Maybe You Shouldn

1
Maybe You Shouldnt Be A Consultant.

• From David To Goliath
• Choosing Careers in Technology Startups and High
  Growth Companies

2
How To Choose?

• Clearly identify
• Short term goals
• Long term goals
• Risk profile

3
Short Term Goals

• Financial Needs
• Student/other loans
• Rent/mortgage
• Other fixed expenses
• Retirement/investment/savings
• Do I know the industry in which I want to work?
• Where do I want to live?

In the course of your life, its a rounding
error
4
Long Term Goals

• How hard do I want to work?
• Do I want to be married/have a family? When?
• What sort of responsibilities do I want to have?
• Manage people
• PL
• Strategic direction
• Where do I want to live?

5
How Much Of A Risk Taker Am I?

• Am I willing to relocate?
• What standard of living am I willing to accept?
• Do I want to own a house?
• Do I want a family? When?

How much money is enough?
6
There Is No One Right Answer

• There are two kinds of people in this world
  those who believe there are two kinds of people
  in this world and those who dont

7
Large Company Advantages

• Tremendous resources
• Established training processes
• Although consulting, banking, and tech firms are
  notoriously equally bad at management training
• Stability
• Benefits

8
Traditional MBA Jobs

• Consulting
• High Salary/starting bonus
• Broad overview of many industries
• Excellent set of tools for analyzing problems
• High level access at clients
• Good spring board
• Great benefits
• Can be pure strategic dont have to get hands
  dirty
• Geographic flexibility

9
Major Industry Jobs

• Large technology firms (e.g. Microsoft, Sun,
  Intel, Dell)
• Good salary (median for MIT - 75K/year)
• Good signing bonus (25-45)
• Option upside
• Lots of non-cash 1st year compensation
• Often located in high quality of life areas
• Fantastic benefits
• Actually get to do something
• Lots of job function flexibility over time
• Learn about running and building a business
• Best networking for startup opportunities

10
Startups

• Widely varying salary, benefits, and bonus
  structure
• from negative to highly competitive
• Usually tremendous option/stock upside
• Very high risk
• Even major VCs admit market is currently
  irrational
• No geographic flexibility
• Tremendous learning opportunity
• Huge impact on company as a whole
• Can really mess up a company with one mistake
• Can get in too deep

11
How To Decide?
Do I eventually want to run a company?
No
Maybe
Do I know in what industry I want to work(e.g.
tech vs manufacturing)?
No
No
Yes
Yes
Consulting
High growth company
Consulting
Do I have a once in a lifetime startup
opportunity?
No
Yes
Take it!
Will I be a better CEO/XXX for having worked
at_____ (MS, Dell, etc.)? The consulting firms at
which I have offers?
12
Why I Chose Microsoft

• I had
• Multiple startup offers from Product Manager to
  CEO and COO
• Consulting opportunities
• A business plan with sponsor interest
• I chose Microsoft because
• Better quality of life than any other opportunity
  (effective cash, financial upside, hours,
  interesting work, etc.)
• Better opportunities for rapid advancement
• Opportunity to pitch my ideas
• More real world I directly affect multiple
  products that millions of people will use
• If I decide that a big company is not for me, I
  will have unparalleled exit opportunities and be
  a better CEO for spending a few years at
  Microsoft
• Can walk around barefoot and no one cares