他永远地走了，他创办的公司还在

    2008年8月来校报到时，李和帕瑞克发现他们都是60位MBA新生的一员。凑巧的是，他们后来还一起参加了一项涉及技术和医疗保健的案例竞赛。“我们一起完成了这个案例，结果还行，”帕瑞克回忆说。“当时并没有真正擦出火花。”但这次竞赛期间发生了另一件事：他们遇到了一位名叫佩伊曼•普尔-莫埃齐的同学，他提出了一个大创意。

    “他说，‘嘿，我正在开发一个新玩意，’”帕瑞克说。“‘如果你俩感兴趣的话，我想让你们瞧瞧。’那是第一个学期大约过了一半的时候。”

    他们随后漫步到他在校外的公寓。在那里，普尔-莫埃齐兴冲冲地描述一个被他称为Magoosh的创意，这个称谓改编自意指“智者”的波斯语“Magush”。他打算为准备参加GMAT的考生创建一个相互帮助的社区。这个论坛与现有的备考服务网站BeatTheGMAT有些类似，但用户界面将嵌入一款GMAT备考软件。就读哈斯商学院前，普尔-莫埃齐也在德勤公司从事咨询业务，他此前一直与同样供职于德勤公司、拥有南加州大学(University of Southern California)计算机科学硕士学位的朋友维克拉姆•谢诺伊共同开发这个项目。

    “这是一个依靠人力驱动、同时与一个论坛相结合的混合型备考服务网站，”帕瑞克说。“在那间公寓聆听这项创业计划时，汉苏显得非常兴奋。他向来都对教育事业充满热情，还曾担任过一家非营利性教育机构的董事。他知道自己想成为一位企业家。他是带着一个愿景和目标来商学院求学的。而我主要是对技术感兴趣。”

    随后几个月，他们一起投身于这个项目。2008年12月，他们推出了一个简陋的网站，还购买了谷歌关键字广告(Google AdWords)，以方便更多人找到这项服务。虽然第一个迭代模型并未产生影响，但他们也没有放弃。李和帕瑞克决定放弃暑期的实习机会。“对于汉苏来说，放弃实习机会是一件想都不用想的事情，”帕瑞克回忆说。“而我至少还在德勤公司拥有一份安稳的工作。最糟糕的事情莫过于我们不再继续开发Magoosh项目。对于我来说，获得这种令人惊叹的创业经历固然不错，但我随时可以重返德勤公司。”

    早期迭代模型的失败促使他们苦苦思索。“2009年1月至5月，我们发现这种基于用户的备考方式其实并不奏效，我们随即开始研究出现这种状况的原因，”帕瑞克说。“调查了许多最近几年参加过GMAT考试的同学之后，我们终于意识到，人们真正需要的是一群深谙这项考试的专家，他们需要这些权威人士来帮他们答疑解惑。”

    他们创造了产品的实体模型，把它制作成PowerPoint格式，随后邀请一些同学像登陆一家网站一样来点击这些幻灯片。“获得了一些反馈意见后，”帕瑞克说。“我们移动了对话框，并更改语言，让他们再次点击。我们不断重复这个过程，直至大家说，‘这种方式讲得通。我愿意注册。’也就是在那时，我们决定建立一个网站。”他们与温哥华一位GMAT考试导师签约，由他为这家新生的网站提供教学视频。

    就这样，在暑期的几个月中，他们全身心地建造这款新产品。谢诺伊返回印度后也没有停止开发工作。李与选择去谋智网络公司(Mozilla)实习的普尔-莫埃齐一起在伯克利拱形街租了一个办公场所，那里迅速成为Magoosh公司的首个总部。他们每天都躲在地下室或后院全神贯注地搭建产品，而大卫•查伦教授此前一个学期讲授的《创业教程》(Workshop for Startups)也给予了他们莫大的帮助。

    李和帕瑞克开始碰撞出火花。“汉苏和我真的很合拍，很容易沟通。我们建立了密切的联系，”帕瑞克说。“汉苏和我真正特别的地方在于，我们都为Magoosh倾注了全部心血。”

    共同的兴趣衍生出一份深厚的友谊，甚至达到了相互依赖的程度。“它远远超出了商业范畴，”帕瑞克说。“我们花了很多时间一起参加社交活动。我们一起喝酒，一起吃饭。”他们经常去北伯克利一家名叫恺撒的小食吧，李往往会痛饮一杯苏格兰威士忌，帕瑞克则喜欢喝帝国黑啤。他们每两个星期总会在星期四腾出一个夜晚，出去聚一聚。

    When the two reported to campus in August 2008, they found themselves in the same cohort of 60 incoming MBA students. They also ended up working together on a case competition involving technology and healthcare. "We did this case together and it was okay," recalls Parikh. "Nothing really came of it." Except one thing: They met another MBA student, Pejman Pour-Moezzi, who would bring them a big idea.

    "He said, 'Hey, I'm working on something," says Parikh. ""I'd like to show you guys to see if you would be interested.' That was half way through the first semester."

    They strolled over to his apartment off campus and Pour-Moezzi described the idea he called Magoosh, a play on a Persian word "Magush," which refers to a wise person. The concept was to create a community of users who would help each other prepare for the GMAT exam. The forum would be similar to an existing service, BeatTheGMAT, but the interface would embed GMAT prep software. Pour-Moezzi, who had also been a Deloitte consultant before going to Haas, had been working on it with a friend from Deloitte, Vikram Shenoy, who had a master's in computer science from the University of Southern California.

    "It was people-powered test prep, a hybrid of test prep with a forum," says Parikh. "At the apartment, Hansoo was visibly excited about education. He was passionate about it. He was on the board of an education non-profit. He came to school knowing he wanted to be an entrepreneur. He came to business school with a vision and a purpose. For me, I was interested in technology."

    They worked together over the next few months, launching a crude site in December 2008 and buying Google AdWords to help people find it. The first iteration didn't really take, but none of them gave up on it, either. Lee and Parikh decided to relinquish their chance at a summer internship. "For Hansoo, giving up an internship was a no-brainer," remembers Parikh. "For me, I at least had a safety net back at Deloitte. The worst thing that could happen is we don't pursue Magoosh, but I get this amazing experience to work on a company and I could always go back to Deloitte."

    The failure of the product's early iteration got them thinking. "Between January and May of 2009, when we realized that the idea of user-based test prep wasn't really working, we started researching why it wasn't working," says Parikh. "We surveyed a lot of our classmates who had taken the GMAT in the past few years. That's when we realized that what people want are credible experts who know the test. That's where they want to get their explanations."

    They created mockups of the product, put them in PowerPoint, and asked classmates to come and click through them as if the slides were a website. "As we got feedback," says Parikh, "we would move the boxes around and change the language and have them click again. We kept doing this until we got to a point where people said, 'This makes sense. I would sign up for that.' That is when we decided to build it." They contracted with a GMAT tutor in Vancouver to supply instructional videos on their site.

    So during those summer months, they poured themselves into building the new product. Shenoy returned to India to work on it from there. With Pour-Moezzi, who chose to take an internship at Mozilla, Lee rented a place on Arch St. in Berkeley. It quickly became the first official Magoosh headquarters. They worked in the basement or on the back patio every day, engrossed in the build that was informed by a Workshop for Startups taught the previous semester by Professor David Charron.

    Lee and Parikh started to click. "Hansoo and I had a really good rhythm," says Parikh." It was easy to communicate. We developed a close bond. The one thing Hansoo and I had that was truly special was that we were both completely committed to Magoosh."

    Out of that shared interest came a deep and profound friendship, even a dependence. "It was well beyond a business thing," says Parikh. "We spent a lot of time together in social settings. We drank together. We ate together." They would typically saunter over to Cesar, a tapas bar in North Berkeley where Lee would swill scotch and Parikh would down Imperial Stout. They'd block out the date on a calendar every two weeks on Thursday nights.