At MBB soon. Steps to take to generate long-term wealth and passive income

Dear Fellow Primates,

It has been a while now since I've started a thread or posted anything for that matter. A bit about myself:

I spent a couple of years on a highly non-traditional career path (sports, arts, etc.) for this forum. With some determination and luck I managed to gain admission at a target school and subsequently land an internship at a MBB. Prior to the internship I was determined to go down the IBD/PE/HF path, but I ended up having so much fun at the MBB that I decided to take the full time offer that I was lucky to receive at the end of my summer there. I am due to start there next year after an internship at a MM growth PE firm.

Great, but what next? So this is all good and I am very happy with where I am right now, but as a result of having lots of time off this summer I had the opportunity to truly reflect on my long-term plans in life. Due to having met many new friends and their families through my new network at my target school (its incredible how strong the signalling effect of a famous school is, it opens doors for you to meet many HNW individuals), I had the fortune of going on fancy vacations with them and staying at their amazing weekend homes in beautiful locations. I very quickly realized that this is the life I want for myself and I am not ashamed to say that.

So, how to get there eventually? All of the HNW ($20m+ net worth) I have met are business owners. Many of them didn't go to fancy schools. None of them spent 20 years working their butts of at MBB/IBD/PE. Yet, they enjoy a higher living standard than Partners at said firms and have much more time to enjoy their families, friends and their money. Summa summarum, in order to get where these people are, realistically, I have to become a succesful entrepreneur and start a business. There is no way around the statistic that great wealth is almost always created by entrepreneurship rather than becoming a rockstar in a profession.

What can I do now? I have laid out a short-term plan for myself:

Capital: Since entrepreneurship requires considerable starting capital, I will have to be very careful with the money I will be earning in my first years. Most of it should be saved. I am going to be living at my parents house so I will be able to save an extra 1-1.5k a month that would be going towards rent and other stuff. I am going to be investing most of my money in cheap index funds from where I will be able to withdraw capital quickly and without fees if the need arises.

Relationships: It will be important for me to build a business network that I can leverage later down the road. My future firm has a long history of successful entrepreneur alumni and it remains to be seen how much of an advantage this will be. Also, I will try to leverage the brand name of my school to build a network since I've accumulated quite considerable student debt to go there.

Generating passive income during FT-employment: This is my biggest question mark. I need to build up some sort of side gig. Probably online. I have purchased a couple of books regarding side gigs but I'm still unsure how to go about this given my small amount of starting capital. Some people say that creating online courses can generate good passive income, but I'm yet to talk to someone who has actually done this succesfully. I'm open to suggestions regarding this. Also, I'd imagine that generating passive income with minimal time investment could teach me valuable skills that entrepreneurs need.

What to do at MBB: So I've tried to read on what kind of studies successful entrepreneurs have focused on at MBB's. The consensus seems to be, that pure strategy projects where you set up a strategy deck for the client and leave might not always be the most useful experience for entrepreneurship. Something along the lines of operations and implementation might be more useful since you're actually developing capabilities at the client and building something tangible. In other words, actual work in stead of intellectual speculation. However I am aware of the fact that especially implementation is sometimes looked down upon at MBB's vs. Strategy and Corporate Finance.

Eventual transition to founding a business: A lot of people that go into entrepreneurship from my future employer tend to do it at the 3-4 year mark. I guess by then you have succesfully proven that they want to keep you, maximized the brand name on your cv, gained valuable work experience and met high quality people. Heck, I might even encounter someone on a study who I will be co-founding with when we stumble upon a market opportunity in the industry we are serving. Regardless, I'm sure there will be loads of high quality people working with me who are thinking about the same transition.

How does this all sound? How would you go about this given my long-term plans? What experience did you find most useful at MBB once you had made the transition? It would be cool if this would be an open conversation around transitioning from MBB into entrepreneurship and generating long-term wealth afterwards. I'm also very interested to hear if you have any first hand experiences and success stories.

Also, PM me if you want to connect.