Businessweek Archives  To B School Or Not To B School  Special
Report (Enterprise) EDUCATION -- OFF-THE-JOB-TRAINING
Entrepreneurs find contacts, but little real-world help  One
evening in 1994, Stanford University MBA candidate Ariel Poler
and a few classmates were brainstorming for an Internet
marketing project. As they pondered the burgeoning World Wide
Web, Poler's idea was born: a company that would help businesses
determine who's visiting their Internet home pages and what
features they're using. By graduation time, Poler was president
of Internet Profiles Corp.  If he hadn't attended Stanford's
business school, Poler might never have come up with the idea.
He certainly wouldn't have made the myriad contacts that helped
him build a business that attracted Dun & Bradstreet Corp. as an
investor. But what he didn't get at the prestigious B-school is
at least as significant: a course on how to manage the daily
challenges of a startup, from setting up payroll systems to
hiring temps. Those things he learne