Beginning

How and Why I Got into Startups

May 8, 2020 /

With a BA degree in organizational psychology and an MBA in corporate strategy and finance, my career started in the big company world. A few years working for a big money-center bank selling electronic money transfer products to large company treasury departments proved to be far too narrow a niche for the gal who dreamed of being a CEO someday.

To broaden my scope and gain experience, I jumped to a small boutique management consulting firm where I led 35 operations improvement projects for 25 different clients over the course of eight years. Those experiences taught me about analyzing business problems, developing and selling visions, leading teams, building organizations, improving processes, and leveraging supporting technologies. I also learned to learn, persuade, write, present, build consensus, and jockey spreadsheets. My clients ranged from Fortune 50 behemoths to small 100-person firms in a variety of industries. I worked in most of the critical business functions, including sales, customer service, manufacturing, finance, M&A, and corporate strategy. Looking back, I can see that tremendous variety gave me many patterns to draw from as I evaluate business opportunities and build companies from scratch.

After eight years, the kinds of problems I was helping my clients with became a bit repetitive, and I became increasingly frustrated with being an advisor rather than a decision-maker. I wanted to be the one to make a bet on the right path and live with the consequences. I had learned that I loved small, focused teams over large-scale organizations, and wanted to put my decade of business experience to work directly building businesses. I also wanted to travel less (my business travel was approaching 100% by 2001) and move closer to our family. So I started hunting for opportunities in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I secured two job offers. The first was an internal consulting role in the corporate strategy department of a colossal biopharmaceutical company. The second was joining a small, grant-funded, pre-product technology startup. One represented an easy step from my prior path with a generous pay package. The other was a leap of faith into a profoundly technical space with a 50% pay cut. For me, the choice was clear. Take the leap.

My reasons why might resonate for you:

  • I explicitly wanted to be out of consulting, directly building businesses rather than advising others
  • I wanted to be part of a small team focused on radical, potentially world-changing innovation
  • I wanted to immerse myself in the world of brilliant engineers and leading-edge technology
  • I knew that switching out of a well-paid consulting career was going to be costly in the short run, but hoped that I could gain experience in creating high-value startup businesses and succeed in the long run.
  • I had a high risk tolerance and trust in my ability to learn new things

Reflecting now, I learned a lot from that leap. Moving my family and coming to faith were among the first steps. Learning to assess market opportunities, product concepts, and technology risk. Digging into the critical elements of the product design and development process. Discovering what is required to raise money for a high-potential technology startup. Making essential connections like meeting a future co-founder and venture capital investors who would choose to back my future startups.

These are lessons I will unpack and expand upon in future blog posts.

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