And students don't even have to submit a winning project in these competitions to walk home with a wallet full of business cards. If you scan the press, there's a pervasive sense that VCs are willing to invest millions on any intelligent individual who can write a business plan. Founding entrepreneurial fathers like Larry Ellison, Dave Packard and Harvard dropout Bill Gates spent years developing ideas and building up their companies. Today's entrepreneurial men and women, on the other hand, can draw up business plans, secure funding and launch in a matter of months. In fact, if they spend too much time at the drawing board, they run the risk that someone else will step into their space.
Markets can explode within months.
A year ago, there were no major online beauty and makeup vendors. And in December 1998, Stanford business school student Matt Hobart began working on his business plan for an e-commerce company that would sell pet supplies online. Deborah Adeyanju, a recent MBA graduate, has mixed feelings. During the first year of business school I definitely learned new material and did not feel I was missing things by not working. However, after completing a summer internship between my first and second years and returning to school, I definitely felt some impatience with coursework that was not practical enough or applicable to my sharpened career focus.