你非要有斯坦福MBA文凭，才能开发出一款约会应用吗？

    在校外居住的学生就读斯坦福大学（Stanford University）MBA的成本，大约超过212,000美元。再加上从谷歌（Google）辞职所产生的每年约75,000美元的机会成本，攻读这种被戏称为“宇宙之王”的学位的总成本累计接近390,000美元，这样一笔庞大的费用，恐怕会令许多人目瞪口呆。

    三个月前刚刚从斯坦福大学商学院毕业的阿曼达•布拉德福德，便为自己挖了这样一个大坑。那么，她接受如此顶级的教育是要做什么？

    她正在iTunes上发布一款应用程序。注意，这可不是一款普通的应用。这是一款约会应用，类似于交友应用Tinder，专为超级挑剔的人找到同样挑剔的约会对象。如今同类产品多如牛毛，比如OkCupid、Coffee Meets Bagal、Hinge、Plenty of Fish和Zoosk等，仅iTunes上便有200多款约会应用。

    在这样的情况下，我们真的有必要为那些靠自己无法找到约会对象的人再推出一款新应用吗？成立一家手机应用公司，真的需要有MBA学位吗？

    可能并不需要。但这并没有让29岁的布拉德福德打消念头。至少，在这款被她称为The League的应用上，布拉德福德的履历可以让她成为优质约会对象。这款应用允许想要约会的人查看The League会员的教育和工作背景，诱导他们进入用户的LinkedIn个人资料和Facebook页面。

    布拉德福德的简历会让大多数人产生一个疑问——她为什么浪费时间，在一个高度饱和的领域里开发一款应用？毕竟，她在2007年毕业于卡耐基梅隆大学（Carnegie Mellon），取得了信息系统专业的学位，而能取得STEM（科学、技术、工程与数学）学位的女性可谓凤毛麟角。毕业后，布拉德福德成为一名销售工程师，后来在企业云计算公司salesforce.com担任客户经理。在这家公司工作三年之后，她又前往硅谷最热门的公司之一：谷歌，最初担任“售前工程师”，后来进入业务开发部门，与谷歌的产品和工程设计团队共事。布拉德福德甚至还在硅谷著名的风险投资公司红杉资本（Sequoia Capital）做了9个月的投资者。

    你肯定会想，有如此了不起的履历，再加上毫不逊色的斯坦福大学MBA学位，一个人应该想出更实质性的业务，而不是一款约会应用。去年，斯坦福大学MBA学生创立公司的比例达到创纪录的18%，但几乎没有几家初创公司是专门开发一款手机应用的。

    The estimated cost of an MBA for a single student who lives off campus at Stanford University is slightly more than $212,000. Add to that tidy sum the opportunity costs of quitting a job at Google that paid about $75,000 a year, and your all-in cost for the Master of the Universe degree comes to a formidable, if not mind-numbing, number: nearly $390,000.

    That’s the kind of hole Amanda Bradford dug for herself when she graduated from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business just three months ago. So what is she doing with that world-class education?

    She is launching an app on iTunes. Not just any app, mind you. It’s yet another dating app, a Tinder-like application for super picky people who want to meet other super picky people. In a world cluttered with the likes of OkCupid, Coffee Meets Bagel, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and Zoosk, there are more than 200 entries listed under dating apps on iTunes alone.

    Do we really need another app for people who can’t get dates on their own? And does it really take an MBA from Stanford to launch an app company?

    Probably not. But none of that seems to have deterred 29-year-old Bradford, whose resume at least makes her prime dating material on what she is calling The League. Among other things, the app allows would-be daters to see the educational and work backgrounds of The League’s members, hooking them into the LinkedIn profiles and Facebook pages of users.

    A glimpse of Bradford’s CV would lead most to wonder why she would waste her time with an app in a highly crowded field. After all, she graduated in 2007 from Carnegie Mellon with a degree in information systems, a somewhat rare young woman with a STEM credential. Bradford then landed a job as a sales engineer and later account executive at salesforce.com. After a three-year stint there, she moved to one of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley: Google, first as a “pre-sales engineer” and finally in a business development role, working with Google product and engineering teams. Bradford even spent nine months at Sequoia Capital, the high-flying Silicon Valley venture capital firm, as an investor.

    You’d think someone with that kind of resume, topped by a Stanford MBA no less, would think up a more substantive business than a dating app. Last year, a record 18% of Stanford MBAs founded companies, but few of those startups were created to do launch an app.