I went to business school because I wanted to be a VC when I got out of college and everywhere I asked, I was told that I needed an MBA.  So I went and got one. I went to Wharton which is one of the top schools and I had a good experience there.

 

I learned five things in business school.  They are five important things, but there are only five that I can list.

 

Here they are in no particular order:

 

1 - A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. I knew about interest rates and such before I went to business school, but the concept of the time value of money and present values were foriegn to me until I got my MBA.

 

2 - You will make more money if you take more risk.   I did not understand that there was an explicit relationship between risk taking and expected return before I went to business school.  I do now :)

 

3 - You can value an asset if you know its cash flows, the timing of them, and can quantify the risks of acheiving those cash flows.  The whole area of the capital asset pricing model and modern portfolio theory was my second favorite thing I learned at business school.  It made sense to me and given my engineering background, I found the math around these theories fascinating.  I don't use the formulas very much any more, but my brain is now hard wired with these theories and I don't think of value any other way and never will.

 

4 - Markets are made up of speculators and hedgers.  You can't have one without the other.  Speculators take risk and hedgers reduce risk.  You can do some amazing financial magic by mixing and matching these concepts.  I loved speculative markets. It was by far my favorite class at business school and it is the one class that I find myself going back to regularly for inspiration.

 

5 - The best price to sell something isn't always the lowest price.  My favorite case study was the champagne producer who couldn't sell his product in the US until he tripled the price. Then his sales went through the roof.  Tom Evslin has a post on this topic on his blog today and it was the inspiration for this post.

 

That's it. Two years and who knows how much money got me five concepts.

 

 

当我从大学毕业的时候，我非常想做一个VC，而且当我问起这件事情的时候，所有的人都告诉我我需要一个MBA的学位。所以我进了商学院，并且拿到了MBA学位。我是在顶尖的商学院之一的Wharton完成的我的学业，我在那儿有一段美妙的经历。

 

我在商学院学到了五件事情，五件十分重要的事情，而且这是仅有的五件我可以列出来的事情。

 

下面五件事情的顺序是随意的。

 

1－今天的一美元比明天的一美元值钱。我在进入商学院之前就知道利率这些东西，但是直到我拿到了MBA学位，我才真正知道了金钱的时间价值和现值这些概念。

 

2－如果你冒更多的险就可以赚到更多的钱。在我进入商学院之前我不明白在冒险和预期的受益中间会有如此明确的关系，现在我知道了：）

 

3－如果你知道资产的现金流和获得现金流的时间的话，你可以对它的价值进行评估，并且可以量化达到那些现金流的风险。我在商学院中第二感兴趣的就是资本资产定价模型和现代证券投资理论。因为我有工科背景，所以我可以很好的理解这些理论，并且对理论背后的数学推理十分的着迷。现在我很少用到那些公式，但是这些理论已经植入了我的大脑，我再也不会用其他的方式去评估资产了，永远都不会。

 

4－市场是由投机者和套头交易者组成的。两者缺一不可。前者使风险提高，后者使风险降低。通过将这些概念混合和相配，你可以玩出惊人的财经魔术。我喜爱投机市场。这是我在商学院中最喜欢的课。我现在还经常复习一下，从中得到灵感。

 

5－商品的最低价并非是销售的最佳价格。我最喜欢的个案研究是关于一个香槟生产商的。开始的时候，他们的香槟无人问津，但是在他们把价格提高了三倍以后,他们的销售情况棒极了。Tom Evslin在今天有一个关于这个话题的帖子。

 

好了，这就是我花了两年时间还有天知道多少美元换来的五个概念。