Day 9 - Pintrest & Strava

     Today again was a busy day in that we met with two companies, Pintrest a company of moderate size who is growing expansively, and a startup of about 80 employees called Strava which provides a sort of social network for athletes.  Our first meeting of the day was with Pintrest where we met with two data engineers Dan and John.  These two talked about their career paths, their roles at Pintrest, and about Pintrest in general.  One thing that Dan and John talked about that I found interesting was what they felt set Pintrest apart.  When initially asked neither could come up with a concrete answer (aside from saying what it was not) one of the two landed on the idea that Pintrest was a positive social network whereas services such as Facebook and Twitter could be and often are places of negativity.  He explained this by saying in places such as Facebook and Twitter people can get involved in all sorts of arguments or fights, but Pintrest is a place for (as corny as it sounds) hopes and dreams.  Now granted I am not a Pintrest user but I have seen people use it and I would agree that it seems to be a place where people go to dream about how they want their life to be and in some cases find ways to make these dreams reality.  Another thing that I found interesting about Pintrest that we as a group had talked about was valuing a business that is "pre-profit" and is seemingly yet to have a plan to make profit.  Now Pintrest does have a plan for revenue but it still amazes me that businesses that don't and aren't able to make a profit are able to get so much funding based off the possibility of making a profit at some unknown point in the future.  Most often I feel that the answer becomes "throw in some ads" but it would be interesting to see an alternative method to making money for this kind of business.
     The second company we visited, Strava the social network for athletes, we were able to meet with the President, former CEO, and founder Michael.  One thing that stood out to me was when he talked about was his opinion on going to business school or getting your MBA if you wanted to do your own startup. Before hearing his opinion, I had always thought that getting your MBA was only helpful in that allowed you more job opportunities and a greater skill set.  However Michael pointed out that a lot of a persons good ideas, drive, and connections come after being in an undergrad program.  Plus, after receiving your MBA you will probably have lots of debt after leaving school and there will probably be job offers that are willing to give you substantial money to pay off that debt which would be a tempting offer away from creating your own startup