your skills to take business decisions that generate superior financial success. These courses enable faster knowledge building. This seems to be very beneficial in any kind of macro, micro, and country-specific financial management.Enroll now in the best finance courses and accelerate your financial skill!
Will SpaceX put ULA out of business?
There is an embedded misconception that ULA is a normal company that can be put out of business. It is not.United Launch Alliance (ULA) is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defense, Space & Security. ULA was formed in December 2006 by combining the teams at these companies which provide spacecraft launch services to the government of the United States. [1]I was recently sitting on an airplane next to a ULA senior employee, his comments were enlightening.The US government forced Boeing and Lockheed to form ULA to have a sole source provider for space launch vehicles. The idea was to combine the best in technology and reduce costs. People had to relocate to Colorado (he was flying back to his home in LA for the weekend). Obviously, combining two companies and cultures into a new company has its challenges.He was annoyed that NASA gave contracts to Space-X and decided they needed to have a new competitor after forcing the prior competitors to merge. There is no reason that government has to be consistent over a 10 year period.He was not a fan of Elon Musk… I cannot very this story but he stated every time Musk lost a contract he filed a lawsuit alleging anti-competitive environment until the government gave in.Space-X cannot put ULA out of business because ULA is a company created by the government. Only the government can decide to break it into Boeing and Lockheed again or to defund it. Cost efficiency is not a big deal when you are talking about critical access to space technology. The only way ULA will be shut down is if the government decides to create another “company” that owns it’s critical access technology.Perhaps not fun to think about, if your company is considered “critical” to DoD the US government can basically take if over by using L-82 procurement (someone may correct me here, it’s been a 20 years since I was dealing with such things) which means they get first opportunity to buy any and all of your product at a fair market price that they decide. Sort of like imminent domain.Think about it this way, Lockheed has a whole bunch of Joint Strike Fighters. There a plenty of rich people. However, the US government decides who can buy one and the price, not Lockheed.Footnotes[1] United Launch Alliance - Wikipedia
Has LinkedIn actually impacted your career? How so?
I’m what some people call a “Linked-Influencer”.Corny I know… but I think it’s a fun name so I’ll go with it.In my peak I was pulling in millions of views every month on my written content that’s very similar to the content I post here.In the beginning of 2018, I was ready to shut my company down.My parents wanted me to go back to college, I wasn’t making the millions I naively thought I would when I dropped out, and I was honestly pretty burnt out. The content game sucks sometimes because you have to constantly put out content to stay top of mind.It was around this time that my LinkedIn account was skyrocketing.People were starting to reach out to me for brand deals, I was starting to get more referrals for clients, and I was starting to build the brand I wanted to build for myself.The problem was that I realized I hated running a services business. As much fun as it was doing growth marketing for startups it just wasn’t worth the hassle anymore.In January of 2018, I decided to start a side project with my two friends John Frye and Rohan Thakkar. I signed them as influencers to my company and made a deal with them similar to one you’d find at an influencer agency.Within a month of signing of them, they were both getting 40k-60k views a post. A huge improvement from the 300 views they were getting before.I found that by liking and commenting on their post using my account, my followers would see this and also engage with their content.This led to me in March launching our LinkedIn Elite Program with Jamocha Media. We started working with many prominent venture capitalists and CEO’s to build their content and brand on LinkedIn.At this point, things started to take off in big way.Jamocha grew from being a business that basically consisted of just me… to a company with an office, employees, and awesome clients.Instead of being a generic “growth” agency, we productized our offering and streamlined the whole written content creation process.Now it’s 2019, and we’re making moves into the premium content space.LinkedIn gave me the opportunity to not only build my brand, but it also gave me a way to directly monetize my audience and build a company worth pursuing.TLDR; I used my fame on LinkedIn to start a copywriting business.
What are some billion dollar startup ideas?
An online payment system in countries were there are none.Now i know what your thinking, online payment system? Ehhm have you never heard of Paypal …Well Paypal is next to being terribly run not available in for example Nigeria.Now you might be thinking, Nigeria? The weird country in Africa?Yes well apart from the weird.Nigeria ranks 7th in the worlds biggest countries by population.And Paypal isn’t fully available in Pakistan either so these are 2 giant markets open for you to disrupt.All you gotta do is build it and get it to those countries, there you go a BILLION DOLLAR IDEA.Now here is some advice if you are actually gonna pursue on this idea.Build a monopolyI am a big fan of Peter Thiel and his monopoly theory.In his book Zero to One he describes the importance of building a monopoly and avoiding competition.If you wanna learn more about it check this video Lecture 5 - Competition is for Losers (Peter Thiel)For those who don’t know a monopoly is a sector or industry which is dominated by one major player.Some examples of monopolies:Google which owns close to 90% of the search engine market.Microsoft which owns more than 90% of the operating system market.And Intel which owns more than 80% of the CPU market.Now Peter Thiel’s theory goes as follows.In order to build a monopoly you have to pick a small market, dominate it and scale.So you could either get businesses of Pakistan and Nigeria to use and ‘’promote’’ your product or you could simply copy Paypal and cooperate with companies such as Ebay so that they can set your payment method as default for those countries allowing you to gain users, market share and revenue.Hope this helps and that you will start this new billion dollar startup.