This question comes up for almost everyone considering a path in entrepreneurship and business leadership: is this worth it? Worth my time? My money?
And the universal answer: it’s a personal choice.
This summer, I’ve had a chance to reflect on the personal choice I made as it relates to my decision to acquire and operate a small business.
Interning at a search-backed business alongside a CEO who chose to jump into ETA without an MBA, I’ve enjoyed comparing the fundraise, search, and post-close operating lives of searchers with and without MBAs.
Below, I outline some of the aspects of school I’ve been most grateful for as I prepare to fundraise and launch my search.
Depth With Your Future Investors
- Investors view an MBA as a clear signal of preparedness for ETA. They spend considerable time on campus meeting potential searchers and building relationships with those individuals over two years
- This depth is valuable as these investors will eventually make up part of your board and will be your closest support network through your growth as a business leader; having a chance to know them on a deeper level can ensure a quality relationship
- A real-life example: I had the chance to attend two different investor-led retreats during the school year and to spend more than a week with two investor groups in-office over the summer
- Partnered searches have an IRR of 40.5% while solo searches have an IRR of 30.3% according to the 2024 Stanford Search Fund Study, so many searchers take advantage of their two years in school to evaluate partnerships
- Many future searchers actually end up partnering with someone from a prior job or undergraduate studies, but having ample time to reflect on must-haves in a partner is valuable–one common motto rings out, “a bad partnered search is far worse than a solo search”
- A real-life example: Once I identified my future partner, we began speaking every Saturday morning about thesis building, geographies, and our non-negotiables as leaders so that we feel ready to co-lead a business together
- While entrepreneurship may not be easy to teach, niche classes provide valuable insights into broader economic trends and challenges businesses face in modern operating environments
- As searchers tend to target hyper-niche spaces that private equity funds may avoid for small addressable market sizes or lack of precedent transactions, identifying niches is difficult; entering the classroom with a thesis-building mindset can help identify these kinds of markets
- A real-life example: My ESG Accounting class helped me build multiple theses around services that will need to be provided to companies of all sizes in the near future to assist with environmental compliance and reporting capabilities
- Your classmates and graduates from peer schools will be the next generation of business leaders; establishing a deep network today could prove helpful in your search phase as you diligence a specific industry or in your operating phase as you look to hire consultants, find a new supplier, or win a new customer
- Risk profiles vary tremendously across business school classes, and several students are looking for ways to become young executives but are unwilling to take on the risk associated with searching, either because they lack deal experience or do not feel ready to lead a company outright; these classmates could become your future CFO, CMO, or Regional President
- A real-life example: Several members of the leadership team of Canopy Service Partners, a portfolio company of Alpine Investors, are recent graduates of Kellogg and other peer schools. The CEO, Chief Growth Officer, and Chief People Officer attended Kellogg, and two Regional Presidents attended Wharton. All graduated in the last ten years.
- Given the average searcher age of 31, most enter business school with less than seven years of work experience across 1-3 different employers
- With classmates, professors, and guest lecturers from so many different backgrounds and experiences, business school provides a great opportunity to learn about industries and business models beyond your prior work experience
- Additionally, classes can provide material improvements to your skill set. Despite having a background in private equity, I found Kellogg’s accounting classes improved my confidence in my CFO skill set, and both Managing Organizations and Leadership Development classes have helped grow my self awareness in ways I expect to help when it comes to connecting with business owners and eventually leading a business.
- Further, even students who bring deep experience in statistics find Kellogg’s core Business Analytics courses to be highly practical and applicable to real-life business decisions
- A real-life example: During my summer internship, I used R to analyze a large data set of customer-level sales and churn information to find statistically significant predictors of customer lifetime value, a skill I learned in my Business Analytics class
- ETA Clubs across business school campuses encourage club members to intern throughout the school year and summer alongside searchers and operators who used the search model
- In-school internships tend to be with active searchers, providing an opportunity to learn about technology used to facilitate sourcing strategies, outbound sourcing approaches, and thesis building
- Many summer internships are facilitated by larger investors who set up “hybrid” summer opportunities where students spend the bulk of their summer at an operating company seeing the ins-and-outs of being a young CEO and a smaller portion of their summer with the investors, learning how they evaluate deals and how they interact with searchers on a day-to-day basis
- A real-life example: I landed a hybrid summer internship and am spending seven weeks with an operating company in Florida and two weeks with an investor group in California
Matthew Conley (2Y, 2025) is Co-President of the ETA Club. He plans to raise a traditional search fund with a partner in 2025