Is IB a good industry to break into for future entrepreneurs?

Currently in VC. Previously in IBD, retail banking and/or commercial banking.

The most successful founders I met previously (pre-VC job) were: - oddballs/creative folks - independent and strong-willed - corporate contractors (not FTE) - within innovations or comparable groups inside corporates

These people don't fit the corporate mold. And they don't want to. They use their network and leverage knowledge and ideas. They are creative folks who come up with concepts that work. Their experience in their respective field warrants a cool MVP much faster than people without any industry exposure.

HOWEVER the founders I met on my current job (VC) are very different: - serial entrepreneurs - some without formal education - very young (average age around 27-32) - lots of trial and error - no corporate exposure before becoming founder - often co-founder instead of lone founder - often focused on accelerators and startup competitions

IMO, a formal educational and professional IBD experience gives you insight into how a company could be structured, executed and eventually exited. You know all about term sheets, how to raise a round and all about how to deal with the legal eagles of the game. In fact, you know enough to advise other founders about these things. But, I have met incredibly successful founders and startups that didn't know any of these things. Guess what, it didn't matter too much. There are startup lawyers who can do this for you without breaking a sweat. As a founder/entrepreneur your job is to know 105% of your business, industry and where your company is headed.

Interned at VC firms my two summers before IB and did tons of sourcing and listening to founder calls. From what I’ve seen there’s no blueprint to being a founder, which naturally makes sense because there’s no prerequisite to starting your own business.

That said, I saw a surprising amount of ex-IB analysts. Usually their rationale for this was 1) it gives them a phenomenal in-and-out understanding of how a business works, generating cash flow, scaling, strategizing, etc, and 2) it gave them plenty of cash to bootstrap their business and keep a cleaner cap table with more equity to themselves. This makes a ton of sense, if you spend 2-3 years as an analyst you can probably reserve $50-60k/year or so if you really skimp. Not bad at all.

Founders never mentioned this (it would be weird to) but I think another big reason is that it adds credibility to them which is huge in early stage VC where the management team’s perception is so important. Even if the first talking point I mentioned earlier (understanding how businesses work) is a bit romantic and IB isn’t entirely relevant to starting your own business, my VC’s partners automatically had a higher level of respect for these founders because of their IB experience (I.e. if this guy made it in IB he’s impressive, smart, can talk to people, knows about how to run a business, etc.). It’s just more impressive relative to other careers founders pursue before their startups it seems

During my internship at an EB, an analyst left to create a startup with VC backing. Definitely provides a good resume line to show you're smart and hard working which can help with funding.

I think it's good to do but a true entrepreneur will not be able to suppress the desire to do their own thing. All of the successful entrepreneurs I know dropped out or completely half-assed school, then worked a job that didn't eat up too much time and used that to fund their initial companies.

Also...being 100% all-in with no back up really forces you to make things work.

With that said, not all people are born to be entrepreneurs, nor with they be able to make their business work so maybe it is good to have a back up.

For me personally, I couldn't tolerate being in school, taking classes taught by people I didn't have much (if any) respect for was very difficult.

YMMV.

no. best venture ceos find an obscure problem that is inefficient and then create efficiency at scale. sometimes these are huge ($crm) othertimes they are small.