My answer so far: Basically, no.

Been thinking about this question throughout my MBA so far, especially during my first year where I would often reflect at the end of a class on whether what I had learnt would have helped me make better decisions and more importantly avoid the stupid ones I made as an entrepreneur.

For the most part the answer was usually no. If I had to deal with VCs as an entrepreneur, my answer may have been different having taken the VC class at Haas (with legendary Terry Opdendyk and co: Sean Foote and Jerry Engel) but otherwise the accounting, strategy, marketing classes wouldn’t have had much of an impact. I learnt enough about the subjects on the job and was supported by very able people we hired. Much of what is taught is either too theoretical or too big-business focused in any case to be relevant to a start-up. Finance classes were useful to a degree in terms of getting inside the heads of (non-VC) investors and bankers and it’s the one subject that I found pretty difficult to learn on my own before b-school (and at b-school for that matter!).

Some of the domain-specific electives are helpful if you’re building a start-up in that space (particularly the case for the tech classes at Haas for instance or I imagine Finance electives at CBS).
The Gilt girls (Harvard MBAs ’04) seem to agree in their FT interview last week:

As an executive “you really can’t digest and memorise everything down to the nittiest-grittiest detail. [Business school] teaches you to take large amounts of information and helps you get to a decision quickly,”

Ms Maybank points out that even with the many resources available in business school the gut is still more important than the courses.

There’s a good Does getting an MBA make someone a better entrepreneur? Quora thread that’s still going with a few different opinions but generally speaking the consensus seems to range from nice but unnecessary to waste of time. The whole thread is worth reading, here are a few fave snippets:

Gummi Hafsteinsson:

You have to keep in mind the causal relationship here: a lot of (but not all) people who go do an MBA are not true entrepreneurs, it’s not that an MBA makes them more or less likely to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Jeremy Liew:

Also life isn’t just about becoming a better entrepreneur. I had a great time at b-school and met some of my very best friends there.

Which really resonated with me. There are plenty of great reasons to do an MBA, becoming a better entrepreneur just isn’t one of them.