http://www.asktheharvardmba.com/2009/07/03/how-many-graduating-harvard-mbas-start-their-own-businesses/ My name is Chris Yeh. I'm a Harvard MBA, and you can ask me anything! Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:17:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 http://www.asktheharvardmba.com/2009/07/03/how-many-graduating-harvard-mbas-start-their-own-businesses/#comment-1264 Finding Technical Cofounders Is Hard | Robby Grossman Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:18:38 +0000 http://www.asktheharvardmba.com/2009/07/03/how-many-graduating-harvard-mbas-start-their-own-businesses/#comment-1264 [...] My hunch is that most good software engineers only work for cash because they don’t feel that working for equity is worth the risk of failure. They can make good money consulting or working as an employee of another company. They can easily get great benefits and a six figure salary. The risk of failure doesn’t seem worth it, especially when the potential reward seems so far away. But an important distinction is that this has to do with their options, not with their profession. If we look at business people who have skills-specific training like software people have, they fall in a similar risk-averse bucket: only 3% of Harvard MBAs use their educations to start a company. [...] […] My hunch is that most good software engineers only work for cash because they don’t feel that working for equity is worth the risk of failure. They can make good money consulting or working as an employee of another company. They can easily get great benefits and a six figure salary. The risk of failure doesn’t seem worth it, especially when the potential reward seems so far away. But an important distinction is that this has to do with their options, not with their profession. If we look at business people who have skills-specific training like software people have, they fall in a similar risk-averse bucket: only 3% of Harvard MBAs use their educations to start a company. […]

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