Stanford GSB grads discuss MBA admissions, entrepreneurship and affordable car loans [Show summary]

Nicholas Hinrichsen and Chris Coleman, startup co-founders who earned their MBAs at Stanford GSB, return to Admissions Straight Talk to share what they’ve accomplished as entrepreneurs since earning their MBAs.

Chris Coleman and Nicholas Hinrichsen share how their experiences at GSB helped them grow their startups [Show notes]

So, you want to be an entrepreneur in something using tech. Or maybe you're interested in tech product management. Should you get an MBA? Is it a waste of time and money that you could better spend learning on your own, founding your own business? Two Stanford GSB grads are here to share their perspective, reflecting seven years of successful entrepreneurial experience since earning their MBAs.

Nicholas Hinrichsen and Chris Coleman, who were previously guests on Admission Straight Talk in Episode 88, both graduated from Stanford GSB in 2013. While at GSB, they founded Carlypso, which was acquired by Carvana in 2017. Since then, they’ve founded a new venture, WithClutch.

When we last spoke, you both had recently graduated from Stanford GSB, and you were running Carlypso, which you had founded as MBA students. What's happened since then? Can you bring us up to date? [2:09]

Chris: A lot has happened since then. When we talked, I think we were going through Y Combinator. We actually ended up pivoting the business into a new model since that time. Carlypso was this sort of peer-to-peer car sales platform. We ended up pivoting to being a direct wholesale channel where we sold cars, leasing to companies that can't sell directly to the consumer but have to sell through these wholesale auctions. We became a virtual dealer of sorts. We built software that said, "Okay, what are the cars that we think are good for consumers? How do we figure out how to use performance marketing to our advantage so that we can market the right car to the right consumer?"

We had a pretty good handle on that. It was a good business. It wasn't a great business because it required very, very heavy operations, actually moving around 4,000-pound pieces of metal all the time, rather than bits and bytes. The software that we built ended up being more valuable than our end-value prop to consumers. And so we sold the software to Carvana, and ended up joining as executives there. Nick ran the sell-to-Carvana business of buying cars from consumers, and I ran product for the initial part of the consumer experience, from the homepage, search page, and product pages.

We spent three years there. It was a great three years of seeing the company go from early public company to the company everyone else is aiming to beat. That was a really fun ride, and we got to know some of the executives there very well who were super helpful and had very different skill sets than us. Now we've gone off to start a new thing again. Me and Nick have just started WithClutch, which is sort of a platform for saving consumers on their automotive expenses.

Nick: Our first employee at Carlypso ended up applying to busi...