IBD --> Coding --> Entrepreneurship ? Need help !

Hi there - posting from a throwaway account. I am a former banker (was an analyst at a MS/GS/JPM in banking), left to start a tech company, so have a lot of thoughts that I'll be so bold as to pretend I can enlighten you with. The startup I formed is co-founded with more senior bankers than myself, is in fintech, and seed funded largely by a handful of investment banks + HNW, so this isn't full-on VC/Silicon Valley, but it's in the same ballpark. I had a heavy quant focus in school, so going from banking - which I just sort of fell into - into tech wasn't that hard technically for me, since it was just an expansion of my existing programming skills (note - I am still only data science focused; not a backend/frontend developer).

To sum up my thoughts before getting into the details, have you read the Lean Startup? It is a book about Eric Ries' methodology for building a company, and in short, proposes that a startup focus on eliminating risk by engaging in lots of small, low-cost experiments. For example, rather than deciding over lunch, "XYZ is a great idea because we think it is; let's go raise a bunch of cash, build a highly expensive software product doing what we think people will want!", and then doing that (and very likely discovering/learning that no, nobody wanted your amazing idea/product), you break the process down into experiments that test assumptions. First, is XYZ a great idea? Build a tiny MVP testing that core functionality, and get it to market ASAP to learn from users and really test every aspect of your plan.

I recommend you apply that methodology to your life/next steps you lay out here.

You've raised a lot of points in your post, many of which seem to be assumptions. For example, you've taken a few online coding classes you enjoyed. Great - but have you spoken to a developer about their job? Really sat down and tried to build something (and encountered the fact that ~65% of your day is de-bugging errors/Stackoverflow)?

"I want to give up everything and follow my dreams." I would encourage you to stop thinking of this like a binary decision. Entrepreneurship is seen as being all about taking big risks, but it shouldn't be. It's about taking small, calculated risks. Here's what I mean:

Before jumping ship from the idea of having a job at a company that exists outside of your head, try testing the waters first. Right now, that can mean having conversations with folks in your network that do work at startups or in SV. More concretely - if you really are on board with "finance is not for me, period", then rather than seeing this as 'immediately after graduating, I'll go to coding bootcamp and then start a company!", if I were you, I would join an early-stage startup immediately post-grad. Find a company with ~5 employees, so small enough that you are getting to see the nitty-gritty crap of entrepreneurship (and enough equity to participate in potential upside!), but you are not the person responsible for making payroll every month/not losing all your investors' money. Stay with that startup in their high growth-y phase, until ~30 employees or so (assuming they are growing...). That will have given you so much perspective and experience before starting your own company. Also, you will be able to build your network during that time and find a co-founder (who you will need; everyone needs a co-founder, happy to provide more info here but this is already long).

Speaking of co-founder, now on to the "coding" discussion. Unless you already were a comp sci major or writing code on the side in school, it sounds like you are going to be the 'business person' on the team unless you make a major pivot. That's okay! That's the CEO, oftentimes. And you go find a CTO, who will be your technical genius. I say this because if your plan is to go to a year-long coding school and then expect to be able to A) actually have the expertise/experience necessary to build an app that is of the level you are going to want, and B) be able to find serious investors willing to put capital behind a CTO (you) with only one year of coding school and no real full time work experience in software dev, you may be in for a rough surprise.

So, this leaves you the choice of either embracing being the business person (in which case you could leverage your banking/finance internship to get the previously mentioned role at a startup in a business position/strategy/ops), or decide to go all-in on wanting to be a technical person. If you really want to do the latter (which still rests on only taking a few online courses at this point, so I recommend you do more research/work here before deciding), then I would recommend you do pursue that coding school, and after graduation, take a job at an established tech company where you can learn from people with much more experience and knowledge than you - if you want to be a CTO at a startup (perhaps your own startup!), then you need to be the end-all be-all tech guru. And that doesn't come from school only.

Congratulations if you've made it this far! Only two other points I wanted to say - and I'm not trying to discourage you; these are just things I wish I knew earlier. First, if you are leaving banking because you want something with more flexibility/greater impact on the world, then know that tech is not this amazing land where nobody cares about money. Even if you leave banking not caring about money yourself, your investors will care about returns and money, so as an entrepreneur you'll end up spending your time thinking about it to. Since keeping your investors happy is what keeps the cash coming in the door. Second, think long and hard about whether starting a company is how you want to spend your twenties. Your friends will still be on their respective banking/consulting career paths, moving up the ranks/getting promotions, without worrying the floor is going to fall out from under their company at any moment (and their ass is going to be on the line when it does, which yours will as a principal). While right now corporate life seems dull compared to startup life, there are real benefits to it, in terms of what you likely end up sacrificing in friendships, dating, free time, and stress trying to keep your company not only afloat, but growing enough such that raising your next round of capital is going to be even achievable. Given that I'm saying that "compared to banking, you're going to be under huge amounts of stress and giving up most other aspects of your life outside of career if you want to do this", and that's "compared to banking", this should give you a sense of just how 'green' the grass is over here.

Lastly, at the end of the day, try to pursue what you enjoy. If that means leaving banking, then absolutely do it! But do it in small steps, testing out those huge assumptions you are throwing out here. Take risks - but calculated ones.

Just my two cents! This is all just my own personal experience and opinions; everyone I'm sure will have different perspectives :-)