他永远地走了，他创办的公司还在

    到了7月份，他们拥有了一款 MVP——最低可行性产品。“这是可以向客户展示价值的最低限度产品，”帕瑞克补充说。“我们第一次发布了一个问题、一个解惑视频，以及一个供人们输入电子邮箱地址的对话框。它是一个定量问题。接下来，我们就开始在人们眼前建立网站。我们添加了一个问题，另一个问题，随后又添加了10个问题。我们不断完善产品，还在2009年8月底或9月初启动了支付系统。就是在那时，我们获得了第一位付费用户。那真是一个大日子，因为我们终于构建了一个有人愿意花钱购买的东西。我们每月收取29美元。”

    到商学院第二学年开始的时候，他们感觉还不错。然而，一个巨大的挑战在于，他们能否在2010年5月毕业后全职从事这项工作。“从某个时点开始，每单增量销售不会让你变得那么兴奋，你开始思考企业将如何维持下去？”帕瑞克当时非常担忧。“我们将如何给自己开工资，支付日常费用，同时扩展业务呢？继续投身于这项事业是一项很难做出的决定。但汉苏绝对是一股驱动力。‘我们接着干吧，’他说。‘如果不做，我们将来会后悔的。’”

    李和帕瑞克决定继续前进。获得MBA学位后，普尔-莫埃齐最终选择去微软公司(Microsoft)工作。已返回印度的谢诺伊也选择了离开，因为当时很难挽留一位远在另一个国家的合作伙伴。

    李和帕瑞克在夏季那几个月形成的密切关系揭示出两人巨大的性格差异和许多建设性的意见分歧。“就愿意倾注全力而言，李更加无所畏惧。他想亲自会见尽可能多的人，试图告诉整个世界我们正在开发什么项目。相较而言，我更加内敛，更务实一些。我可以告诉客户这些事情，但一涉及到投资者，我总是说，‘我们不要因为他们而费神。我们先搞定自己的事情。’但他拥有这份令人惊叹的信心。他富有魅力，目光远大，知道我们可以让公司达到什么样的高度。”

    “每次我想不出执行某项工作的方式时，我有时候会认为那是根本不可能做到的事情。而对于汉苏来说，没有事情是不可能的。他就是那股驱动力。他时常说，‘我们可以做到这一点，’而我的工作就是问，‘好的，但我们怎么才能做到？’他不断拓展我的能力边界，我居然真的推动了我们的事业不断向前。

    2010年秋天，他们获得MBA学位、刚刚开始全职从事这项事业后不久，两人之间最大的争执爆发了。直到那时，他们已经筹集了大约7万美元资金，其中包括在英特尔与加州大学伯克利分校全球挑战赛(Intel-UC-Berkeley)中赢得的1万美元奖金，以及北桥创投公司(Northbridge Venture Partners)投资的5万美元。但李现在强烈地感到，他们亟需从投资者手中募集更多资金，只有这样，公司才能迅速成长。帕瑞克更倾向于自力更生的发展方式。这种分歧似乎难以调和，以至于帕瑞克一度表示，他愿意彻底退出。

    “当时的讨论非常艰难，”帕瑞克回忆说。“他觉得，只有筹集一大笔资金，我们才能够真正有一番作为：显著扩大Magoosh的规模，让它抵达更多人，为许多还没有使用过它的人提供备考服务。那时候的潜力将大得多。而我更关注实际层面。要是我们增加筹资额度，我们就必须壮大，与此同时，我们将不得不放弃一些股权和对公司的控制力。”

    By July, they had an MVP -- a minimal viable product. "It's the minimum you could put out that might show value to customers," adds Parikh. "The first time we put it out it was one question, one video explanation, and a box for people to enter their email address. It was a quant question. And then we just started building the site in front of people's eyes. We added a question and another question and then 10 questions. We kept improving the product to turn on payment in late August or early September of 2009. That was when we had our first paying customer. That was a big day because we had finally built something that someone was willing to pay for. We charged $29 a month."

    By the time their second year of MBA studies began, they were feeling pretty good. The big challenge, however, was whether they could grow the business to pursue it full-time after graduation in May 2010. "At some point, you start getting less excited about each incremental sale and start thinking about how is this going to sustain the business?" Parikh recalls worrying. "How are we going to pay ourselves, cover expenses, and scale the business? It was tough to make the decision to pursue the startup. But Hansoo was definitely a driving force. 'Let's do it,' he said. 'We'll regret it if we don't.'"

    Lee and Parikh decided to move forward. Pour-Moezzi ultimately chose to take a job with Microsoft (MSFT) when he got his MBA. Shenoy, already in India, left the business when it became harder to remain a partner remotely from another country.

    The close bond Lee and Parikh formed during those summer months revealed major personality differences between the two and a number of constructive disagreements. "He was more fearless in the sense that he was willing to put himself out there. He wanted to go and meet as many people as he could and tell the world what we were working on. I was a little more reserved and practical. I was okay with telling customers about it, but when it came to investors I said, 'Let's not really bother with them. Let's really nail it.' But he had this confidence that was amazing. He was charismatic and he had this vision of where we could take the company.

    "When I couldn't think of a way to execute on something, I would sometimes assume it just wasn't possible. For Hansoo, nothing was impossible. He was that driving force. He would say, 'We could do this. And my job was to ask, 'Okay, how do we get there?' He stretched me, and then I actually helped us move the ball forward."

    Their biggest dispute occurred shortly after they graduated and were working full time on the business in the fall of 2010. Up until then, they had scrounged together about $70,000 for their business, having won $10,000 in an Intel-UC-Berkeley contest and $50,000 from Northbridge Venture Partners. But now Lee felt strongly that they needed to raise significantly more money from investors to grow the company. Parikh preferred to bootstrap their business. The disagreement was so profound that at one point Parikh suggested that he would be willing to leave the business altogether.

    "Those were tough discussions," recalls Parikh. "He felt that if we raised funding, we would be able to really make a difference: to grow Magoosh much bigger, to reach more people, to serve test prep to a lot of people who don't have access to it today. The potential was so much greater. For me, it was more of the practical side. If we raise funding, we're going to have to grow big, and at the time, I thought we would have to give up some equity and control."