Jeff Schwarting
Jul 24, 2017 · 2 min read

Quick opinion from someone who graduated from BYU’s business school with an emphasis in entrepreneurship (me):

Another option not mentioned here is to teach the business students to make things themselves.

The purported problem is that the people who want to start businesses aren’t making products (business students), and the people who are making products don’t want to start businesses (STEM students), and I hear the same solution all the time — get them together!

In fact this post said exactly that:

While it is possible to succeed without a tech founder/product-centric employee, DO YOUR BEST TO GET ONE ON YOUR TEAM.

But you don’t need to be a STEMie to make products.

In business school you’re mostly taught to manipulate existing things / systems — pull this finance lever, turn that marketing knob, hire X key employee — but rarely, if ever, in business school, is the product itself, or it’s creation, addressed.

After my business school indoctrination I didn’t even consider making a product myself. I was steeped in thoughts of attracting technical co-founders, and raising money at an attractive valuation, and getting into TechCrunch.

I eventually remembered that I, too, can make products, but it took a long while.

I wish we had spent a lot more time talking about the product in my entrepreneurship classes.

I wish someone would have told me, “hey, if you want to start a business, you’re going to need a product to sell. And it’s going to need to be really good. And since it’s just you right now, you’re going to have to make it.”

    Jeff Schwarting

    Written by

    Accelerate.