I recently overheard a conversation at a coffee shop that is quite common in the Bay Area. Three 30 year old male MBAs were sitting around scheming about what startup they can latch onto that will rocket them to financial success. They talk about hopping from person to person and group to group to reach the coveted status of being "SOOOO connected." It's as if they think they will achieve some sort of Nirvana by working themselves so far up the ladder that they end up clinging to the walls inside Larry Page's asshole. This nonsense and the habit of working words like connect, sync up, add value, skill set, strategy and execute into every sentence makes my skin crawl. But it is only a surface annoyance. What is so off-putting about MBA schmooze culture - besides the hairspray - is the lack of focus on what role they intend to play for what kind of company. They act as if a startup is there to serve them instead of looking for ways to serve a startup.

A startup is like a special forces team. In the Army's Green Berets people specialize in communications, languages, field medicine and demolition. Each role is critical to the survival of the whole. Each person goes through such extensive training that his teammates don't have to think about whether or not he will do his job. Special forces operators do not care much about saluting, rank or titles and people do not need to tell them what to do. They know that they are each useless without the other so they focus on holding up their end of the bargain. The result is a small number of people can autonomously inflict damage far out of proportion to their numbers. Startups are very similar. Tiny numbers of skilled people working together can build and sell things that upend entire industries.

So if you're going to be a part of a startup, you should focus on your area of expertise and how that is going to help achieve the team's goal. If that means you can sell, then get good at selling, if that means you can build then get good at building and if that means you can promote, then get good at promoting. The problem with the worst of the MBAs is that they have a sense of entitlement. They feel like they should be in charge before they've been a part of the team. In the military these rank seekers end up climbing "the regular army" ladder. And in business they end up as middle managers of big companies. No self respecting startup would ever put up with that much pomp and circumstance.

A startup's direction and momentum is a living thing that is bigger than the sum of each individual player. It becomes a force that guides you. It exerts far more influence on you than the time of day, the weather, your family or any part of the normal physical world. You form bonds with your teammates b/c you are all captive to the same shared vision. When VC's laugh you out of a room, or when you sleep in a tent at your friends wedding b/c you're too broke to afford a hotel room, that vision, and the teammates who share it, will keep you going. It becomes a religion - something you can't prove but know is there. For whatever reason, a large majority of MBAs don't seem to get this and it comes across as unforgivable sacrilege to founders.

Many MBAs see a startup as a way to make money and when they try to act like like they're into it, it feels like a cop pretending to be a drug dealer. They're just saying what they think you want to hear. Which is a shame b/c the vast majority of technical founders are clueless about sales, accounting, marketing, pitching and all the traditional MBA roles. Engineers have a lot of fun at the expense of MBAs but it's ultimately a shared loss. If MBA programs produced people who were ready to grab a shovel and team up with engineers, there would be so many more successful startups that it would make a measurable difference in the nation's GDP. Instead MBAs go on with their empty networking and engineers hide in their basements building products that never get discovered.

In the Green Berets, a demolition specialist needs to know that if he gets shot while wiring a bridge, the medic will be able to stabilize him and the communications officer will be able to coordinate a helicopter rescue. Likewise an engineer needs to be able to build a product knowing that once it's done there will be someone to ram it down the throats of every living customer or stand on top of a mountain singing it's praises through an alphorn. When a team has faith that the necessary roles are played by competent people with shared goals, they become capable of incredibly asymmetric victories. Partaking in this miraculous process is what startups are all about. The money and glory, in the unlikely event that it ever comes to that, is just a byproduct. And that "huge rolodex" that MBAs covet does not come from hours of meaningless "connecting" in coffee shops. It come from submitting your ego to a cause greater than yourself.

PS: I know a number of very grounded MBAs who "get it" as far as startups go. But so many don't, and they are so vocal about it, that it's safe to make this generalization.