Should I get an MBA first, or launch our software to the global market now?

I've worked with around 60 startups. MBAs do more damage than good in the startup world and I've spent a lot of time cleaning up after them. Sure, if you want your startup to flop, get an MBA, but, personally, I'd rather hire a hard working bricklayer.

Launch. Almost no one I know who has built a successful company has an MBA, so clearly it's not required. If you have a product and some customers, that's enough.

There are 2 factors- your age and your marital status. If you're under 30 and single, launch. If you're married OR over 30 get the MBA. A single person can live on $15,000 a year and be happy while trying to build a million dollar business, but a married person or someone over 30 has to face the reality of commitment and jeopardizing future employment prospects.

By the way, the MBA has no value to your startup, it's only valuable in bigger companies like Dell. If you're dream is to run your own shop, you'll learn all of that along the way.

A good friend just completed her MBA - while working full time. Launch the company and if you really thing an MBA is important, look at P/T study opportunities.

The real question is this: how long will it take to complete and MBA and what do you think the market opportunity will be if you wait a year or two?

It's good to have some business skills but the best thing would to focus on the product itself and get help from some reliable people who know the business side much better than you. How is strategy planning of large company going to help if one does not get the actual product to the market first?

Do what you know best and ask other people to do what they know best. Don't try to do everything alone if you feel you have not enough of time for it.

Also, you might find some interesting opinions from 37signals' book Getting Real.

Launch and buy the books that are prescribed by the MBA course and read those. Better faster and a whole lot cheaper. A good book is the 10 Day MBA by Steven Silbiger. We give these to our Entrepreneur members.

As a graduating MBA student, I can't wait to finish to work on my idea/product that has been cooking in my mind for the last few months. However, I have been wanting to start a company from I was a wee toddler. For whatever reason, I ended up in grad school and the truth is I have learned a lot and am glad that I did it.

Yes, the majority of the things you learn are for larger companies...but I would recommend that since you have a technical background and IT undergrad, do an MBA with a concentration in finance. Understanding the financial statements of a company, is like understanding the anatomy of the body. If you don't understand how money works, what investors/employees/partners are looking for, it can create more headache than is necessary.

Yes, you will probably have to do courses you don't want to do - namely some marketing courses, or sales, etc. - but you never know when these things can help you.

The worst thing you could do though, is enter the MBA program just to get the initials. Make sure you actually learn and apply it to your situation. If you can do both the startup and the MBA program at the same time - that is most ideal. You might have to delay some stuff with the product - because your projects/homework might be killing you in the MBA program - but when you can relate what you are studying with what is happening in your company it makes the lessons that more effective.

Launch - I went the MBA route and whilst interesting, I couldn't shake the urge to do something from scratch.

Launch.

And then also read or listen to business and marketing books. Search Amazon, Audible, iTunes, read the reviews. Buy. Read or Listen.

A few examples:

1) Purple Cow by Seth Godin (I read everything from Seth Godin!) 2) Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin 3) Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson 4) Twitter Power by Joel Comm (Gets you thinking about Social Media marketing) 5) The Great Formula by Mark Joyner

Launch! No particular constrains so no brainer. Whatever happen the experience will be worth any grade you could obtain on top of what you have now.

Before I did my MBA I thought to myself "What am I going to learn, I know how to manage a business!"... but I went ahead and financed it personally by distance learning while working at Dell.

After doing the MBA I can look back and say that I did learn a lot but probably much more beneficial working in a large corporation - as the guy above said.

If you have business acumen and ambition which you obviously do if you are posting here - you should go ahead and launch before someone else takes your idea. At the end of the day the success of your business is going to be down to how unique your business is, and how well you can build business relationships, which very much depends on your personality and I don't think an MBA will really change that.

What an MBA will do is show how to put things into a framework - for example identifying your strenghts, weaknesses, opportunities and threats - which I had not thought of before. A good book on business strategy will give you all this but I think the advantage of an MBA is that it crystallizes what is important rather than you having to make your own mind up about what book to read for example.

Just Do It. MBA = "Master of Bugger All" ("Bugger all" is an English phrase meaning.... "nothing").

I don't think you need am MBA degree to get started. If you know that you have a market and are aware of the cost drivers of a sale, the rest just falls in place. Personally, I think that MBA degrees are oversold. There are two vital aspects to run a business - knowledge and the network. The knowledge required for running a business can be obtained without having to pay for the MBA degree. As far as the network is concerned, the local barcamp group or a site like this aid you in that aspect.

Why would you get an MBA? You might hire some to work for you, but I don't see how it is going to help you "go global".

My business partner has an MBA from a respected school, and she said that it wasn't really worth it.

I agree with everyone here, and say just launch! If it works well, you won't need the MBA, and if it doesn't, you will have gained a lot of experience which will make your education more worth while (its always better to have previous experience when getting an MBA)

If I make another suggestions, if you want to translate your software, use: http://www.onehourtranslation.com

They are the best translation service around, both in translation speed and cost (at least for human translation, but if you are planning on using Google translate, you might as well get an MBA, since the product won't work :) )