ALAIN DE MENDONCA GRADUATED FROM HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL IN 2001,THE YEAR OF THE DOT.COM BUST AND 9/11 ATTACKS. DESPITE THIS AND MORE,HE FOUNDED HIS OWN COMPANY AND WAS ELECTED ‘BEST MANAGER FOR 2008 IN FRANCE.’ MENDONCA ELABORATES ON HOW AN MBA CAN PREPARE YOU FOR ANY EVENTUALITY
IT vard I is graduated close Business to a from decade the School since Har-(HBS) and I am still willing to stand up, raise my hand and say, “Investing two years of my time and committing $1,50,000 of personal debt to fund my tuition and living expenses is probably one of the best decisions I have ever made.”
Most of my classmates went into the fancy world of private equity, or to management consultancy and investment banking powerhouses. I, on the other hand, decided to choose a lonely but highly inspirational path — starting a company on my own. And even though I graduated just as the dot.com boom turned into the dot.com bust, I was able to use the collective skills taught in the MBA classroom to raise the initial funding for Karavel, an online travel agency.
We have since become a leading online travel agency in France with about $500 million in annual sales. I even sold the company in 2005 to a large industrial group, but the need for ownership was such that I decided to buy the group back in 2007 in a leveraged buyout (LBO). Since then, I have run the business with as much energy and passion as those early days.
REAL WORLD LEARNING
At HBS, I worked on the Karavel business plan in my student room, living on a diet of takeaway pizza, unaware that the company would one day have created jobs for 600 people. In those 10 years I feel that I have seen all that the industry has to offer by way of challenges. These range from:
• Raising venture capital in 2001 just after the meltdown of the ‘tech bubble,’ in the year when the Nasdaq dropped 70%
• Handling the blow of the terrible attacks of 9/11 that translated to an overnight drop of 30% in flight travel, or the SARS virus, bombings in Tunisia, Thailand, India, Bali, Morocco, Turkey, Egypt (you name it) that shook consumer appetite for travel
• And more recently, facing the implosion of the banking credit markets with its far-reaching impact on the economy.
Add to that the essential daily tasks of any successful business — recruiting the right person, designing a high performance organisation, making decisions about IT choices even though you have no clue about technology, negotiating agreement with unions (particularly strong in Europe), and inspiring those around you.
I must admit that without an MBA, I would have not been able to move as far (or as fast) in business. While a video game allows you to practice your skills and reset the game to try again, real life does not give you the same chance to start over. And in this respect, an MBA continues to be the best training you could get.
MULTIPLE BENEFITS
To begin with, an MBA builds your trust in yourself. For two years (or one), if you are fortunate enough to be accepted to a top Bschool, you are immersed in a culture of confidence building, surrounded by talented classmates. Despite recent criticisms of the MBA culture, I maintain that building your sense of self-belief and faith are known to be the cornerstone of any success. However, you need more than this. And that is where the added value of networking through the MBA comes in.
MBA networks are like a community of very diverse people, and if you search the alumni database you will always find someone who can help you. If you need money for your project, you call alumni working in the finance community. If you need industry experts, you call the alumni who have senior positions in your industry and you interview them.
Further, through the course of your MBA, you will study so many business cases, listen to so many great speakers, have so many great discussions with your brilliant classmates that by the time the dean shakes your hand and firmly awards you a well-earned degree, you will have ample self-belief, the skills to handle any situation and contacts for any challenge.