[hellodevnull]

The general idea is the same in education and almost every other aspect of life: learning enough, then applied practice. You do a programming language tutorial then work on your own programs to really grasp it. If you skip the first step you'll make needless mistakes and pick up bad habits, if you skip the second you'll rarely be of much use in the real world.

Here, working at another company can be considered the first step in learning about building businesses, and I'm sure it's beneficial, but in startups I've found you can quickly learn and practice whatever you're intending or supposed to do. Let me give an example form personal experience. At one point in my life I had never sold anything before and probably would have been a lot better if I had worked in another company and observed the sales department, however, when my time came, I had to start contacting customers. I spent a while reading about sales then just went for it. I improved a lot in a short space of time... now I consider this an accelerated experience gain because I researched exactly what I needed for a particular task and applied it to a problem. In the same way I'd only learn about some particular aspect of programming because I've discovered it's what I need.