From finance to entrepreneurship, your stories?

For people / or people you know who have made the transition from finance to starting their own businesses.

What kind of business are you running? Any success/failure story and lesson?

I'm running a referral marketing agency catering to a niche segment of fintech, have a bit of a hard time for it to take off given amount of time I'm spending on this side business, still have my full time job in finance but I'm contemplating going full time business owner.

7 Comments
 

I've been thinking long and hard about entrepreneurship myself and I believe that the days of buying laundromats are gone. The next big thing is decentralized finance - still the wild west right now, but so little regulated that you can move fast, start things and break things without having to jump through endless regulatory loops. Just a bit more technical than the business model of your average waste management firm..

 
Most Helpful

I guess it depends on what you call "entrepreneur". DeFi is like fintech, it can mean anything. 

On the investment side, it'd be easy to offer give non-tech savvy investors access to returns derived from crypto. The 8th biggest cryptocurrency (Polkadot) pays you 12% per year just for staking. Lending USDT (a stablecoin with a fixed value of $1) can net you an annual >30% return which is basically risk-free since crypto loans require borrowers to put a collateral whose value is greater than the loan itself. There's also yield farming, in which Mark Cuban is active.

All DeFi projects on the corporate side will still be related to financial services. For video games, in-game currency could be based on an actual token that it'd be easy to trade on online markets, etc. An interesting use case is KCS, which is Kucoin's (a crypto exchange) currency. Each day it pays 50% of the transaction fees generated during that day to all KCS holders.

 

Omnis et perferendis et asperiores. Reiciendis cumque quod natus et ut ex et. Aut omnis id id vel suscipit sed iusto dolor. Voluptatem est quae id aut dolor doloribus.

Fuga minus recusandae nesciunt. Esse consectetur libero esse molestiae. Omnis omnis optio ut repellendus dolore. Consequatur est ut ex repudiandae. Aut expedita id fugit omnis est. Consequuntur soluta exercitationem consequatur voluptatibus totam est. Id rerum omnis maiores placeat iusto doloribus dolor fugiat.

Career Advancement Opportunities

August 2026 Investment Banking

  • Evercore 01 99.4%
  • Moelis & Company 01 98.9%
  • JPMorgan 01 98.3%
  • Morgan Stanley 08 97.8%
  • Goldman Sachs 02 97.2%

Overall Employee Satisfaction

August 2026 Investment Banking

  • Moelis & Company No 99.4%
  • Evercore No 98.9%
  • Morgan Stanley 01 98.3%
  • Banco Santander 02 97.8%
  • BMO Capital Markets 12 97.2%

Professional Growth Opportunities

August 2026 Investment Banking

  • Evercore 01 99.4%
  • Moelis & Company 01 98.9%
  • Morgan Stanley 06 98.3%
  • Goldman Sachs 01 97.8%
  • JPMorgan 01 97.2%

Total Avg Compensation

August 2026 Investment Banking

  • Vice President (16) $429
  • Associates (48) $259
  • 3rd+ Year Analyst (8) $210
  • 2nd Year Analyst (25) $178
  • Intern/Summer Associate (14) $159
  • 1st Year Analyst (83) $151
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (75) $101
notes
16 IB Interviews Notes

“... there’s no excuse to not take advantage of the resources out there available to you. Best value for your $ are the...”

Leaderboard

1
redever's picture
redever
99.2
2
BankonBanking's picture
BankonBanking
99.0
3
kanon's picture
kanon
99.0
4
Secyh62's picture
Secyh62
99.0
5
CompBanker's picture
CompBanker
98.9
6
DrApeman's picture
DrApeman
98.9
7
dosk17's picture
dosk17
98.9
8
GameTheory's picture
GameTheory
98.9
9
Betsy Massar's picture
Betsy Massar
98.9
10
bolo up's picture
bolo up
98.8
success
From 10 rejections to 1 dream investment banking internship

“... I believe it was the single biggest reason why I ended up with an offer...”