What is the best starting job for an aspiring entreprenuer?
I am currently an undergrad and my long-term goal is to one day start my own company. I have neither the experience nor the capital to start one any time soon, so I am looking for a job that can give me the best start. I think a job that gives applicable experience, ample capital, and potentially enough free time to start something on the side is the best-case scenario.
I think consulting is generally the best place to start. I am biased as this is where I began my career, but feel it gives you the best exposure to solving a broad variety of problems. I think a few years in consulting then pivoting to a strategy role at a startup would be a good career path. The biggest thing with starting your own company is you have to face such a broad range of problems, that a finance role wont necessarily help you a ton. You could do one year in IB and then transition to consulting so you would have strong financial modeling skills as well as strong problem solving skills, but I would think the year in IB would be entirely necessary.
I'll second this, but for a different reason. I went the backwards way of DT6 and I moved into consulting after doing SEC reporting. So a bit different than IB, but you still gotta know all the skills. It'll teach you a ton either direction of DT6's start or mine.
lol consulting is a terrible way to start for true entreprenuership. You dont actually learn a 'real' skill you can sell. Much harder to start your own firm, especially if in strategy consulting.
You are far better off doing a skill customers will pay you for (CPA, HVAC technnician) or something heavily network based (real estate) than consulting/banking to be an entreprenuer
Very true, being able to provide goods or services that customers/client value is the most important aspect of starting a successful company.
It helps to know about stuff like market sizing, operating margins, capital structures etc. (all skills you develop in Consulting/IB) but it’s the value you create for customers that leads to success.
E.g. if you want to build a successful fashion brand, it’s far more important to become an amazing designer and spend years designing clothes than to be a consultant. You can always hire them if you need help down the line lol.
Work for a fast growing company doing ~$15m - $100m in revenue and growing at least ~1.5x - 2x YoY.
Make sure the founder is cash efficient and not one of these monkeys that raised $$$ in '20/'21 but is a dogshit entrepreneur.
Your goal is a "chief of staff" type of role.
Maximize learning, not pay. $80k and growing your skill set 4x in a year is better than $300k and 1.2x.
Most of my c-levels right now at ex-entrepreneurs that blew up or guys that want to be entrepreneurs. Our understanding is that they give me a killer 2 years of their life and I will be their first $ in for their next entrepreneurial attempt.
If it's consumer, I am happy to send you some names I respect immensely who are run by 200 IQ founders.
BTW - you should also ignore advice from non-entrepreneurs here. Their advice is worthless.
This is the most subtle yet meaningful advice. Read this 3x over and repeatedly try answering the question "Why?".
sent a pm
how would you get a job at a place like this? I've been ruined by working at an intrapreneurial org = worst of entrepreneurship & worst of corporate life
Smile and dial + LinkedIn
Can you explain the Chief of Staff role? Came across it a few times but from reading about it on WSO, people are generally negative about it.
Thank you for the useful info. Sent a PM.
Where did you find these aspiring or ex-entrepreneurs? Also, can you expand more on the Chief of Staff role? What are they responsible for?
Sent a PM as well
how do you feel about an intrapreneurial orgs?
Commenting to save for later. Great response.
Honestly you sound like an "wantrepreneur". If you want to start your own business, you should focused on actually building a real skill (engineering, programming..etc). Afterwards get employed in a position where you can grow and aggrandize on your craft. Then after being industry for a long enough tenure where you see an inefficiency and/or gap in the market. Additionally, you will have enough technical ability to address the hypothetical problem, create a business around the solution and capitalize on the value created from said solution through monetization strategies; that's a bottom-up approach. Another approach is top-down where you do market research to try to find the gaps in the market preemptively, which a bottom-up approach.
Any role with exposure to the financial operations of a company. Once you see how the inner gears work in a successful company, you should be able to manage your own financial operations.
But, you have to have a good idea and have to come with the right timing in the market. So a good idea at the right time and then you just have to execute. This is all a lot harder than it seems. Growing a business from scratch comes with many challenges. Most will fail.
Sales
In order of priority: MBB, VC firm, engineer (at a subject you’re good at), sales, fast growth startup
After watching ~ 500 motivational entrepreneurial videos on YouTube throughout my life I would say that the 3 best places to start are:
1. McDonald's / Subway cashier
2. Janitor
3. Wal-Mart
That's where the desire to be rich, the ambition, and the flame appears. 498 of the videos say that they were handing sandwiches / cleaning the stairs / arranging Pringles when they saw a guy exit from his Mercedes with a 5k suit and they said: I want to be like him and I'll make it happen; and they became rich.
that's it
Sales is quite underrated imo. To learn how customers tick, what they actually want (or you make them believe so), to deliver a message to them to buy this NOW as it will change their life (by happiness or actual use or simply for owning it) and much more gets you quite ahead. You can always later on hire an excel monkey.
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