How MIT Didn't Prepare Me For a Startup, Part 1

I was at MIT for a few days last week for the MIT Startup Bootcamp.  One thing I love about MIT entrepreneurs is how scrappy and motivated they are.  Compared to the iconic facebook chasing social media west coast entrepreneurs, these guys are Rocky Balboas.  They stay in the game when others would have given up, and they tackle substantive problems.

MIT graduates still come out with several learned habits that will work against them though.  Hopefully I'm wrong and it's just me, and I wouldn't be surprised, but I do think these are more general.

One such habit is to obsess over everything.  At MIT there's a very finite set of material to study at any time in any given class.  The hard core students among us make sure that the curve is attrociously high.  You might spend 20 hours studying a small set of material.

So the onus was on expertness.  Of everything.

This doesn't work in an early stage startup where everyone has to be a generalist and work on seven different projects per day.

You don't want to be an expert in your series A docs.  If you are negotiating the finer points in a legal negotiation, you are losing.

If you are worrying about your computers costing $800 versus $1200, you are losing.

I know the MIT obsessive in you wants to optimize everything, but just don't.

On the other hand, hit REALLY high notes on the important things.=

HubSpot is a startup that's all about bringing new Internet marketing to the long tail of small and medium businesses.  It's a huge opportunity and a huge deal.  Their biggest challenge is educating the 100 million small business owners about this new world.

For HubSpot, educating their market is incredibly important to their success.

So they put on a conference.  Their founders wrote a book.  They've released several free and easy tools like TwitterGrader and WebsiteGrader.  They take this stuff seriously, and they should.  Their MIT'ness is shining through!

So, for folks like me, half the battle is identifying where to hit the high notes and where to swing for the B team.  And when it comes time for the B team, swallow your pride and show 'em how impressively unimpressive you can be.

Comments

[Corey]

I went into consulting right out of MIT.
A similar idea applies - you always want to be under budget, so there are some things that you just don't want to excel on, because it's way too expensive.

One of these days, I'm going to have to start my own company.
Waiting to hear what else you weren't ready for.

[r shyduroff]

hi adam - was wondering what you might be up to about now. if you're free for an hour next tuesday, please do drop by sem.089 and introduce yourself to our current students and the usual small but steady crowd of alums who seem to have permanent seats in class (smile) ... we still meet in olde 66-148, 7-9pm, still right after e-club, which still meets 6-7 in 56-114 ...
hastily, but sincerely, - r
.

[Adam Smith]

Hi richard, always great to hear from you. I think you have my all time favorite valediction!

I was only in Boston for a few days but will try to remember to look up the seminar the next time I'm in the area. Probably spring 2010 but not sure.

Please give all of your current students, Michael Grinich included, my best wishes!

Adam

[Tiffany K]

Hey Adam,

Thanks for sharing your blog post on LinkedIn.

Your status appeared on my LinkedIn email updates this morning, and I was compelled by your article's title to click.

I seldom comment on blog posts, yet your article is worthy of publication on The Tech and beyond into any business publication. I especially like your observation on expertness vs. swinging for the B team. So true!

Just RSSed to your blog. Nice work!
Tiffany

[Adam Smith]

Hi Tiffany, thank you for your kind words!!

Adam

[twitter.com/joelvincent]

What you're hitting on is a general engineering approach to everything - precision and specific ways to accomplish stuff. Sweat the details - thats what any good engineer will do because a small oversight will have you in some lab for days on end reverse engineering and tracking down what happened.

I'm the first to bag on MIT and the types of folks that come out of there (i.e. bag on myself), but I have to disagree with this generalization and from experience over the last (almost) 20 years say that what you're seeing is an ENGINEERING attitude, not specific to MIT.

Now had you said MIT didn't teach social skills, politics in business, business networking, and other soft skills to help you be a better business person - I'm with you 100%... :)

[Adam Smith]

yes, totally true @joel! engineering not just MIT, for sure.

I'll definitely talk to social/soft skills, teamwork, etc in a later post. : )

Any other thoughts on challenges making the MIT -> startup jump?

[Sachin]

obsess over everything -- not good but obsess over a particular thing (which is your bread & butter) may be good in real life to succeed...expertness sometimes is necessary in order to be an authority and to be always in win-win situation..

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500167369]

Thanks for this post Adam!