Business

You’ve watched the videos and you’ve read the stats. You know that getting into Harvard Business School (HBS) requires top-tier grades, test scores, and career experience. But let’s be honest—so do thousands of other applicants. These things are just the table stakes.

The truth is, HBS admits only about 10% of its applicants, yet its former admissions director once said she could admit at least 50% more people without “watering down the quality.” So, what does this tell us? Hundreds of highly qualified, exceptional people apply and don’t get in. The difference between those who get an acceptance letter and those who don’t often comes down to one thing: standing out.

So, how do you stand apart from a hypercompetitive group of applicants and secure your spot? Let’s explore the different types of successful HBS applicants and the strategies you can use to build an application that gets noticed.

While a professor at Harvard Business School, I had the privilege of speaking with many of the world’s most innovative startups—companies like Facebook and Airbnb. They operated in vastly different industries, yet a common thread ran through their approach to growth. They all seemed to think about digital disruption in a similar, structured way, a way that wasn’t widely taught or understood at the time.

This led me to a realization: there is a common, repeatable approach to creating a high-growth startup. It can be engineered, designed, and taught. My name is Talis Sasher, and after ten years at Harvard, I now teach this very approach to my students at the University of California.

By the end of this blog post, I hope you’ll see that building a successful digital startup is not just about intuition. It’s about following a set of tools and a specific process that can make you far more successful.