Who has more influence in society: BB IB MD or A-list celebrity (Kanye/Drake/Beyonce)?

Who has more power and influence in society - BB IB MD or an A-list celebrity (Kanye/Drake/Beyonce)? Considering the connections each has to high-ranking politicians, MF PE leadership, and influential businessmen and public figures, and the ability to activate and utilize those connections at will.

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I just feel like first of all the influence Beyonce and Kanye specifically have over the general public / millions of people alone overtakes an MD at a BB. Plus the people you mentioned are all like billionaires, while an MB might have like a 10-50M net worth. I might be wrong, I'm just a college student but idk

 

But those "millions of people" you mentioned are non-important people that aren't in positions of authority, so one can argue that that "mass" influence is worthless. Also, wealth and power are two totally different things. A random uneducated Chinese billionaire can have a net worth of ~10B but no one cares about him (no real connections to the people that truly matter like American politicians, U.S. MF PE leadership, and well-connected American billionaires/F10 CEOs).

 
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What do you define as influence on society? Being able to have millions of people do something is influence to me. What changes can a random MD make to society?

 

BB IB MDs aren’t that important. There’s a fundamental difference between connected and influential, and at the end of the day, they’re not the decision makers in the transaction. If you’re looking for ways to make your career choice feel more important, this is not the way.

 

Off topic but I don’t think Dr. Dre is A list, at least not anymore. He’s certainly not on the same level today as Ye, Drake, T Swift, Kardashians, etc.

 
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First, congrats, those are both great offers! It's tempting to take the A-list celebrity gig, but I'd advise you to take a long-term perspective and think about optionality. Lot easier to go from IB MD to A-list celeb (e.g. DJ DSol)...much harder to make the transition the other way around.

 

As funny as it sounds, this is real advice. A long-term IB career offers a lot more optionality and predictability in terms of what you may get out of it compared to going all in for an A-List celeb pursuit where there is a much higher degree of "luck" and "probability" involved. One can climb the IB ladder first and utilize the important connections that he gets to make something out of that celeb pursuit/venture later on, with a lesser risk of an unpredictable crash or failure out of nowhere. But the downside is that it is such a long and painful grind up in IB that one would debate whether that painful grind up justifies the benefit of going that route versus all in for the high-risk high-reward celebrity route much earlier on.

 

A list any day

But to be fair, I’d personally would prefer to be an MD 

 

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