Dealing With Those MBA Video Questions
Maria |
July 21, 2024

In this episode of Business Casual, the hosts delve into the evolving role of video essays in MBA admissions. As AI technologies like ChatGPT begin to influence traditional application essays, top business schools are increasingly turning to video responses to gauge the real-time communication skills and spontaneous thinking abilities of their candidates. From INSEAD to Kellogg to London Business School, discover how these institutions utilize platforms like Kira Talent to see beyond the polished essays to the authentic person behind the application.

The co-hosts share strategies for excelling in video essays, from perfecting your on-camera presence to preparing succinct, impactful responses that demonstrate your leadership and problem-solving skills. This episode is a must-listen, providing the tools to turn video essay challenges into opportunities to shine.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.370] – John

Well, hello everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. As I’ve often noted before, Maria is the founder of Application Lab, and Caroline is the co-founder of Fortuna Admissions and former Managing Director of Admissions at INSEAD. We want to talk today about those video questions that admissions officers are increasingly asking applicants to do. Years ago, the first major school to introduce video questions for admissions was the Rotman School at the University of Toronto, in part because the firm that pioneered this, Kira Talent, was based in Canada. Yale and Kellogg followed. Now, there’s a wealth of schools with video questions. We think they’ve assumed even greater importance in the era of AI because admissions officials, while they still require written essays, may be discounting them to some degree because they fear that ChatGPT is becoming a drafter of these documents that are then massage by candidates who submit the answers. But what’s interesting is different schools use these videos. Some give you a fair amount of time to prepare, even offering up clues as to what the questions are or the actual questions themselves.

[00:01:40.970] – John

Others give you a very short period of time. We want to go over what the different schools are requiring and how you can best prepare for them. Caroline, you’ve done a deep dive in researching what’s out there. What have you found?

[00:01:55.010] – Caroline

Yeah. So definitely there has been a gradual increase in the number of schools number of top business schools that are requiring these video questions. And as you said, I think it’s a great way for schools to get a sense for how someone actually communicates live in a format that, for the time being, is, I think, It’s really impossible to fake. So it’s a great way for schools to cross-check people’s communication skills and how they think on their feet. And if they have a really strong written application, but they really fumble the video questions, then that can definitely raise a flag. And as you said, there are different ways that schools are using this. Many of the schools are using the Kira Talent platform, and the schools can customize that. So in some cases, schools have a fixed question plus some random questions. Some schools just give candidates random questions. So for example, at INSEAD and ESA, you will get randomly assigned questions from a database of thousands of questions, right? So you can’t predict what you’re going to be asked. Some schools do a mix. So some schools have a fixed question plus a random question.

[00:03:08.590] – Caroline

So that’s the case for London Business School and for Kellogg. I think also for Oxford. Some schools require you to do the video assessment when you submit your written application, and then other schools use this process at the interview stage. So it’s not required of people who get dinged pre-interview, but it’s in addition to the interview stage. So LBS is in that category. And also, some schools are using this platform, the Kira Talent platform, to have candidates do a live written exercise. So that’s the case for Rotman and for Oxford. And I think the INSEAD is introducing that as well. So it’s a timed written response to a randomly generated prompt. And also actually, Ross, I think, has that as as well. And they will be candidates are required to write a question or write an email on a topic that they might need to address if they were a student at the school. So I think that, again, that is a response to AI and concerns that students or candidates may be using AI to generate their applications, but you can’t use AI when you’re under these time conditions using the Kira Talent platform.

[00:04:25.820] – Caroline

So it’s a way for schools to assess your ability to perform in a unscripted and unprepared environment.

[00:04:34.350] – John

So, Caroline, you’ve done some research that shows some schools have given people quite a bit of time to prepare to answer a question. Other schools want it within 15 seconds. Which are those?

[00:04:46.750] – John

Yeah, that’s right. They give you 60 seconds to prepare and 90 seconds to respond. Other schools, for example, INSEAD, you get 45 seconds to prepare and then 60 seconds to respond. MIT is also introducing another video question. So they already had a question asking you to introduce yourself to your future classmates. So a sex subject where you do a 60 second video. But they’re also introducing this year a second question, which will be a randomly generated question from their database of questions. And for that one, they say that you’ll get 10 seconds to prepare and 60 seconds to respond. So that’s a much shorter time frame. And I guess they’re looking to imitate more closely the experience of actually being in a live interview and having to respond to a live question immediately.

[00:05:36.530] – John

Now, what does an admissions official really get here by requiring video answers to questions?

[00:05:43.830] – Caroline

Well, so from what I’ve heard from the schools, they find these very useful as a way of getting a sense for people’s communication skills, whether the way they communicate cross-check with how they present themselves in their written applications. They’re also looking to see how well you think on your feet, which you will definitely need to do in the classroom. So it’s a way for seeing if you get thrown a random question in a challenging business school context, are you going to be able to hold your own? They’re short, right? So often you will be doing three or four responses of 60 seconds each. So if you think of the amount of time that adds to the file readers work, it’s only three or four minutes. But in that time, I think they can observe quite a lot, and they can learn quite a lot about the candidates. Also, many of these schools aren’t necessarily observing the candidate directly themselves, right? So a lot of these schools are using alumni or students for interviews, and so the admissions commission community never gets a chance to actually meet the candidate in person. And so the interview reports, while they’re very useful, it’s not from someone who’s a member of the admissions team.

[00:06:55.660] – Caroline

And so this is a way for the admissions team to actually observe the candidate directly. I think that they find that short recording and the ability to observe someone live in an unscripted environment, get a sense for the authentic candidate, they find that a really useful complement to the written application.

[00:07:15.480] – John

Yeah, and I will say, I have sat in admissions committee meetings at a few schools, including Rotman, and I’ve watched some of these videos. I can tell you that, boy, you can tell a lot a candidate when you see them in person speaking as opposed to reading something that they’ve written or looking at a standardized test. You can tell immediately if they have any professional presence. You can tell how awkward they are. To your point, you can tell how communicative they are, how articulate they are in expressing a point of view, which is super important in a business school class. Now, Maria, there’s got to be a way to prepare for this, What advice do you have for people who know they have to overcome, I’ll use overcome as a word because I think it’s more challenging, overcome a video hurdle to get into a highly selective school? What advice should you provide here?

[00:08:17.420] – Maria

As you might imagine, I have a lot of advice, but I think some of the key points I bring up here are, first of all, practice, even if you don’t have access to the Kira Talent platform, even just putting on your webcam and practicing saying anything. It doesn’t even have to be the sample questions because it is a very unnatural sensation to stare into your camera, first of all, when you’re talking, instead of looking down at yourself or looking down at the interviewer’s face on the screen. In order to make eye contact with the video, you’re going to want to be trying to train yourself to look at the video camera. It’s not comfortable necessarily to have exactly 90 seconds to give an answer. Just getting into the of practicing a few times, what does it feel like to give an answer in only 90 seconds? Do I only talk for 10 seconds? Maybe that’s not enough. You can just record yourself. Again, there’s no shortage of free webcam browser-based types of services out there where you can just record it or even just use your phone even to record yourself and time yourself and practice that.

[00:09:24.280] – Maria

Just getting comfortable with the idea of doing it is the first thing. Then the second big tip that I have I advise people to have, especially for the schools where you think you might get some a behavioral interview around your leadership style or teamwork or a time that a client was difficult or whatever it might be. I call them Swiss Army knife stories. These are good for any interview, but they’re especially good for these very quick ones where you’re not going to get a follow-up question. You’re not going to be able to clarify yourself. You’re not going to be able to look at the person’s face and say, They just missed that. I need to… Hold up. Let me back up and re-explain that because I can tell that I missed the mark. In situations like this, it’s really useful to have Swiss army knife stories that you can pick and choose and pull and twist into different shapes depending on which question you get asked. If you have some key questions where you’re like, Well, if I get asked a teamwork question or a leadership question or a persuasion question, I can pick and choose the different elements of the story and be ready to go regardless of which flavor of question I get.

[00:10:22.500] – Maria

Now, all of this having been said, don’t overly prepare, because if the entire point of these videos is to try to get a sense of your communication presence and your style and all those good things that Caroline just brought up, if all of a sudden the camera clicks on and you are like, Thank you so much for asking me about why I want to come to your school. The three reasons I want to come to your school are as follows. Obviously, you’re defeating the purpose. Also, if you prepare too much for a specific type of answer, what if you get a variation of that question and you answer the wrong question?

[00:10:55.170] – John

You need to come off this colloquially casual, to the point, relax, relaxed, comfortable, right?

[00:11:01.940] – Maria

Yeah, absolutely. Because I’m trying to get a sense of who are you going to be on my campus? Would I want to sit next to you in a classroom? Also, what are my corporate recruiters going to think of you? If they come to my campus and they hire out my Career Services office and set up all the little cubicles for the interview, am I going to be embarrassed by you? Or are you someone that the recruiters are going to say, Hey, you know what? I had a really good time coming to your school meeting your students. They’re all great. We loved them.

[00:11:32.490] – John

One of the things I think that can disadvantage a person is, let’s face it, if you’re an introvert and you’re uncomfortable in front of a camera, you are immediately at a disadvantage. If we can argue that one of the reasons why business schools are so effective is because they take people who have a lot of rough edges, stand them down, and get them prepared for the professional world. Our videos are disadvantage for candidates who don’t feel awkward in front of a camera? Let’s face it, there’s so many people who you take a picture of them and they have to see it before anyone would post it on social media because they want to make sure they’re looking their best. You know exactly what I’m talking about here, I bet. Am I right?

[00:12:23.220] – Caroline

Well, yes. I mean, you have less control over this, right? I think it’s also important to keep in mind that it doesn’t matter if you don’t give the best possible response. Many candidates often think afterwards, Oh, I could have said this, I could have said that, I could have used this example. They know that it’s a difficult exercise. And I’ve heard this from the schools as well, that they’re not looking for perfection. So they understand that, as Maria said, it’s an anxiety-inducing context because you don’t have a human person looking at you who you can engage with. So there’s that barrier that people naturally feel when they’re just talking at a computer screen rather than talking to a real human being. And the candidates know that there’s a lot at stake, and they get a random question. If they get three or four questions, if you fluff one slightly, don’t worry about it. So they’re not looking for you to give absolutely spot on, perfect, perfectly delivered questions in 58 seconds, and it cuts off at 60 seconds. So I think that candidates can keep that in mind. But also, as Mary said, it’s definitely really worth preparing.

[00:13:43.120] – Caroline

And I do see candidates approve if they do record example responses and just get used to the format and also get used to the timing. It’s quite tricky. In a real interview, no one’s going to cut you off at 60 seconds, but the platform will cut you off at that limit. And so it’s a shame if you haven’t wrapped up your response by that question, your response to the question by that point. So just do try to get used to that time frame. That’s why the practice is also useful, just so that you can internalize how quickly that time elapses. And also a mistake that I see candidates make sometimes is that they get a question and then they give an introduction to their response, and their introduction It takes 30, 40 seconds, and then they have 15 seconds to give the subsets of their response. And that can be more difficult for some candidates than others, depending on the cultural background. Some people are more chatty and likely to deliver longer responses than others. So you have to get used to diving straight into your response. You do not have time for an introduction, for a preamble, for repeating the question.

[00:14:57.330] – Caroline

You just have to get straight down to it. So there are some tips like that that can help you. And just the practice does really, I think, give you a better shot at doing well in the actual recording. And I would say as well, just think a little bit about the staging. So people are used to being on Zoom now, and so generally this works just fine. But just be careful that what is behind you, just look professional, dress appropriately, don’t If you don’t have piles of laundry in the background. I advise people to put their computer up a little bit higher because laptop cameras are often around chin level, and that’s not a very flattering angle for most people. So it’s good to put your computer on a pile of books or something. So the camera is also at a more natural level. If you were looking someone in the eye and they were sitting opposite you, it’s going to be more at that level. And make sure the lighting is appropriate, right? That you’re not You’re not in the dark. So just think carefully about your staging and the setup and make sure that you’ve got a good context and also that you are not going to be interrupted.

[00:16:12.650] – Caroline

There’s no background noise. Just make sure that you’re able to do this and focus on the exercise and not worry about what else is going on around you.

[00:16:20.240] – John

Because there is no redo, right? I mean, it’s one shot and you’re over.

[00:16:24.950] – Caroline

It’s one shot and you’re over. I mean, I have heard that if there’s really a disaster, like the fire alarm off, you can contact the school and they will reset it for you. But it’s best to try and avoid that scenario.

[00:16:37.050] – John

Now, we mentioned one MIT question, which is introduce yourself to your classmates. What are the range of questions that people can expect from different schools. Maria, can you give us a sense of how the questions may differ? We do know that mostly they come from a larger bank of questions that are randomly selected by a computer for each in most cases, although that varies from school to school. But what’s the range? What things can people expect to be asked?

[00:17:08.940] – Maria

Sure. There are a couple of predictable buckets that these questions tend to fall into. As you might imagine, It’s only a valuable exercise for the admissions team if you don’t know in advance precisely what question you’re going to get, but they do tend to fall into different categories. Sometimes that category is something along the lines of why do you want to get an MBA? Why is now the right time? Getting your motivation for why you’re applying to this particular school or for this degree. Very many of them are often these behavioral types of questions, trying to get at your leadership style, what’s a failure that you’ve had? What’s a success that you’ve had? How would you describe your leadership style? Give us an example. There are all kinds of questions around that where you would use primarily examples from your work or perhaps community service if you have extensive leadership there. Some of the questions are just simply trying to get to know you. There’s very random icebreaker types questions about what’s your favorite hobby or what’s one of your favorite childhood memories from when you were growing up or things like that. Then Yale actually has an interesting question.

[00:18:08.960] – Maria

For years, they’ve always had within their bucket of questions. Their third question has often been some a debate type of question. What I mean by that is they will give you a position. They will say something like, A strong education requires a basis in the arts. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Or, Leaders need to understand global society. Do you think business is becoming more global or less global? Explain. Anyway, they will give you some a statement where you have to choose a side and then explain your rationale for whatever position you’re taking.

[00:18:41.720] – John

That sounds a lot more challenging.

[00:18:43.580] – Maria

Yeah, but I like it because it really mimics in the business school classroom, you are going to be given random questions and random topics where you are going to have to take aside. To Caroline’s earlier point, if you do get a question like that, whether it is, what’s your favorite childhood memory or what you think is the most important leadership trait that exists or whatever it is, it’s more important to just come up with an answer that you can then come up with a cogent response around as opposed to the best answer. If you get asked a question about, do you think globalization is a good thing or a bad thing, don’t spend 28 seconds of your 30 second thinking time thinking, Is it good? Is it bad? Just pick one and just come up with some a cogent reason for whatever your position is. Then don’t beat yourself up later if you’re like, Oh, I said globalization was bad, but actually it’s good. No, it is more about your presence and your ability to think on the spot and present your ideas clearly more than anything. Pick one as fast as you can and then spend the rest of your time thinking of what other points you’re going to make, what are the points you’re going to make.

[00:19:47.020] – John

Now, Caroline, did you discover any questions that you like the most or you dislike the most that are asked on video?

[00:19:55.820] – Caroline

I like the random questions. I know some schools have fixed questions, but and I suspect that they get quite fixed, rehearsed responses to those questions. So I think that those random questions probably give the schools more insight into the information that they’re looking to gather from the candidate. Kira It also enables you to program a specific category of question as well. So I think that those behavioral questions can be quite revealing. They can also set it so it could be around, so for example, a specific topic. So it could be that you’ll get a question about your leadership skills, or you’ll get a question about your motivation for some question related to your motivation for attending business school, but not a scripted question. So I think that But really, those random questions that are not so scripted are more useful, although, of course, more challenging for the candidates. Candidates like to know ahead of time exactly what they’re going to be asked. But I think that in terms of how useful it is to I suspect it’s the random questions that are more insightful. Something that we haven’t mentioned is also that some schools are using this at the interview stage or a substitute for the interview.

[00:21:14.500] – Caroline

Most of the schools are using this in addition to interviews, and so it’s required as an exercise at the application submission stage. But for example, with HAAS, you can choose to either do the video questions or you can schedule a Zoom interview, but there are limited slots, I believe, for the Zoom interviews. So many candidates will end up responding to the video questions on the Kira Talent platform. So HAAS is using that as a substitute for the interviews. And also at McCombs, I believe there’s an optional interview, but everyone has to respond to the video question. So again, I think that they are using that as a substitute for the interview. So that’s something to keep in mind as well.

[00:22:03.640] – John

Right. Yeah, certainly this can go all over the place, it sounds, depending on which school is deciding to use the video approach. Do we think that we’re going to see more of this in the future, less of it, or pretty much the same? Maria?

[00:22:20.580] – Maria

I not only think we’re going to see more of it in the future, I have long advocated this exact type of question because I do think that it is very valuable to see. As Caroline pointed out, it’s also fast. It probably takes just as much time, perhaps even less time to learn about someone than it would take to read a series of essays from them. It’s more valuable than an essay in so far as you can spend months crafting essays. I think Caroline and I probably had folks who started on their HBS essays at the beginning of this calendar year, only to find out later that they had to start over again or at least re-adapt what they had already written to these new three questions. The essays can be done and massaged and worked on ad nauseam. Sometimes what happens is that the person’s personality or authenticity gets edited out on the proverbial cutting room floor. It gets removed. But these video questions can tell you so much about a person’s, their personality, their communication style, all those good things that we already talked about. So not only do I think that this is going to continue to be around for years to come, I think more and more schools should, in fact, use these as a part of the admissions process.

[00:23:28.220] – John

Caroline, you think we’ll see more of this in the future?

[00:23:30.920] – Caroline

Yeah, we’ve seen more schools popping up with these questions for this new season, and I think that that will likely continue. It may be that schools like Harvard Business School, where it’s actually the admissions team are interviewing candidates, they may not feel the need for it so much. So I wouldn’t be surprised if HBS takes a pass on this, or at least is a very late joiner, if eventually they do jump into these video questions. But I agree with Maria. I think it’s a really useful exercise for the schools. I think we’ve seen a gradual expansion, and I see no reason for that to change.

[00:24:08.260] – John

Right. I think both of you are right. We’ll probably see more of this. I think it’s incredibly valuable for an admissions team to sit in a room and watch these, having done so myself. They reveal a lot about a candidate, including things that a candidate probably wouldn’t want revealed, to be totally honest, because I’ve seen really awkward people do miserable jobs on video because they haven’t followed the advice that we’ve offered here today, including taping yourself beforehand and timing yourself. Because what you don’t want to have happen is you have 90 seconds to answer a question and you only use up 45 seconds of your time like Biden did during the debates. You want to use your full amount of time and you don’t want to go over and get cut off, but you want to use that full-time to your advantage and leverage all of it in a positive way. So folks, good luck on those video interviews, and thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Dealing With Those MBA Video Questions
Maria |
July 21, 2024

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] John Byrne: Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. We have a really cool story to relate to you today. Me and my co host, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, are going to talk about the most disruptive MBA startups of the year. Every year, Poets& Quants invites the top schools all over the world.

To submit nominations for ventures with what we call the greatest potential for lasting beyond business school. So what we want to do is acknowledge MBAs who have launched really cool companies that are paving the way for the future. And this year, we have 41 student startups that we have honored in what is the sixth annual list of the most disruptive MBA startups.

And they come from all over. We got nominations from Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, MIT, INSEAD, London Business School and others. And, uh, I think what the basic list shows is that entrepreneurship is alive and well in business schools are a lot of great ideas. A lot of them are powered by AI. No surprise there.

They involve every imaginable industry. There’s a good number of these in the business of health as well as in beverages, consumer products and things like that. And I wonder, Caroline, if you have a favorite among this group, and I bet you it’s going to be an INSEAD startup.

[00:01:30] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah, I have a few favorites, and definitely INSEAD is on my list, although I’m going to start with a London Business School one.

Um, and there were a few international ones that I thought were really interesting. I like the story from kiro, which is a fintech startup, coming out of London Business School, founded by LBS student Alicia Chowdhury. she secured 200, 000 in funding, and it’s the first AI powered financial coach, which is designed to help,

Gen Zed, as I would say, or Gen Z, as you would say. and young adults, get personalized financial guidance. So that’s something that jumped out to me, given that I now have a young adult among my children and trying to teach her financial literacy is somewhat challenging, so I can definitely see the need for that. And she tells a really interesting story about how financial literacy was something that she had struggled with and realized that there was a gap in the market, right? There’s a lot of great financial information out there, but it’s not necessarily tailored and communicated well to young people. And she ended up working in finance before business school.

she doesn’t have a tech background, but she did. Teach herself the fundamentals of AI and machine learning, and she assembled a technical team to work with her. And I thought it was really interesting as well, how she leveraged the LBS resources. And I think a lot of the stories that you have in this article really tell a great deal about the power of business school experience in helping people launch a company. And of course, there’s often a lot of criticism about the value of going to business school. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, there’s no point going to business school. And I think that this article really debunks that. so for example, this is how she benefited from LBS.

She was a finalist in the LBS Launchpad. She completed the LBS Entrepreneurship Summer School. She joined the LBS Incubator. She led the LBS Entrepreneurship Club. And then, of course, she benefited greatly from a lot of the courses that she took at LBS. I got a lot of great advice from LBS faculty, as well as the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital.

I think a wonderful story about how a student had a vision of something that she wanted to do and saw a gap in the market and really went after it, leveraging that wonderful ecosystem that you get at business school and she’s got a VC group backing her. So that’s one of her investors and Aviva Group is a huge financial company.

I think it sounds very promising. So congratulations to Alicia.

[00:04:11] John Byrne: Yeah, you’re right. One of the things that comes through here is the support that students get from the schools. And their classmates and their professors, it’s a real terrific thing.

As you said before, a lot of people say, hey, if you want to start a company, instead of paying a school tuition, just use that as your seed capital and you’re going to be better off, but the truth is that a business school you’re surrounded by really smart colleagues and people who’ve been through this before and mentorship from professors and seed money from the many venture challenges that occur at different schools can make a very big difference and shift the odds in your favor of success. Maria, do you have a favorite?

[00:04:53] Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah, my favorite.

startup was Cell Mind, which is out of the Johns Hopkins business school. This one really hit home for me personally. What they are trying to do is they are trying to maximize access to a type of cancer therapy called “Car T”. And I have indirectly lived this. We have a good friend from business school who has been battling cancer for several years, and last year there was a complete rollercoaster around  this car T therapy. And I apologize to any doctors if I’m butchering this. But basically, my understanding is that if it works for you, it essentially can cure your cancer or cause it to go into remission. But, if for whatever reason, if your body is too weak at the time that you receive it, it can actually kill you. Unfortunately, it can cause something called a cytokine storm, I think.

And so, the decision of whether to go or no go is obviously one that is very fraught with a lot of, emotion and risk. And so, we actually had a friend who last year was approved for CAR T. But then in the weeks right before they were going to give it to her, they then disapproved her because she had gotten weaker … it was this whole roller coaster.

And so any sort of startup that is doing something to figure out, which patients actually are likely to do well with this therapy? Can we expand our doctors being perhaps understandably a little too cautious because they’re concerned about the negative side effects, perhaps being worse than the.than the cancer itself.

Anything that can help expand access to this is why they were number one in my book. And as you guys were just talking about. Because Johns Hopkins is one of the best, if not the best medical school in the world, this is a great example of a business school student or group of business school students leveraging the resources and the expertise at that overarching institution, trying to find ways to commercialize it, and just make the most of those resources.

I really loved that story.

[00:06:40] John Byrne: Yeah, and that’s what you increasingly find. it’s not a bunch of MBA students doing their thing. It’s reaching out and having these really entrepreneurial collisions with students from other departments, other schools where they have deep expertise in computer science or engineering or medicine or law or public policy or environmental sciences teaming up with MBAs to launch things. which really give them extra power.

One of my favorites comes out of, uh, Chicago Booth. And, it’s sort

a really interesting idea where, first off, it’s called Encore, and it’s a marketplace for high end collectibles. Now, you think, how could that really be a cool thing? What they’ve done is they’ve combined TikTok style videos. With the traditional eBay auction format, to create a really engaging experience for people who want to shop for these collectibles. But what’scool is the MBA who’s behind this. His name is Will Enema, at first thought he shouldn’t apply to Chicago Booth, new venture challenge, because he had already raised a pre seed round and thought that Encore might not be good for that traditional, giving money out kind of program. But, he entered it after he was urged to by a number of professors at Booth. The idea placed second in the competition. He won $350, 000 to help launch his company, but here’s the real kicker:

Within two weeks of that competition, a venture capitalist who participated in the judging agreed to lead their seed round. So it just shows you how, incredible things can happen, in the environment of a business school.

Now, Caroline, I’m sure you have others that you really thought were really cool. Name another one.

[00:08:29] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah. So my second one is of course, an INSEAD startup and it’s called faceflow. ai. And I really liked this one because it’s an AI powered skincare platform. So again, relating it to my personal experience of having four daughters who are constantly clamoring for the. latest ridiculous beauty product that they’ve seen on Instagram.

I think this is a fantastic idea.

What it does is it actually gives you scientifically based product recommendations, right? So they have for the two founders, Daniel Patel and Simon Zhang, Patel had previously founded a marketplace for international skincare brands. So he knew the skin, the beauty industry, skincare products.

And then his partner, Simon, is an experienced AI engineer, and so they’ve combined their expertise to bring AI to skincare recommendations. And it’s underway. I checked out their website. I have signed up already. The product is not yet available, but I’m looking forward to when it comes through.

And they won the INSEAD French competition and, talk about how they’ve benefited from the very entrepreneurial environment at INSEAD,

I really enjoyed reading about their experience and I’m excited to learn more about their products.

[00:09:49] John Byrne: Yeah, absolutely. And now

Maria, I know there are 2 Harvard startups on the list from your alma mater. did you pick 1 of them as your 2nd choice?

[00:10:00] Maria Wich-Vila: It was not necessarily my 2nd choice, but there was 1 called Vulcan Investments. This is a little bit out of my, Wheelhouse. So I think we all tend to gravitate towards something we know or something we have experience with, but it’s trying to figure out how to solve the rare earth magnet problem. Right now. A lot of these rare earth materials that are powering modern technologies are coming from China, which poses several challenges, especially should relations with that country not go well in the future. So this is trying to solve for that issue. I think that was a really interesting one.

But actually, my second choice was one that again, I have indirect personal experience with, albeit in a different way. It was called Yogger. What they’re trying to do is, I believe it’s taking your phone to watch you as you perform exercise then give you feedback on, your gait, your form, et cetera.

And this was really interesting to me, not so much because of exercise, although I wish it were (ha ha) (though: side note, my dad was a track and cross country coach for decades and I totally forgot about that in the moment, but I should have mentioned that!!! D’oh!!!), but who knows, maybe this will motivate me to jog more (har har har).

In the interview with the entrepreneur. he talked about how you can do things like a gait analysis right now, in other words, tracking how your legs move when you are running or jogging, and then providing an analysis, but these sorts of things are very difficult to get to. It’s expensive. You need to be set up with, they put a whole bunch of sensors on all of your joints. and I have a friend who has a child with cerebral palsy and they’ve had to do these, go to actually Hopkins (this is not a Hopkins based startup, it’s from Tuck, Dartmouth Tuck), but they’ve (my friends, I mean) had to go to Hopkins and actually have these, it’s a day long thing to set up your child with the different sensors. And so the thought of using something as simple as an iPhone app, perhaps, machine learning, et cetera. all that good stuff to analyze your gait and make this accessible. It’s not only I think useful for casual exercise enthusiasts, but I think it could also have ramifications and uses even in other areas. For example, kids with special needs. So I was really excited about this one.

John Byrne:

MIT Sloan has three startups on our list this year.

That’s more than any other school. And one of the really cool ones is called Vertical Horizons. This is an incredibly ambitious startup. It’s all about commercializing high density, high efficiency power supplies for AI computing. Essentially, it’s a semiconductor company. and you might not think that an MBA would be involved in actually creating a semiconductor company.

But it’s founded by Cynthia Allen, an MBA in the class of 2024 at Sloan and one of her professors. So it’s a good example of where university develop some sort of new technology or new insights. And then needs to commercialize it. And in this case, you have an MBA coming along, who has a great interest in this, and is helping to commercialize it. The actual idea of it has 4 million in research grant funding to develop the technology. So there’s a good amount of money behind this very ambitious idea.

I think, stepping away from the individual startups, what I think this says about, the ability of people who want to go to business school and use that experience as an incubator to launch a startup, it’s alive and well, it’s a great way to launch a company because it does take a lot of risk off the table and these startups, these 41 startups that these different business schools really give you a great insight into what different people are doing.

Caroline, I’m sure, and Maria as well, you probably meet a number of people in your practices, that want to use an MBA to do a startup. Do you think they’re ready to take full advantage of these experiences?

Caroline Diarte Edwards:

Yeah, I certainly hear from a lot of candidates who are hoping to launch a venture. Some of them want to do it as soon as they graduate and for some of them it’s more of a longer term ambition because of course financing can be a challenge.

Especially if you’ve invested a lot in taking on a lot of debt with your MBA and a lot of the themes that I hear, candidates are interested in come through in your article as well. So it’s noticeable that there are quite a few startups in your list that address, healthcare issues as Maria highlighted, also education, environmental challenges. And I think those are three areas that I hear a lot about from candidates in terms of where they would really like to have an impact.

And I think, something else that is noticeable is that a lot of them are really trying to have a positive impact on the world as well. They’re really trying to address,  fundamental societal challenges, many of them, which I think is wonderful from health care, mental health issues, pollution. et cetera. There’s a lot of really interesting, and important issues that are being addressed by some of these startups. and, I think it’s wonderful that we have this young generation, going through business school who are ready tackle these challenges that that they have inherited from our generation.

John Byrne:

Yeah. And these ideas are going way beyond, some of the earlier ideas of five, 10 years ago, hookup apps and match.com, uh, wannabes and things like that. some of these ideas are remarkably sophisticated and elegant as well.

Maria, last words.

Maria Wich-Vila:

I think that this article not only is very optimistic in terms of these amazing ideas that are out there, but I also like that it shows that there are so many different paths to entrepreneurship through the MBA that first of all, number one, the NBA is valuable for entrepreneurship, which, as you noted a second ago, is often a stereotype that that exists that, oh, I don’t need this. but also there are so many different MBA programs out there. Look at the range of schools that are creating these amazing startups. Look at the fact, one of the, Stanford ones, the student was not an MBA student. They were an MSx student.

Sometimes I’ll meet people who are a little bit on the older side who are applying and they’re like, I have to do the two year program and I’m like, no, you can… you just need to get your foot in the door and even if it’s that MSxs program, it’s one year versus two years. For example, you can, you just need to get to a university that’s going to teach you the things you need and give you the resources and then you can take it from there.

So I, the other thing I really appreciate about this article is showing the breadth of programs and the breadth of students and the breadth of backgrounds of these students who are creating incredible new companies.

[00:16:37] John Byrne: Yeah, check it out. It’s called most disruptive MBA startups of 2025, and it’s on the Poets& Quants website.

If you are interested in doing a startup, I think you’ll learn a lot about how business school can help you make it a reality. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

Maria

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