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I have always been very entrepreurial in spirit, and have always dreamed of developing startup business's as a career. However I have found that while I am in school it very hard to prioritize my time, therefore I have put my Ideas aside untile I get my degree. I am currently finishing up my B.A. degree in International Business, and maintaining a 3.71 average. I am going to graduate summer of 2011. Now that my graduation date is closely coming, I am torn between a few decisions; I am considering an MBA program (preferably Babson, or another Highly entrepreneurial school), I am thinking of applying for a job with a small startup or a consulting firm, and lastly I am thinking of pursuing one of my many different ideas.

The Idea of getting an MBA is great but the truth of the matter is, is it worth the cost? I have taken several classes now in college, and learned a great deal, but at the same time I feel like I haven't learned enough. I have always been interest in startups that have to do with E-commerce, so I have thought about taking classes to learn web design and programming in order to reduce the startup cost. Do you think that might be more beneficial that an MBA?

I love the idea of working with a successful entrepreneur or a consulting firm to get the exposure to several different business', but now is the worst time since the great depression to be looking for a job.

Lastly possibly starting a company. The problem with that is I have had several different ideas to start companies, but for some reason I lack the passion behind the idea, and am constantly second guessing if it will work or not. I am not sure if I lack confidence, or if my ideas are just not great.

Point being I am looking for some advice on my situation. Thank you in advance.

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Work for a startup - it could even been an unpaid internship. You'll rack up real-world business, networking, and entrepreneurial experience (and even some coding) without accumulating the debt of an MBA. In a startup environment, you'll have plenty of opportunities to bounce your ideas off others and refine your own business plans. I think that would give you the foundation to make a more informed decision and help you make the most of any subsequent path you take.

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I agree, and perhaps work on your own ideas on the side. You can always go back and do an MBA later if you want. You will always feel like you haven't learnt enough because you don't really learn about entrepreneurship in school. You learn about it by doing it. So cut your teeth on someone else's business if you can and then go for it. That being said, an MBA can be a good place to find like-minded business partners - but I would still recommend getting some real world experience first. – Susan Jones Dec 28 '10 at 12:02
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Jeff, I think you've summarized your biggest problem in a couple of sentences: "it very hard to prioritize my time", "I lack the passion behind the idea".

When it comes to time, that can be a challenge per se, but it got nothing to do with school. Many of us have kick off in part-time while working, check UltraEdit story as an example. One of my best lessons during my masters was time management, so you may start learning prioritization as soon as possible.

The lack of passion you state can be a problem too because it may be the first step into abandoning the idea. There's no problem whatsoever in dropping an idea, but that should be because you've concluded it's no good or the time is not right, and not because you lost interest on it. So, having passion helps (a lot) in keeping things up during the bad times (and you'll have it just as everybody else). Plus, your initial idea will probably not be the idea that will hold your business, it's just a start point. So if you don't care much about it when it's time to adjust/redefine you just may opt for the easy way, drop it and move on to the next one. And this is a real problem, many just hop from one idea into another and after some time, all they have is a hand full of dropped projects.

Oh, and your idea, no matter what it is or how great it sounds, it probably is not that good! Don't get me wrong, that's just how it is. One starts with an idea and, as I've previously stated , that is just a starting point. You need to work on it in order to improve it. You should test your idea with real people - mom, dad, friends and relatives are excluded - you should ask them if they would pay for it and, how much would they spent on it. This will allow you to validate the idea and get a feeling about the business. Plus, if you get lucky, you'll end up with valuable feedback about the features that really matter.

As an end note, and since you state nothing about what you already know about kicking off business, so I recommend you read some books and blogs about startups, sales and marketing. Here's a few I recommend:

I hope this is helpful for you.

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