Programmer wants to be an Entrepreneur!

Here's my (mostly worthless) advice:

VC Money

Ignore VCs altogether. If you're fresh out of school with no successes under your belt, then your chances of landing VC money are about the same as your chances of catching a unicorn. Seriously, forget about it. Just pretend VC money isn't there (because it's not).

MBA vs Working

Developing your product/idea will teach you way more than you'll learn in the MBA program. You'll hear that from pretty much everyone else here (kind of a biased crowd). If your goal is to run your own business, I don't think there's much to learn in an MBA program. It's like reading a book about swimming or jumping in the water and trying.

Business of a startup

Try to connect with other entrepreneurs in your area. If you take the leap and start working, then very quickly you'll start to have specific questions to pose to these people. They will most likely have dealt with it and can advise you accordingly. It's much more educational to solve your own specific problems than it is to read about the general problems that businesses in general face.

I think that if you're a true entrepreneur, then business school will be very frustrating. You'll be chomping at the bit to actually try something instead of working on your school assignments.

Degrees earned online are the same as regular degrees earned taking classes on campus as long as its from the same university. The important part being to make sure the school is accredited and the accreditation is respected.

I have no personal experience with VC's but I would hazard to say that they are more likely to give you money if you can show them a working prototype and plan. Business people can always be brought in, what is important is the product and the engineering behind it. (Then the marketing, and business side)

Personally if your determined to either do consulting/freelance or create your own startup I would say forget about the school. Work on the project, and you already have the skills to do free lance programming it sounds like, and the business aspects of doing consulting/freelance as just yourself, you could learn easily online or from books in a few days.

You should read The Monk and the Riddle, to get an idea how a particular VC thinks.

Then, you will eventually need to have someone involved on the project with you, if you are the technical part of the business, then you can find a friend that has gotten an MBA, or at least has strong experience with business.

You should start with doing some of the development, at least enough for someone to get a rough idea about your idea. Then you can look at getting more people involved in your business. By doing some of the work ahead of time you will have a better idea how much more work is involved, and what skills you need that you may not have.

No contest: Work on the product idea and forget about the MBA.

Most of what you need to learn about the business aspects of a start up is pretty easy to learn especially for someone who has been through an engineering program. After reading a few books on the topic (such as High Tech Startup and Portable MBA series) you'll know more than enough of what you need to learn about business (relative to what you would have gotten from an MBA program anyway). For the most part, the only form of business experience that applies to startups is having done one already anyway. I talk about this to some extent in this answer to another question on this forum.

Usually, for engineers the hard part is not learning the business stuff, its actually wanting to do it over the technical stuff. Having the MBA is not going to fix that if your inclination is toward the technical part longer term anyway.

In specific answers to your questions:

1) Having an MBA does not make you more likely to get funded. This is about the quality of your business concept, the associated market it is in, their sense of your dedication to the concept and the ability of you and the team you put together to execute it.

2) Does not apply - I am not recommending the MBA path. However, if you do have an MBA I do think the quality of the program actually does count. Rightly or wrongly, from a perception standpoint, an MBA from a community college is not the same thing as an MBA from Harvard. But again, in general, having an MBA is not really going to convince a VC to fund you anyway. This is about ability to execute, not education.

3) Yes - work on the product and pickup the business concepts on the side. And, when the time comes, if you really need the help it should be comparatively easy to partner with somebody who knows how to sell what you made.

Somewhat related to your question here, I recently saw a presentation by Aaron Patzer of mint.com. Aaron recently sold his business to Intuit for $170M dollars. For a pre-revenue company, Aaron suggests that a tech company's value should be multiplied by $500,000 for each engineer on the team and you should subtract $250,000 for each business person/MBA working in the company at that point. The reasoning is simple, engineers build value in the company and the business people are only burning money at that stage because you have nothing to sell yet. I could explain further, but you should just checkout the presentation and watch the video as Aaron can explain it better.

Good Luck!

I mostly agree with the advice given thus far. The only exceptions would be - depending on the school, a) they may have venture programs for graduates and b) you could make some awesome contacts. For example, University of Chicago Booth gives tons of venture money to students and fosters the startup process. They also have very connected alumni. Most of the knowledge can be found online, the connections are what you're really paying for.

I don't think you'll get more out of the MBA than just starting the hustle, the latter will teach you many times more than you could learn in the classroom, but I bet you can do both. You may even connect with someone who ends up being a business partner. You guys can blow-off class together and take over the world a la Zuckerberg.

One thing to keep in mind, it sounds like your employer would be involved in your tuition? If that's the case, it almost always includes a length of time that you're committed to the company (or you have to pay them back). It doesn't sound like you plan to be there long, so pay close attention to any contracts with your employer.

I chose the "just start doing" route, and I am completely happy with my decision. But...if you've got the time and resources, why not? There's a good chance your first (and second and third) startup ideas may not work, you'll always have the MBA.

A lot of good advice is already in place, my two cents...

1. VC money - Make sure you are thinking about VCs for right reasons. Are you sure you need big money for your business? And even if you need, doing MBA just because VCs 'may' consider you is not sane. I think VCs are more interested in what your idea is, how much difference it can make and obviously how much money it can make. That's all.

2. No MBA. No second thoughts. If you have some idea and the zeal to make it a reality you will actually hate to be in the flock of sheep. Doing what you think will give you the edge and real knowledge about the business and start-up world - even if you fail! I happened to ask an entrepreneur who got 3 rounds of funding from VCs, this question "How much do you think has your MBA made a difference in establishing your start-up?" and he replied "Zero!" and continued to say that he wish he would have never done MBA and have used those 2 years to actually work on the idea. And you will get many many such entrepreneurs.

3. Yes!! Start working on the idea. Identify your target market, see if some target customers are really eager to pay for what ever you are working on and I can go on like this.. but the point is.. start working on it! This journey will teach you all the necessary things you need to know about business and I will even go ahead and say you would be more 'knowledgeble' than a world class MBA who has not done any real business.

Happy journey!