Try the Side Door

We’ve all been in situations where there’s a long line to enter a highly popular venue. Maybe it’s your favorite ride at Disneyland? Or maybe it’s a trendy restaurant that doesn’t take reservations? Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Certain scarce assets have a high price of admission, and we have to pay if we want access. Sometimes, though, there’s an opportunity for us to get what we want at a more reasonable cost.

I call this the “side door principle.” When everyone is lining up at the front door, maybe there’s a side entrance that no one knows about. It might take you through the mud room rather than the grand foyer, yet it gets you where you want to go.

In my life, I’ve paid full price, so to speak—not just in terms of money, but in time and effort—to achieve many of the things that are important to me. I spent 10 years becoming a board-certified and licensed physician and surgeon. I spent six years working hard on building my first venture business before launching my first fund. I ultimately brought my dream home to fruition, but the building process took almost three years of daily engagement and substantial financial and emotional investment. 

Yet there were other areas in my life where I decided that the price of admission to enter through the front door was either too steep or unnecessary for what I wanted to achieve. After having graduated from fancy schools for my medical doctoral and post-doctoral work, I started my financial career at Sands Capital with minimal business knowledge. I decided to do a part-time MBA at a large public university—not because I needed to enhance my academic credibility, but because I needed to procure certain sets of skills to execute my job well. With a job, a wife, kids, and already having spent the majority of my life in school, going back to graduate school full-time was not a sensible solution. The school I chose allowed me to achieve my aims in an affordable, time-efficient, and convenient fashion, working well with the other responsibilities in my life. Professional programs, which offer classes at night or online, are often the side door entrance to skill development and professional growth. 

At the same time, I had numerous people in the VC industry tell me that if I didn’t get my MBA from a place like Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton—the front-door universities—I shouldn’t bother. It would only diminish my credibility. In hindsight, I know this advice was wrong. Deferring the opportunity to learn the skills I needed until I had the time to apply to and attend a top-tier business school would have been a big mistake. The knowledge I gained at UMass Amherst has been invaluable throughout my venture career. In this case, I was glad I slipped in through the side door.  

Having a father who is a university professor with a PhD, I always had an aspiration to get my PhD and assume a position in academia. But, as is often the case, life took me in a different direction. By the time my career and family were well established, and I already attained one doctoral degree, getting a second doctoral degree in a traditional manner—via the front door—wasn’t sensible.  So, I looked for the side door. I found a fully accredited program that allowed me to get my PhD on a part-time, flexible basis while maintaining my full-time profession and sustaining my family commitments.  

It’s important at this point to differentiate between a side door and a trap door.  

A side door PhD is still regionally accredited by the same organizations that accredit the traditional top-tier institutions. They’re simply a vehicle to get an accredited education on a part-time, online basis. Trap door degrees, in contrast, are not regionally accredited, though many claim designations from specious organizations. If you do want to consider a side door approach to a degree, I highly recommend going to the US Department of Education website and doing a search for your targeted institution. The DOE is quite vigilant about differentiating between side door and trap door institutions.

Although I had a dream of becoming an academic when I was younger, pursuing the entrepreneurial route and building a large-scale venture capital business precluded me from becoming a full-time professor. That said, I found suitable side-door approaches that met my needs. I founded a Lab at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute, where I have the designation of scholar and engage in cutting edge research in collaboration with some of Harvard’s most distinguished scientists. Similarly, I founded a program at MIT, where I’m also a scholar, and at Stanford University, where I’m an Adjunct Professor. These appointments afford me all the desired experiences of being a professor, while allowing me to spend the majority of my time on my business.

I’ve taken this side door approach to other aspects of my life as well. One normally needs to meet qualifying times for the Boston and New York City Marathons. Instead of qualifying, I chose to run the races for charity. This allowed me to run the races and, at the same time, support medical causes that are important to me—research in cancer and retinal diseases. And although it took me quite a number of years and a lot of hard work to get my black belt in martial arts, there were programs that were even more rigorous and would have taken significantly longer. With martial arts, I chose the program that met my needs and worked within the framework of my life. 

In other words, I side-doored it.

To be clear, the side door approach isn’t always optimal. The degrees that I pursued in this fashion were not central to my professional success. I didn’t need them to get a job. Instead, they were supplemental. There are times when only the most rigorous, straightforward approach will do. In these circumstances, it’s wise to go all in and crash the front door, if necessary.

It’s also important not to apologize for taking the side door. There’s no shame in getting a side door PhD while working full-time, even when your neighbor’s daughter is getting her PhD at MIT. There’s great pride to be had in running a marathon for charity, even if others have to qualify. Don’t apologize for joining the dojo that works best for your needs, even if there are others that are more strenuous. 

In the end, the ultimate arbiter of success is you.  

If you can find side door approaches to reaching your goals and meeting your aspirations—approaches that fit with your current responsibilities and allow you to live a fuller, more well-rounded life—this may be an important complementary pathway in life. It may be a way to have many life-changing experiences you may not encounter if the front door is the only entrance you consider.