Why are people in the SV startup ecosystem so dismissive of MBAs?

Wharton undergrad alum here. In general, MBAs are people who couldn't go to TT colleges for undergrad and need an extra leg up with a better brand on their resume -- or if they did go to a TT undergrad, they usually did the typical IB/PE route, didn't find much happiness in being sheep for Goldman, and are looking for alternative options. Mostly, they just party (which is fine, networking is essential), but it's silly to think of business school as about the academic concepts you learn -- most of which are self-evident.

The general disdain isn't really about being technical or non-technical. The general disdain is exists probably because in order to do something, you don't really need a MBA to do it. MBAs as a group seem more risk-averse and prone to have their thinking atuned to the status quo (back in 2007, they all wanted to do Wall Street; now they all want to do tech, even though we're probably in a bubble here) -- although that kind of thinking rarely makes anyone real money. Because of this status-quo leaning, they wouldn't seem to do well in an early-stage environment (which I think is where the bias of "SV startups" comes from), although I think as a group, they would do well in growing but established companies (Dropbox, Facebook, etc.).

These are semantics. If you define a startup as a company that has not achieved product-market fit, MBAs have little place there. If you define it as a "venture-backed company" then they do.

The meaningful work at a startup happens before product-market fit. MBAs have no special skillset that helps you get to product market fit, whereas engineers (and designers) do have a skillset that is important for startups get the traction they need.

In fact, the stuff that MBAs tend to do is at best, distracting in an emerging market, like focusing on pricing strategies, bizdev, etc.

Once you've achieved PMF, by all means hire MBA's who can help you grow your business.

But I think in the SV mindset, you are no longer a startup, you are in the growth phase..

Part of this has to do with revenge of the nerds. Before tech was cool, an MBA was seen as an elite route to career and business success and often techies were regarded as mere lackeys - the means the MBA's would use to build their "enterprises".

However now that more and more tech enterprises are started and grown by techies, there's this sense of FU to the old school mentality with MBA being one of the symbols.

What percentage of people saddled with more than $100,000 in student loans, a mortgage, credit card debt, and possibly a family to support, decide to forgo income for a few years, put none of the education acquired from 2 hard years of business school to use, and essentially rewind their careers to build a new career as an entrepreneur?

You could very easily be captured by a system of debt, responsibilities, and other obligations that prohibit you from pursuing an entrepreneurial career path.

I am an engineer who got an MBA from a top school later in my career. MBA is very instrumental in making a startup successful as long as you can control certain tendencies. A typical MBA thinking is :

TAM is 10 billion. If I even capture 1% I will make 100 M.

This sort of logic makes startups mad because startup is the art of surviving for another day in the face of severe resource crunch. So this is bullshit argument for a startup founder. A startup is all about getting the revenue going initially and being extremely creative in doing so by leveraging any help available from anyone. It's also the ability not to lose hope in the really tiring day-to-day roller coaster ride filled with rejections and comments from armchair advisors.

So if you can put the MBA tactical skills such as messaging, channel creation etc, to creative use without bringing in bulshit 60000 ft 'strategy' talk, you will do great.