What is the best path to becoming a F500 CEO?

Have the last name of Ford or Rothschild or Walton

Start a F500 company

F500 CEO is not a realistic goal. You can aim for senior management perhaps. Consulting -> lateral to your industry of choice in corp strategy/corp dev is a common way

Disclosure: Not something I’ve thought of at all, whatsoever

Opinion: I think, the highest probability path (from my perspective) would be to focus on laying the foundation for a Search Fund (which is common for graduates from top bschools). Spent 1-2years “searching” for a company to acquire and operate as CEO. The size of the target company will depend on the size of the Fund you raise.

Although less profitable, and maybe even somewhat counterintuitive, I would advise searching for a very simple, small business that seems very easy to learn the ins/outs & is complimentary to your specific skill set, & also one with a strong supporting management team in place. The smaller the business, the more margin for error, and there will be errors.

Once you get the hang of this, try to scale the business through inorganic M&A by adding-on smaller companies, thereby making yours bigger & bigger.

Now, as an operator with a proven track record, you can either:

A) sellout to a Fortune 500 company strategic buyer, & increase the probability of rising through the ranks

B) have proven yourself as a good operator in a PE-style platform, and partner with a PEGs as an interim CEO, gradually working your way up in the size of companies you operate, until one day you may find yourself asked to be the CEO of a F500

Hey, I'm a PL at BCG, HSW MBA, etc. TO be honest, if you look at the exits from consulting, they tend to go into corp strat type roles with the intention of getting into a line management (P&L ownership role). However, my sense is that that does not always happen. If you want to be a CEO your best bet is to go straight into industry and work your way up. One of the problems with that is that it is a LONG journey fraught with risk (high likliehood you get stuck in MM).
One benefit of consulting / IB / finance is that you can make a lot of money in a much shorter period of time. Here's an exercise I'd recommend to you. Go look at the biographies / linkedin profiles of 20 CEOs of businesses that you think you'd want to run. Into tech? go look at Yelp, FB, Apple, LI, Amazon, etc. Into O&G? GO look at Exxon, Chevron, Anadarko, Baker Hughes, etc. You get the picture. Now look at what those people did and the paths they took. I bet that at least 75% of them did not do anything like consulting or banking.

Second this. I don't have quite the vantage point that bmc has, but I've done this LinkedIn exercise before and was surprised at what I saw. Most (90%+?) VP and Senior VP level people have worked at their company for 15-20 years, and well over half didn't attend a school that WSO would consider to be a 'target.' A lot of no-name state school people that just worked their way up.

true story lol

https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/consulting/is-management-consulti…

this is like asking what's the best path to become a billionaire or president of the us lol