The mbaMission Podcast

From Waitlist to Startup CEO: Clyde Anderson’s MIT Sloan Story | Ep 112

• mbaMission • Season 2 • Episode 112

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 39:48

Send us your admissions questions!

What does starting a company during business school really demand beyond a strong idea?

In this episode of The mbaMission Podcast, host Harold Simansky and Gatehouse Founder Liza Weale sit down with GrowthFactor CEO and MIT Sloan alumnus Clyde Anderson for a candid conversation about the Sloan experience, entrepreneurship, and school fit. Clyde explains how he moved from finance to business school, why Sloan became the right match after a surprising waitlist turn, and how a classroom insight became the seed of a company.

The discussion covers Sloan’s analytical core, its culture of experimentation, the role of co-founders, and the practical resources that supported GrowthFactor, including startup workspace, entrepreneurship classes, faculty guidance, and MIT delta v. Clyde also describes why Sloan remains valuable for students who do not plan to launch a company, from consulting and finance paths to veterans, operators, and students pursuing less linear careers.

For applicants considering MIT Sloan, this episode offers a useful reminder: fit comes from more than a school’s reputation. The strongest match often appears when your goals, your way of learning, and the community around you push you to become more fully yourself.

Guest contact:

Clyde Anderson, CEO of GrowthFactor

clyde@growthfactor.ai

https://www.growthfactor.ai/


00:00 From Sloan Waitlist to Startup CEO

05:03 From a Waitlist Update to a Sloan Interview

09:28 The Benefit of Authenticity When Applying to Sloan

13:22 The Birth of GrowthFactor 

19:47 Finding Co-Founders at Sloan

22:51 The Sloan Startup Resources That Supported GrowthFactor

25:07 How Sloan Students Champion One Another

28:38 Sloan Career Paths Outside of Entrepreneurship

34:21 How Delta V Helps Launch Student Ventures

35:17 The Post-Graduate Power of Sloan’s Alumni Network


Book your FREE 30-minute MBA admissions consultation with Harold or another one of our experienced MBA admissions consultants by filling out this form.

Learn more about onTrack by mbaMission, our innovative, on-demand MBA application platform, and take our two-minute questionnaire to receive your customized learning path.
 
‼️Use code MBAMPOD for 30% off any onTrack subscription‼️

Contact Us:
info@mbamission.com

Follow Us:
YouTube
LinkedIn
Instagram

From Sloan Waitlist to Startup CEO

Clyde Anderson

Sloan, from my perspective, saw something in me that I don't know that I even appreciated.

Liza Weale

You were just somebody who was thinking about building and thinking about creating.

Harold Simansky

We hear this a lot. I want to go to business school and start my own business, find a founder. How does that actually work?

Speaker 1

It's just a ton of time with people, understanding them.

Harold Simansky

One of the requirements of having good business school success is making relationships with other people.

Liza Weale

How would you leverage the resources around you to help figure out how to move forward?

Speaker 1

Having that, you know, network of human beings who care about each other, you know, and that's Sloan.

Harold Simansky

Today we're putting the spotlight on the MIT Sloan School of Management, a program well known for its analytical rigor, hands-on learning opportunities, and strong entrepreneurial ecosystem, and my alma mater. To help us explore what the Sloan Experience is really like, we are joined by two guests. First, Liza Wheel, the founder of Gatehouse Admissions, who is not only a Sloan grad herself, but has helped many applicants targeting Sloan and other top MBA programs. We're also joined by one of Liza's past clients, Clyde Anderson. Clyde grew up in Alabama, attended the University of Chicago for his undergraduate studies, and began his career in investment banking before moving into private equity. He then headed to MIT Sloan, where he did something many applicants dream about. He launched a company with fellow Sloan classmates that Venture is now growth factor and operating system for retail real estate investing. In today's conversation, we will talk with Clyde about what it is to actually start a company while in business school, what resources Sloan provided, how he balanced the demands of launching a venture with coursework, and how the Sloan community supported him in the early stages of building a business. We'll also take a step back and explore the broader experience, the types of students who tend to thrive at Sloan, what might surprise the applicants about the program, how students choose their courses, and whether Sloan is still the right fit for candidates who are not planning on becoming entrepreneurs. We're here today with Clyde Anderson, MIT Sloan of Class 2025, my friend Liza Will, MIT Sloan class of BMW. And I'm Harold Samansky, MIT Sloan class of 1999. Yeah. So a little bit 25 years between us.

Speaker 1

Yes.

Harold Simansky

Yeah, which is sort of scary and fun at all at the same time. So you just graduated. Let's just jump in first of all with your background. How'd you get there? What had you been doing?

Speaker 1

Sure. I um so I had been working in finance for five years before school, two years in investment banking, three years at a merchant bank called BDT that does, you know, part investment banking, part private equity. And then right before school, I actually left BDT for about six months to work for my grandfather at a uh lending bank in North Alabama, um, which was probably not you know super relevant to the process of getting in, but was super relevant to kind of how I viewed the world when I got to school, having this different lens of finance, but all finance or finance adjacent related activities. And then before then, went to U Chicago undergrad and originally from Alabama.

Harold Simansky

Okay, originally from Alabama. That's actually sort of terrific. And what I mean by that, my nephew's now at the University of Alabama. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well time. Yeah, exactly. Having having a great time. And the reality is that that piece of the world, Southeast, is just really booming. So with that in mind, before we even go down that road, uh okay, so you were thinking about business school always, or is that something that's sort of developed over time?

Speaker 1

It's a good question. I I I was thinking about it certainly in undergrad. Um, my dad is very intelligent and and we're quite close, but he was never, you know, deep in academia. And so I think he encouraged me to go to U Chicago, you know, as a way to get a better education, then later think about business school. Um, from my vantage point, I was in finance, and I think it's hard to view the world outside of that when you're in it. And so for several years, you know, when I was in undergrad, I was thinking about it. I took my GMAT, I got into finance, and I kind of stopped thinking about it for a while. And it wasn't until I think four years in when some things kind of changed at the firm. And I had the opportunity of like, okay, do I want to be here for a long time or do I kind of want to get out and try something new? Uh, and I realized, okay, let's do the business school thing. I'd kind of already done some of the pre-work for it, and so I wanted to explore. But I think, you know, Liza was my counselor for getting into school, and I think she knows I really did not know a lot about business school when I started looking.

Jeremy Shinewald

If you want to be one of our success stories, sign up for a free consultation with a member of our full-time MBA admissions team. Since we've worked with tens of thousands of applicants over the past two decades, we can give you our honest opinion on your chances and help you put together your very best application. That is not a sales call, but rather your first session with one of us for free. We can give you a profile evaluation, answer specific questions about the process, review your resume, talk about your school choices, and so much more. Sign up at nba mission.com slash consult. We look forward to working with you.

From a Waitlist Update to a Sloan Interview

Harold Simansky

Obviously, MIT Sloan was on your list, or was it on your list? It was not on my list. Okay, okay. Okay. And and Liza, what made you think that Clyde would be good for MIT Sloan? MIT Sloan good for Clyde?

Liza Weale

That's a great question. I think like Clyde just came up, uh came into this process with really eager to learn. I mean, and and he just had this entrepreneurial spirit. Every time we were working together, he's like, all right, let's just do it. And he just seemed to um be ready to open up, you know, roll up his sleeves, jump in. And, you know, that's the ethos of Sloan, really. So as he was considering schools, I was like kind of like the Sloan Whisper, you know, you should check out Sloan, you should check out Sloan, you should check out Sloan. And then I think eventually it stuck. I don't know. Did you visit the school?

Speaker 1

What um No, it was because Liza said, okay, we're gonna apply to five schools. And I said, Great, here's four I feel like I want to apply to. I don't know a fifth one. And she she we had talked a few times, she said, I do.

Harold Simansky

Uh and this is that's terrific, yeah. And not because you're an alumni. Let's make this very, very clear. Great, yeah.

Liza Weale

Oh, not because I'm an alumni, just because when people I I mean, Sloan is a great program. And even then, I feel like you had, we'll talk about, I'm sure, your goals or you what you're doing now, but you had entrepreneurial, um, you had you had entrepreneurship somewhat in your blood. Yes, you had been in finance and business, but you were just somebody who was thinking about building and thinking about creating, whether that was um, you know, going back and possibly uh working with your grandfather again or something like that, you know, that was that seemed to be core to you, which felt like it might be a good spot for you at Sloan.

Harold Simansky

Yeah, Claude, just what was the application process like?

Speaker 1

So um Liza and I started working together, uh, worked hard basically over Christmas to to write all of these essays and applied to schools. And so I applied to these schools, I applied to five different schools, and I got on the wait list of three of them. You know, it was Sloan and and two others. Um, and so I thought, okay, you know, that that stinks and that hurts. So then I am still working with Liza, but it's very, you know, okay, let's wait and figure it out. I got married. And then after I got married, I thought, okay, I think I'm done with this BDT thing. So I moved to North Alabama, worked for my grandfather, and and I talked to Liza. I said, Hey, I've quit my job. I'm now a lending officer in North Alabama. She said, That's quite material. You need to tell the schools you're on the wait list of. So I submit an update and I said, Here's what I'm doing. I'm actually really fulfilled right now. Sloan within maybe 24 hours responds to that and says, We want to interview you. And it was so fast that I had trouble like getting on the interview fast enough. And my grandfather was having heart surgery. So I had to leave the heart surgery that morning. I was in a blue pickup truck, a Ford Ranger. I pulled it over in a church parking lot and I put my phone up and and I'm in a spore coat and I said, Hey guys, like, and and then I hopped on the interview because I couldn't make it to the office in time. And uh, and I thought, you know, it this can't be good, right? I'm in a truck, I'm in Alabama, there's no way I'm leaving a good impression.

Liza Weale

Wait, and didn't wasn't there a time change issue too?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I got yeah, that's I thought I was gonna make it in time, and then I realized, no, I don't have an hour. I have to pull over now.

Harold Simansky

There we go.

Speaker 1

Um, but I was luckily dressed apart, you know, I looked good. Um, but but I was you know rattled. You know, my grandfather I'm quite close with just had a stint put in. I'm like it, we know okay, the surgery went well, but I'm right out of the hospital. Um, but I hop on there and I was like, hey, here's here's what I'm doing. And um, and and I so I finished the interview. And me and you know, when I got that interview, my dad and my grandfather, everyone's so excited, right? Oh, it's MIT could be the coolest thing in the world. And he's laying in the hospital bed, and and I call him right after. He goes, I thought the interview didn't happen yet. I said, No, sir, it just happened. He said, How'd it go? I said, I don't think we're gonna be going to MIT. You know, I'm in a truck, I'm real. It felt a little too authentic. Um, and MIT admissions calls me two days later and and says, Hey, you're in. We want you. And I said to her, I said, This is insane. I thought, for sure, you know, you wouldn't like me in the truck. And and and she goes, No, we loved it. It's been a good thing. And so uh so it was on these other two wait lists, and I like that day just said, I'm done with y'all because Sloan, from my perspective, saw something in me that I don't know that I even appreciated.

The Benefit of Authenticity When Applying to Sloan

Harold Simansky

Right, that's right. And it was authenticity, it was the fact you were so genuine. In fact, we have a podcast with Donna Levinson, the dean of admissions at Sloan, who really speaks to what they're looking for, and she will emphasize authenticity. It's it's and that's very Sloan, right? Yeah, it it's not a really a place.

Speaker 1

It is, but I had been in finance and and you know, you kind of have to be a certain kind of person. And up until this point, not being me had felt rewarded. And Sloan came in in a big way and said, just exactly who you are is who we want here. And so I think that that that made me fall in love with it. That made me go to Sloan with this different attitude of like, okay, I'm gonna figure out who I am because that's what Sloan wants.

Harold Simansky

And what we have very frequently are clients who say to us, I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to go to MIT Saloan. And then we look at the resume and I'm not seeing entrepreneur at all. I'm not seeing anything entrepreneurial. And at that point, I started thinking to myself, well, maybe there's a better fit. So did you always know you're gonna be an entrepreneur? And we'll get to what you did.

Speaker 1

And I think actually I would argue it went so far as certainly the first day I showed up at Saloon, I did not know I was gonna be an entrepreneur. Okay. I went in with a very now Liza worked hard with me to create a good reason to go to business school and whatever, but I went in genuinely with a clean slate of I don't really know what this is and I don't know what I want to do. Um, and I would argue that five years in in private equity and investment banking does not scream entrepreneur.

Harold Simansky

Uh which is an issue that we have sometimes with our clients.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Harold Simansky

This idea, they try to make the argument I want to go to slow and entrepreneurial place, is sort of the the usual stereotype there. And I don't know about you, Lazie. Sometimes we just can't make it work.

Liza Weale

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sometimes it's just not, it's not believable. But I mean, remind me, um, what were your goals going in?

Speaker 1

I think the what we had kind of circled on. I think when you uh just a quick preface, but when you live in that finance world, it's hard to think, okay, I'm gonna be a startup person. Yeah. So we focused on uh ETA, entrepreneur, yeah, through acquisition and kind of this transition period between the two.

Liza Weale

Yes. Um which that felt very believable. Like again, I think you It's what I thought I was gonna do. Right, right. There was enough evidence in in your background to make it believable. I could tell that you were passionate about sort of taking something running with it. So um it did feel like Sloan could be a good match. But absolutely, there are times where people just I mean, you know, when you push and you ask, why do you want to be an entrepreneur? Because I want to be my own boss, you that's not enough of really uh to transition from um, you know, somewhat more uh, you know, structured environment to entrepreneurship. But I think you had, again, leaving BDT, seeking a more operational role for a little bit, those little tendencies I think were um part to convince us.

Speaker 1

I think you're right, but it's also funny now, being someone who's been, you know, starting a company for for two and a half years, it's not enough to just want to be your own boss. It is the the the lows are really low. Yeah. And if your your intrinsic desire of why you're doing it is not deep and real enough, like you will walk away from it because it becomes ultimately quite hard.

Harold Simansky

No, that's right. In fact, before we get to sort of the punchline is first, what you're doing now, what your Sloan experience was like, Jeremy and I did a podcast about ETAA, entrepreneurship through acquisition. And what we really found is just how it is very much emerging at the different business schools. Booth and Kellogg now have their own conference on ETA in schools that traditionally were not great entrepreneurship schools. Someone can argue with me, but that's at least the impression I always have, even have to this day. Stanford, the flip side, a great entrepreneurial school, they even have an ETA conference. So it's certainly gotten very hard, uh, very popular because it's part of it is entrepreneurship on trading wheels. Yeah, this idea here, you sort of have a business in the box. I'm gonna go buy it, and then we'll figure it out. Um, okay. So let's now take a step back and say, so what happened as a non-entrepreneur going to MIT Solar?

The Birth of GrowthFactor

Speaker 1

As in first day, kind of walk you through Exactly, first day and how it evolved.

Harold Simansky

Or maybe we should say, what are you doing now?

Speaker 1

Maybe that's a better place to So now I am the CEO of a company called Growth Factor. We just uh crossed a million in annual revenue and raised 5.2 million of seed funding. Um, so we're feels like we're off to the races in terms of building it. Uh we started, I started that company, we started it uh during school, which led to a quite stressful second year.

Harold Simansky

Sure it did.

Speaker 1

Um but now it's our full-time job. We've got an office and I've got about a dozen full-time employees and things like that.

Harold Simansky

That that's amazing. But why don't you just tell us a little bit more about growth factor and what steps were actually taking while you were at MIT school?

Speaker 1

Yeah. So I got so I mentioned my dad and I were quite close. I got to Sloan, I went to the first day of orientation, and three different speakers described the school as a playground uh as they were up on stage and whatever. And I thought this is the coolest thing I've ever heard. So I called my dad that night and I said, Dad, this is amazing. I'm so excited. What what do what should I be doing? And he said, I don't know. And I said, What do you mean? And he said, I just knew all the smart people were there. Just do whatever smart people do. So, okay, so I get to second day of orientation and I feel like a chicken with my head cut off. I don't know. But it it created this environment and to the point of them describing it as a playground of like I felt very free and I felt like I could explore everything. Um, and so I did. I explored, okay, what what do the other people who came from finance do? What do the consultants do? I didn't even know much about consulting. Um, and and what is you know, ETA actually, and going to those clubs and and what is entrepreneurship? And it's a huge part of Sloan's culture and just talking to the professors and talking to you know the students who had come from that kind of a background. What really happened though was one of the core classes at Sloan is called DMD, data models and decisions. DMs.

Harold Simansky

Well, you well um pause here. Uh Liza, your experience with DMD, and then I'll share mine.

Liza Weale

Oh, uh I don't have I just remember it being legit. I mean, everybody says the core at Sloan is aggressive and it's tough, and it was. And um, my albatross was definitely uh, I remember uh micro-econ. That was a tough class.

Harold Simansky

That's brutal. Yes, that is brutal.

Liza Weale

It was brutal. But DMD was kind of fun because that was when it moved from just stats in a book to really trying to figure out how to predict decisions and things like that. But I definitely remember, I remember my book. Do they still have textbooks? I remember my DMD textbook.

Speaker 1

Yeah, we're over all the time now. We're there in textbooks for years.

Liza Weale

Oh, well, there you go. I don't know. I still I still remember that. What's your DMD story?

Harold Simansky

My so my DMD story was thank God I was sitting next to somebody in class who was 24 years old. It's like, thank God. And then I'm sort of looking at all of this, my eyes are glazing over. And I was coming from politics, really. I had no background whatsoever. And and I was basically cheating off him the entire semester. And it worked for everybody, to be honest. Worked for me, worked for him, worked for the professor. So here I am. And every day my professor would have lunch at Legal Seafoods, which used to be a restaurant right by us. So it was one of those things where if I ever had questions, I'd go have lunch with it. Yeah. So it was really, really easy. No, it's perfect. Yeah.

Liza Weale

I will say my learning team, my core team was just amazing. We're still, I don't, do they still have um oceans? And and were you a fish or were you something else?

Speaker 1

Uh I was a bird.

Liza Weale

Okay, you were a bird. I heard that that I was a I would you were an eagle?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I was the No, I was not an eagle, I was an egret.

Liza Weale

Oh, egret.

Speaker 1

The niche. Yes, I think is. Uh I was I was a med, Mediterranean.

Liza Weale

Okay. I was Pacific and I was a Dorado.

Harold Simansky

I was Pacific.

Liza Weale

Oh, you were?

Harold Simansky

I was Pacific.

Speaker 1

Little cohort here.

Harold Simansky

Yeah, yeah. Exactly right. But God, I don't remember what type of fish I was. Let's say mackerel. Yeah, yeah.

Liza Weale

But I do remember my learning team, we were so efficient. We were a high production. I we had one um one of my team members, he was like a stats expert. So, of course, I'm like, this is great. And then we had another um person on our team, and he was just super, super efficient. And we would always finish our exercises, like first, we were the first group, and we'd be like, all right, what do we do now? So, and I just I still text with that crew. It's uh that team was like really, really special to me. I'd forgotten that I was a Pacific Dorado. I'm like, I know I was a fish, I don't know. So I'm texting my friend Chuck, being like, What fish were we? He's like, Dorado. Oh, okay.

Speaker 1

So it was just a really whether it's fish or bird, Sloan does not like to pick the most common breeds. It makes it very hard. I can I can totally see in the next few years me being like, I don't know what an e-grid is. I've never seen it.

Harold Simansky

That's right. Definitely go to the edge for most things.

Liza Weale

But with your training in um finance and banking, was the core um like how was it for you? Was it relatively easy? Did you feel like there was still a lot to learn that?

Speaker 1

I think like anyone coming in, you've got a few classes that feel pretty, pretty doable, and you've got a few classes that feel brand new. So econ felt doable for me. Um, accounting felt doable, even though I was not an accountant, I was close enough. Uh DMD uh felt incredibly new, and so did you know OP and and communications. I that's not what I was getting trained on at all. And so um the interesting thing is like the two classes that felt the newest was either the most technical or the least technical. Yes. Um, but both were fascinating to me. But I also I had a a uh core team member who was a stats, you know, expert. He's become one of my best friends, Devesh. And um, and he was teaching me a lot about DMD. And then I had a professor, Rama, who was incredible. Um, and I just fell in love with that course. And I thought this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. And Rama made a comment maybe six weeks into school where he said, you know, every major company is using everything you're hearing about um in this class. And I thought, that could be true, but I know, you know, I came from a family business of retailers, and so I thought, I don't think they're using this. So I called uh Books A million, who's my family business, and I said, Hey, how much of this are y'all doing? And I said, Oh, talk, talk to this guy, talk to this guy. And it turns out they were not using any of it. And so I thought, well, I know how to do this a little bit, but even if I don't, I got Divesh, I got Rama, they can tell me how to how to help. And so Growth Factor came out of this idea in that classroom first semester of I want to take this right now and help a business that I care deeply about.

Finding Co-Founders at Sloan

Harold Simansky

Oh, okay. That that's such an interesting combination. On the one hand, because of your familiarity with this industry, you saw a little bit of white space. And at that point, you sort of overlaid what Sloan did really, really well. You put it together. And then what actually happens though, in the sense of, and we hear this a lot, I want to go to business school and start my own business, find a founder. How does that actually work?

Speaker 1

I think it looks different for different people, and depending on who you are. I think some people come in much more intently and much more structured on what this looks like. I didn't. Um, I got very lucky to find Sam and Raj, who became my co-founders, uh, in that kind of first and second semester to help me figure out what starting a business looked like. Um, but I I think that like there is this process of dating co-founders and kind of getting to know people. Um, and and you know, there are people who start their own company solo, but it's it's for me at least, it wasn't the right thing. I did not know enough about how to do this. And so you kind of date and you try different things and you see people start little companies for a month and then kind of move on to the next thing. Um, so I I think I know that's not a great answer, but I think it can look a lot of different ways. But a lot of how it does look is just a ton of time with people understanding them. And then on the flip side, it is a very hands-on action-based process of a career. So you need to kind of, while you're in school, get out there and try to sell something, try to build something. And if you spend those two years just thinking about what to build, then it's it's very hard to leave school thinking that you're going to, you know, you have the entrepreneurial chops to keep going.

Harold Simansky

Right. That makes sense. Just talk a little bit about your co-founders. What were their backgrounds? How had they gotten to salon?

Speaker 1

Yes. So Sam uh is my COO, CFO. Uh he was both of them were consultants actually. Um, but Sam had spent two years at operations at another startup before school and sort of came in with this vigor of I saw a bunch of things that I I didn't love and I want to find a startup and and make it really, you know, a good business. So doing all the operations, creating the sales processes, whatever. Raj uh has a very different background, although he is also. Consultant before school, Raj was a computer science major, and I think Raj has always focused on the product and the thing that's in our customers' hands and wanted to be the person who had the full vision and autonomy over okay, what is actually causing the transformation with our customers and what are we building? And then for me, you know, it was from day one about the customer. And so I cared about our first customer. I grew up in retail. We now serve retailers and restaurants. I stay very close to them. And as a result, also it kind of became about the people, you know, both Sam and Raj and our broader team. Um, I've always felt that I'm a very people-focused, you know, leader of different things in my life. And now that comes out in Growth Factor.

Harold Simansky

No, that makes sense. So we always hear about MIT and the resources it has for startups for entrepreneurship. What did you take advantage of?

The Sloan Startup Resources That Supported GrowthFactor

Speaker 1

Everything. Again, I did not feel I knew what I was doing. Uh, and so we took, you know, we we built the company from IHQ. IHQ is is, I believe it stands for Innovation Headquarters. It's a taller building right near Flattop Johnny's, so about a block away from Sloan campus. Yes. Um, and it's it's just kind of several floors of open workspace and a bunch of people building different things. You've also got the Martin Trust Center, which has much more of the actual academics and and um almost like the programming and curriculum of entrepreneurship, but it doesn't have as much space. And so we were mostly hanging out in IHQ and then taking the classes and meeting with the professors from the trust center.

Liza Weale

And how did you like just balance your time with you know trying to start a company, take classes, meet classmates, everything? Like how was doing all of that together at once?

Speaker 1

I think we we focused early on once we knew that that first summer was going to be devoted towards the startup. I think the startup became the main thing that we were doing. And so class and everything became almost a secondary thing that we had to do in some ways. But the good part of Sloan is there's so many classes on entrepreneurship that we were functionally doing the same thing. So classes like you know, GSD or even entrepreneurial sales, it felt like I could get a tremendous amount out of those classes that was perfectly aligned with my actual job at the time.

Liza Weale

And what GSD?

Speaker 1

GSD uh stands for uh get stuff done.

Liza Weale

Yeah.

Speaker 1

I think the actual name is Scaling Entrepreneurial Ventures. It's taught by Emily Green and Costa and Kirk Arnold, a bunch of really uh incredible former entrepreneurs who just want to kind of give back to the community. And it's a it's a class where you know 20 or 30 startups pitch to get in. They only have five startups a semester, but it becomes very, you know, they meet with you one-on-one and your teams and talk about where you are and what you're facing. And so it was incredibly formative to us.

Liza Weale

So you felt really that Sloan had your back throughout this process?

Speaker 1

I could not have started a company with us. Wow. I mean, it it was there, I cannot imagine that there is a better school in the world to start a company at.

Liza Weale

Like when you got um, when you ran into roadblocks, how would you leverage the resources around you to help figure out how to move forward? Yeah.

How Sloan Students Champion One Another

Speaker 1

I mean, it's why we're our company still in Kindle Square because I still leverage those. It's mostly, you know, I had a list of professors, and different professors are good at different things. So I'd say, okay, we're struggling with marketing. Here's my three professors that I'm close with that can help me with marketing or whatever it is. Um, and then you asked too about how do you balance social life with all of it. I think it all becomes the same thing if you can do it right. And so similarly, I was going to a lot of my friends who were building companies or in this space and saying, hey, what are you doing? You know, trying to pick their brain, take all that, take it back to the team and say, okay, here's three or four things that we can do to overcome it. The first two or three wouldn't work, the fourth maybe would. And so you just kind of keep testing and iterating. But but having that, you know, network of human beings who care about each other, you know, and that's Sloan.

Liza Weale

That's Sloan.

Speaker 1

Like your fellow students care so deeply about each other, and the professors care so deeply about you. That's the magic that I think, you know, when you convinced me to go to Sloan, I didn't understand. You don't find that everywhere.

Harold Simansky

No, you definitely don't. I mean, listen, you frequently have stories where business school can be quite alienating because at the end of the day, for some schools that are even more academic, you sort of go into that rabbit hole. Suddenly you're spending a lot of time in the library, which is the exact opposite of what you really want to do. Right. But the nature of the school pushes you then in that direction.

Speaker 1

Sloan, I felt, had a a more supportive culture of kind of relationships and marriages. And um, but it can be uh because it's such a stark shift. She's seen her husband in business casual going into an office every day, and all of a sudden I'm in hoodies and she comes home from work and we're hanging out and whatever, you know. It's like it's so so that the shift to business school, I think, was a big one. And then the shift to being a startup person was a big one. My wife is the greatest, though. She's she was incredibly excited to watch me kind of go through a transformation and and support. And now she's getting her masters, and I feel blessed to be able to support her and kind of give back in that way. Sloan, this is important, I think. My wife ended up being the the president of the significant others of Sloan. SOS, absolutely, and uh and she loved it and she poured herself into it, and so she got really into the community. That's really great. And I I'd have a lot of people uh at Sloan come up to me and and they start talking to me. I'd say, I don't, I don't actually think we've met. And they'd go, Oh, I know Leslie. Yeah. Okay. That that that's right. I think Sloan does a lot of things really right. And I think one of those is the smaller class size. I mean, that changes the world in terms of you kind of all got to try to get along. That's right. Um, and and I think it works out. And I think, you know, similarly, like Sloan's kind of open coursework or everyone can kind of be a part of everything. You know, I told Leslie several times and I was getting close to my professors, I was like, you can come to a class with me. You can, and she said, I'm not interested in that at all. That's right. Which was there. But it just that that kind of approachability from a a and it's not any institute, it's MIT. I mean, it's a right, that's right. I'm from Alabama and I grew up knowing MIT. So for her to, I think, feel like it was that accessible to her really helped her feel like, okay, I'll go and make friends and talk to people and go to these events. Yeah. You know, Sloan, uh, significant others can become members of clubs without you. Uh, and people told me this before, and I thought, that sounds like no one's doing it. People are doing that.

Harold Simansky

That's really great.

Speaker 1

Yeah, so some of my best friends from school are significant others that I met at these clubs or different functions.

Sloan Career Paths Outside of Entrepreneurship

Harold Simansky

That's great. That's fantastic. So you have a lot you made a lot of friends there. What are other people doing, particularly folks who they simply were not entrepreneurs, they didn't want to be entrepreneurs. Yeah. What sort of things do you do?

Speaker 1

Which is most people, by the way. And I think that that's the interesting part of Sloan having a reputation, which is true, of being a more entrepreneurial school. It still is not the majority.

Liza Weale

Yeah.

Speaker 1

You know, it's maybe 10 to 20% of the class. So it's a business school. A lot of people are going into consulting. Um, yeah. And then people are going into finance, probably less than other schools as a percentage, but still a good number of people. Um, you had some people going in kind of different corporate development roles. Um, and and I think if I look at my, and then I I there's also a big veterans population at Sloan. A lot of my best friends are vets. One of them went back into the Navy after school. Um, and so his Sloan journey was, I think, quite fun because he knew what he was doing.

Harold Simansky

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. One of my close friends, just to to interject here a little bit, was in fact a Navy veteran. Yes. And he had three children, and he was living married student housing as as I was, but there were five of them, five of them in a single place. So it looked like a submarine. It literally did. The kids were on bunk beds, he had servers going, and at that point, I'm like, are you sure you left the Navy?

Speaker 1

Yeah, no, they've lived a different life, I learned very quickly that our so our pre-Sloan experiences were quite different.

Harold Simansky

Yes, yes.

Speaker 1

Um, but I've become, you know, so so the interesting thing is like if I look at my closest friends from Sloan, I think, you know, besides my co-founders, maybe one of them is building a company. Most of them went into consulting or finance or or corporate development or some of these other kind of routes. Um, and and I don't know why exactly I I do in some ways. It's because that's the school, and I wasn't as focused on I need friends building companies. I just wanted to find friends. And to what you were saying of like you're dropped into a new place, I had done that a couple of times, right? You Chicago and and Dallas and whatever. But Sloan and business school generally felt like the first time that I was dropped in with no agenda. You know, in undergrad, I dropped in and I was playing football. And so those were my friends, and they're my best friends now. Um, and I'm thankful for them. But Sloan, it was like, whatever, I'm just gonna meet people. And it ended up being such a blessing because now I know people who are doing all kinds of things. Um, and and even though I think the other blessing from that is like I don't sit with my friends and talk about work because we don't feel we have to, right?

Harold Simansky

Right, right, right, right, right.

Speaker 1

But it but people to your question on what are people from Sloan doing, seemingly everything. It was like a wildly, and you know, you'd meet someone, you'd ask that question, what are you doing? The other good part of Sloan is the LGO program and having all the engineers, you know, much more engineers coming from their their previous lives. And so they're doing kind of the crazy, you know, oh, I'm moving to rural Pennsylvania for five years to build a factory. I was like, that's wild.

Harold Simansky

Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1

But it's it happens more than you would think.

Harold Simansky

People forget one of the requirements of having good business school success is making relationships with other people, putting putting in the time, putting in the energy.

Speaker 1

Yeah. It's probably, I mean, from my perspective, it was the most important thing because you learn a ton from the classroom because you get to pick your classes. And so, but also you learn even in those classes from specific professors. Yes. And they're so accessible. Yes. I mean, it is wild. You know, in undergrad, I felt like, okay, I can't really talk to them. I have like three of their cell phone numbers. Yes. You know, I hung out with one, one of them met my dad. Right. Yeah. Very, very close with them. And so the difference in learning from a peer versus a professor starts to feel a lot thinner than it did in undergrad. And it feels more like you're just learning from people and you're trying to find the best people to learn from.

Harold Simansky

Right, right, right. And I think that's a very MIT school-wise. Yeah, this idea here smarts really counts. I was on a team with a 21-year-old because MIT undergrads can take courses with us. Yeah. And needless to say, brilliant guy. He started a company right after he graduated. And that I mean, one of these classics, 21, 22, by the time he's 25, he's on to company number two, three. Yeah. And at the end of the day, and but they still keep in touch with him. Then he had great success. So now he's an author. Yeah. It's really sort of sort of really interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah. That's the it is, you're right. And that is MIT. And everyone feels, you know, it's talking about IHQ. The fun part of IHQ is most people there are not Sloaney. Right. Yeah. Um, and you spend all day with Sloaney's and you're excited about that. But MIT generally is just this place where people are just hands-on figuring out what they're passionate about. And I feel the school sort of gives you, you know, maybe not explicitly, but this mandate of hey, you can do anything you want, but you have to do it. Right. You have to go out and try while you're here. And so, you know, me and and one of my friends, uh, a guy named Blake, who was a Navy guy, we would spend our Friday nights instead of going out partying, we'd go to IHQ and we'd try to build a video game because we were like, let's see if we can. And it turns out we could not. Um, but it acts MIT. Yeah. That culture from the broader MIT bleeds deeply into Sloan. And that is something where I talked to my other friends who went to other business schools. That's just not a part of it because that's a part of MIT specifically, not a part of anything about the business school or whatever. And it just kind of naturally, organically becomes a part of your life as experimenting and doing and trying, and sort of again, like back to that playground playfulness of how you can try different things and it's okay to fail.

How Delta V Helps Launch Student Ventures

Harold Simansky

Clyde, let's just pause right here. What is Delta B?

Speaker 1

Delta V is a basically summer-long accelerator. Um, it's the the final step in entrepreneurship at MIT, if you will. Um, groups from all over the broader MIT come. So some Sloan, some undergrad, some grad students, PhDs, everything. Um, and it's it is just a summer of building and iterating on your company and learning from the best alumni and mentors that you can. Um, and and ultimately you present at a, you know, we call it demo day, where you kind of get to reveal, hey, this is my company into the world. Um, it's a great program. They spend a lot of time kind of thinking about, okay, what works for everyone and what works for you, and and giving you the space to build your company because often if there's too much homework, you know, I have things to do for my customers. So uh, but it it's it's like a great final step to say, here I am, world, and here's here's what I'm gonna do next.

Liza Weale

So

The Post-Graduate Power of Sloan’s Alumni Network

Liza Weale

now you are officially part of the alumni group at Sloan. So talk to me a little bit about that group. How did you work with alumni when you were in school? How has your role shifted now that you're out?

Speaker 1

Yeah. It's it's interesting because my first thought was that, oh, maybe I didn't work with alumni that much, but that's not actually true because almost everyone around you at Sloan is either currently at Sloan or is alumni in some way, and they come and interact in your classes all the time. They come and speak. And so I was able to meet actually a lot of alumni through those classes who came to speak and you stay and you meet them and you talk to them, or they're currently lecturers or advisors, and you meet them and you meet their friends. So I was interacting with alumni quite a bit while I was there. I think it's just so natural to the process that you don't quite even separate the two. Um, and now I am an alumni and and um it feels like a very seamless transition in the world because Sloan is is such a big part of me. And we didn't move far. You know, we're four blocks away. Um, and and we had this kind of building the company in school. So it felt like we were doing the same thing we were doing in school. But even now, like being on the other side, I think to to feel that blessing of like, hey, I I had a magical bubble of life and it didn't pop. Yeah, it just came with me is is is really a wonderful experience. And I I couldn't be happier about you know being a Sloaney.

Harold Simansky

That's great. No, that's really terrific.

Speaker 1

The process of entrepreneurship is this process of constantly re-inventing yourself and the company has changed. How do I change in the face? And it feels now for the first time like, okay, we're a little bit of a real company. Wow. Right, right, right, right. Um, but it's exciting. I think when you've got, you know, quite a few customers and employees, it feels like you're really making an impact on people. You know, you've got people that get a house or, you know, have start a family while they're working for you, um, or you've got customers where you can actually see the results in their business. We just um found out how much we impacted our first customer, which was Books a Million. They've had a uh about a nine times return on investment with us, and and their sales have grown, you know, in their news stores by about 14%. And so we're seeing the impact we've had. Um, and that just feels like the greatest feeling in the world.

Liza Weale

So, Sloan, thumbs up, thumbs down. Would you recommend it?

Speaker 1

I would yes, I'd give it two thumbs up. Uh, I would say, um, I am I am so thankful that you were the person who said you should think about the school that I had never thought about. And and if you had not done that, my life would have been meaningfully worse. I cannot imagine that there is a better business school to go to honor.

Liza Weale

Well, I mean, I win too, because we are now officially kind of related for life. We are all here. We're a one line of Sloan. So we all win. But it it sounds like you just had a magical experience. And honestly, I think for a lot of our viewers, like you're living the dream, you know, to go and actually start a company, find success, find you've got a path forward, you know, you you did you did it right and you did it well, which is um just a real it's been a real delight to chat with you today.

Harold Simansky

I appreciate it. Absolutely. And let me just pause here. If you want to chat with me, if you want to chat with Eliza, by all means sign up for a 30-minute free consultation. And honestly, one of the things I think we do very well is help people understand there's many different business schools out there, and some are better fits, and some maybe less better fits.

Liza Weale

Yes, you're right. We're we're drinking the Sloan Kool-Aid here because we're all together. But we uh, you know, I think you and I just uh we have this uh wonderful role to get to know so many different schools and so many different applicants. But it's always just fun to go a little bit back in memory lane and relive our own experiences through Clydes today. So yeah, absolutely.

Harold Simansky

Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you, good luck with your company. Very exciting. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, of course.

Jeremy Shinewald

Exciting news! You can now access OnTrack by MBA Mission for free. Take our two-minute onboarding questionnaire to personalize your learning path. Choose the free plan, and you'll have unlimited access to our complete modules on MBA application timelines, standardized testing, your professional background, community leadership, school selection, and more. You'll also get access to select lessons from our brainstorming, personal statement, essay, resume, and recommendation modules. It's a great introduction to the on track platform and will help you jumpstart the MBA application process. Get started today at ontrack.mba mission.com.