MBA Start-Up Diary: Leaving Banks To Launch My Own Venture

 

 

Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, famously said that launching a start-up is like jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down. If that’s the case, choosing to leave a promising career to launch a start-up is like lighting your parachute on fire and then choosing to jump off that same cliff. 

 

I decided to burn my parachute. This is my story. 

 

 

I started my MBA at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, in 2006. After my first year, I landed a summer job at a small private equity firm and ended up working there part-time throughout second year. 

 

A few months after graduation, as the financial crisis started to heat up, I made the tough decision to leave the firm and accepted a job in equity research. I spent the next five years at two different investment banks, covering diversified financial services and later retail banks. 

 

 

In addition to my responsibilities as a research associate, I got involved in the recruitment process. I attended networking sessions, screened resumes, interviewed candidates and helped new hires learn the ropes.

 

Shockingly, finding strong candidates was far harder than I thought it would be. People applied without many of the necessary qualifications, interviewees had little idea of what the role entailed and new hires got lost navigating day-to-day tasks. It seemed that all of these problems stemmed from a basic lack of knowledge. 

 

There are many places on the Internet where you can find salary information, interview questions and company reviews – but high-quality information about jobs is in short supply, and most people don’t have access to experience-based career advice.

 

I started to think about how useful it would be to have a site where people could find job-specific advice from hundreds of experienced professionals.

 

That thought has become SecureTheJob.com – a site where people share job-specific career advice (think Glassdoor for career advice) and users work together to create detailed job descriptions (think Wikipedia for job descriptions). 

 

Great careers are built on great career advice and career education, and the goal of SecureTheJob is to make both available to everybody.

 

 

After almost five years in equity research, it became clear that something was missing. Spending my days analysing companies and dissecting management decisions wasn’t doing it for me anymore. I realized that I had spent my entire career on the outside looking in.

 

Deciding to leave finance was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make. The way I saw it, leaving finance would mean throwing away all of the years I spent getting into the industry and working my way up the ladder. I had worked so hard to land a high-paying job and here I was thinking about leaving behind the money – and all of the security – it provided.

 

When I told people that I was thinking about quitting my job to start my own company, their reactions seemed to mirror my internal discourse. Half thought I was crazy, while the other half applauded my courage.

 

I went back and forth for months. What finally made up my mind was reframing my definition of risk. Up to that point, risk was giving up a defined career path and lifestyle. With time I realized that the real risk would have been spending the rest of my life wondering “what if?”. 

 

I decided that life is too short for regrets.

 

 

So what are my thoughts on leaving the corporate world to launch my own company? Professionally, it’s been the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. Business school and five years in finance were great learning experiences, but nothing could have fully prepared me for the challenges of starting a company.  

 

Founding a company is like business school on steroids – things move faster, the learning curve is steeper and mistakes have bigger consequences than a blemish on your transcript.

 

The truth is: start-up life isn’t for everybody. If you hate making mistakes and find comfort in having clear and defined responsibilities, launching a start-up probably isn’t for you.

 

 

Many other founders that I’ve spoken to would agree that start-up life is an incredibly humbling experience. The hours are long, you often feel isolated, the lows can be crushing and you’re working harder than you ever have for little or no money.

 

That being said, this has also been one of the best years of my life. It’s invigorating to know that the buck stops with me. As the founder of a company, everything I do has a direct impact on my company’s success or failure. I’m constantly challenged and learn something new every day.

 

I don’t know how my story will play out. But there’s one thing I know for sure – waking up most days excited to start working is something that money can’t buy.