{"id":8638,"date":"2012-05-04T14:15:05","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T20:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/?p=8638"},"modified":"2022-02-09T11:39:33","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T16:39:33","slug":"what-i-learned-at-haas-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/what-i-learned-at-haas-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Learned at…Haas: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our \u201cWhat I Learned at\u2026\u201d series, MBAs discuss the tools and skills their business schools provided as they launched their careers.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"<\/a>Mili Mittal is a former mbaMission consultant and now the CEO and cofounder of <\/em>mor.sl<\/a><\/em>, a recipe recommendations platform designed to help busy professionals cook. <\/em>mor.sl<\/em><\/a> was recently featured in <\/em>TechCrunch<\/em><\/a>. Mili received her MBA and a Certificate in Entrepreneurship from the Haas School of Business at the University of California\u2013Berkeley (UC Berkeley Haas) in 2010. In Part 1 of this four-part series, Mili describes how her Haas classmates turned into friends who supported and guided her when she was starting her own company.<\/em><\/p>\n

I went to UC Berkeley Haas already knowing that I wanted to start my own business after I graduated. After four years as a human resources and information technology consultant at the Corporate Executive Board Company, where I gained \u201cintrapreneurial\u201d experience building a new product line, and after having also cofounded and launched a dance company, I\u2019d caught the entrepreneurial bug. I thought I was going to business school to round out my skills\u2014to learn finance, accounting\u2014the technical things I would need to build a business. I was wrong.<\/p>\n

At Haas, I learned and gained so<\/strong>\u00a0much more than just academic knowledge (not to undermine those things, however\u2014for example, learning to build a financial model in Professor Sarah C. Tasker\u2019s \u201cDesigning Financial Models That Work\u201d course was invaluable). I chose Haas because of its strength in entrepreneurship and social responsibility, because it supported students with crazy \u201cI\u2019m gonna change the world\u201d ideas and because students emerged from that campus and did just that. When I got there, I was energized and excited, not just by everything the school had to offer, but also by the energy and ambition of my peers. At Haas, with only 240 students in my class, these peers quickly turned into friends.<\/p>\n

The single most beneficial resource I had on my entrepreneurial path at Haas was the support of these friends. When you\u2019re starting a company at Haas, you don\u2019t feel alone, even though entrepreneurship is generally a very lonely path. Instead, you have a community of professors, friends and mentors who act as your cheerleaders. They work for you from the get-go, both inside and outside the classroom. Professors like John Danner and Kellie McElhaney worked to introduce me to the likes of Whole Foods\u2019 and Wegmans\u2019 executives so that I could gain invaluable industry perspective on my company.\u00a0 Professor Mario Rosati sent my pitch to Silicon Valley investors for their feedback. Fellow entrepreneurs in my \u201cEntrepreneurship Workshop\u201d <\/em>class worked tirelessly to offer perspective on my business plan, pitch and product iterations.<\/p>\n

Moreover, I found my first teammates at business school\u2014I originally started the path to mor.sl<\/a> by working on a venture called myChef, which I founded with fellow Haasies. Even our classmates who were going the more traditional route of marketing or finance offered their support\u2014filling out SurveyMonkey questionnaires about their pantries and tastes, testing various iterations of the product and offering their own connections as resources. Based on these individuals\u2019 input and feedback, we realized the initial concept for our venture required too much user input to stay accurate, and quickly pivoted to a new model.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s even more awesome? These friends continue to support me to this day, nearly two years after graduation. Those who have gone on to see entrepreneurial success of their own offer their advice and materials for me to learn from\u2014sample term sheets, partner agreements, seed-round pitch decks that worked for them. Those who aren\u2019t entrepreneurs offer their skills, too. For example, my friend who works at a digital marketing agency offered tips on effective Facebook marketing when I needed them. Haasies are my champions\u2014and my company\u2019s champions. They share our success on Facebook, pass the mor.sl<\/a> URL along to their friends, introduce me to potential partners. And all of them, together, have been my rock, continually encouraging me to push forward even when I\u2019m not optimistic, and championing my small wins. Basically, they\u2019ve got my back.<\/p>\n

When you are choosing a business school\u2014whether you\u2019re looking to start your own venture or not\u2014take a close look at who you\u2019ll be sitting next to in class. Make sure they can quickly go from being your peers to your friends, because it\u2019s your friends who will support you on your journey, no matter what your path is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In our \u201cWhat I Learned at\u2026\u201d series, MBAs discuss the tools and skills their business schools provided as they launched their careers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-school-insider-interview","category-berkeley-haas"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat I Learned at...Haas: Part 1 | mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/what-i-learned-at-haas-part-1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What I Learned at...Haas: Part 1 | mbaMission - 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