Should you leave consulting and join a start-up?

Part I of what I wish I'd known before leaving Deloitte for a Series B tech co.

Greetings! Welcome to Part I in a series about transitioning from consulting to start-up. This post covers if + when to make that jump. This should be most applicable to folks who are either (1) 0-4 years into consulting and debating whether to leave, specifically to go to a start-up, or (2) have already made the decision and are either looking for words of affirmation or girding their loins for the transition. Feel free to subscribe if you’d like the next post in your inbox!

First off, why should you listen to me? I’m one of thousands of people who have made the jump from consulting to start-up and emerged unscathed. Realistically speaking, nothing I offer below is game-changing, net-new advice. But I’ll give you the advice that served me personally well, and I’ll shoot straight from the hip. Trust me, I’ve read Victor Cheng’s ‘Case Interview Secrets’ (and still don’t know how to do mental math). I’ve stayed up late and gotten up early to polish an appendix slide. I’ve almost peed my pants in a Thursday afternoon Uber ride to the airport, dragged my Tier 2 suitcase through the airport, and boarded with Diamond Medallion even though I’m only Platinum Medallion. Shall we begin?

You should make the jump if:

• The allure of the consulting lifestyle has worn off. There’s a well-worn saying in consulting that you’re only ever two bad projects away from quitting. If you’ve just about had it up to here moving boxes around slides, never seeing what happens after you send out vF.pptx, and trying not to lose two sets of phones—welcome to the party. If the always-on lifestyle is taking over your entire personality, and if the good people who work in Terminal B of the Hartsfield-Jackson airport are starting to recognize you—take a seat.

• You’re ready to own outcomes instead of creating output. By the time I had left consulting, I had almost a dozen projects under my belt. Yet I still had this nagging feeling that I had never actually hand-delivered real impact. Did our recommendations actually work? Did the client really crawl-walk-run their way to success? Who knows! Maybe we’ll find out in another 3-5 years. If you’re itching for more direct exposure to the business beyond creating deliverables that may rot on your client’s hard drive, this may be the path for you.

• You’re excited to do a little bit of everything. Get ready to hear the phrase ‘wear many hats’ ad nauseam when you interview for start-up roles. This is code for ‘do whatever needs to get done’ and can obviously look quite different from company to company. For instance, in the first few months of my Strategy & Operations role at Lyra (then a Series B), I had a hand in each of the following: recruiting therapists, defining program metrics, creating dashboards, implementing a new pricing model, modeling out growth scenarios, researching telehealth laws, helping the team set up the room and print out materials for a provider training session, working on board deck slides, pulling Salesforce reports, writing and running SQL queries. So as you can see, the scope can be quite broad. How does that sit with you? It’ll definitely be a change of pace from, say, charging hard at a single deliverable, but it can be a lot of fun and you feel like you’re truly playing a part in building something.

You should stay if:

• You’ve been in consulting for under a year. I personally think you check the consulting box after two years, but you might get some raised eyebrows if you peace before one. One full year of consulting experience gives you some credibility for developing that fabled ‘consulting toolkit’.

• You’re getting to fly at a lot of different altitudes: Ideally, you should have a diverse portfolio of experiences that include both super high-level strategy and way in-the-weeds execution / implementation work. And don’t buy into that myth of strategy over everything. Case in point: I prayed daily for the sweet kiss of death on a project re-designing and implementing Salesforce workflows for a sales org at a tech company, yet it was one of my most compelling experiences to talk about in interviews. I also dropped everything to join the firm’s sexiest corporate strategy project for a $XB Soup Company That Shall Not Be Named; it was hands-down the worst summer of my life, and absolutely no one, not a single person, asked me about it in interviews. Devastating.

• You thrive in a super-structured environment with a clear career path. Say what you want about consulting but there are lots of things that companies of that scale do exceptionally well. This includes creating a career ladder, and plenty of programming and structure to help you climb that ladder. It makes sense: they’ve invested a ton of money recruiting and training you, and it behooves the firm to keep you on-board (and highly utilized) for as long as possible. So naturally, one of the biggest differences that you’ll notice between big co. and start-up is the lack of clear-cut career paths at the latter. This means that it may not be easy to get to the fine print on how to demonstrate readiness for a promotion, whether there’s a path to switch teams internally, or what pay bands look like at each level. Not for any malicious reason, but because they may not exist or be documented. Even if they’re quite mature and gliding along on their merry, well-funded way, start-ups are less concerned about making you a nice, neat career ladder and more concerned about surviving for another year. So unless you’re content with your starting level, title, and compensation for the foreseeable future, you’re going to have to be your own advocate. More on that in a later post.

• You’re still learning about your likes and dislikes. If you’ve got no idea which industry or what type of work excites you, then stay in consulting and at least narrow down the list. Many a time I’ve gotten on the phone with someone who’s toying with the idea of leaving consulting and wants counsel, but they’re essentially open to anything that sounds cool. This sounds like “I’m interested in start-ups but open to bigger companies, preferably in consumer product, retail, sustainability, or travel and hospitality.” OK…? That’s a real wide net to cast. From my point of view, it’s tough to figure out the best advice to give or or recommend a shortlist of people to get in touch with. Narrowing the aperture allows you to be more targeted in your job search, and lets people who want to help you do so more effectively.

• The lifestyle works for you! The whole global pandemic aside, the hotel and airline points are sweet. I’m going to be milking those until they pry the last 10,000 Bonvoy points from my cold, dead hands.

There you have it, folks. Leaving consulting—my first job post-grad, and the devil I knew—for the start-up world has had its fair share of ups and downs. I certainly look back on my time in consulting with a ton of fondness. But I’m convinced that leaving when I did was the best move I could’ve made for my career and my overall quality of life / job satisfaction. Whatever you decide, I hope this post helps you feel more confident that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. In the next few posts in the series, I’ll cover “So I’ve decided to leave consulting. Now what?” and share my strategies for figuring out what that next step looks like and how to hit the ground running in the new role.

Comment or drop me a line if there are other topics you’d like for me to cover, either as part of this series or in general. Throw me a heart or buy me a coffee :~) if you enjoyed this post!