Advice Needed: Founder of VC backed Startup or GS/MS IBD Analyst

Recently interned at a top group at GS/MS and honestly had a great experience, received a return offer and if I stay in finance would love to go back. The problem is I am pretty entrepreneurial, previously founded a software business that was acquired but decided that finance/IB would give me some great credibility, skills, and exposure if I wanted to pursue something in the future, which I do.

I've been working on a startup for a while now, and I believe that it has potential. Been having conversations with some early stage VC funds, nothing serious but just to gauge interest, and it seems that they are at least interested if I were to seriously try and raise funds. MVP is built and currently in beta testing phase. Would wanna test more before trying to raise a seed and possibly apply to YC/Techstars. If this startup were to get into YC or raise ~$2M in seed funding, would you return to IB or would you go down this startup path?

6 Comments
 

Yes, pre-revenue. Planning on applying to those you listed! If I did get into any of those programs would it be dumb to turn it down?

 

Yes, pre-revenue. Planning on applying to those you listed! If I did get into any of those programs would it be dumb to turn it down?

In my opinion yes - analyst programs can get deferred, and creating a startup is something that has the least opportunity cost the earlier you try it.

Also, once you get into one of these accelerators, you almost will never completely fail - you'll usually have the option to get "acquihired" by a company like Rippling (which loves to acquihire YC startups) 

 

Knew someone in a similar situation. They deferred their analyst offer by a year and spent that time on the startup. Ultimately fizzled out, so they went into IB that subsequent year 

 

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