10 Reasons Why I Left Strategy Consulting To Go Back To A Startup After A Year

Tech > Consulting

Hey there, Yuppie Junk!

Life update --> A few months ago, I moved back to early-stage tech in a GTM function (wearing many hats, but mainly a sales/marketing function). I am happy that I gave strategy consulting a try (taking a page out of Jeff Bezos' Regret Minimization Framework), but even happier that I am back in startups/sales and that I have a firm conviction on where I want to be in my career for the long-term:

• Sector - early/growth-stage startups

• Industry - AI or infrastructure

• Function - GTM (sales/marketing)

One question I have gotten a few times since leaving strategy consulting (after being in it for only a year) was why I left to return to startups/tech/sales. I've been burning to write this article for quite some time now.

As I was thinking of writing this article, Austin Rief, the founder of Morning Brew, posted a tweet last week:

That's spot on. The dogma that "you should go into consulting to learn a bunch of transferrable skills" is outdated in 2024, IMO. I’d advise undergrads to go work at a startup, or start something themselves (if they have the privilege to).

Like Austin, I wanted to write my thoughts in long form (as I sit on a flight to SF) and outline the top 10 reasons I left.

1) Hiring strategy consultants for insight gathering is way less valuable in 2024 than it ever has been

I understand the value of hiring a large strategy consulting firm in the 1970s. Before the internet, there was one option: if you wanted insights fast, you needed to rent their brains to find out what the "best practices" were in an industry or function of an organization.

The internet (specifically, Google) helped to democratize some of this by indexing a ton of knowledge of the web in the early 2000s, but even then, there was so much data/information that it still made sense to hire a consultant to parse it all out.

In 2024, the emergence of ChatGPT (which combines search with informational retrieval) makes consulting even less valuable.

The main reason why you use a consulting firm in 2024 (might even be 99% of the reason) - is to CYA/as an insurance policy.

Spot on again, Austin.

If a C-level of a Fortune 500 company wants to steer the cruise ship that is that large of an organization (with thousands of employees), she needs a way to cover her butt in case it goes poorly. "[X prestigious firm] told me to do it, and here are these slides; here is the proof we thought through this."

The second reason you'd hire consultants in 2024 is to clean up messy data rooms and do a lot of admin PPT/Excel crunching you don't want to do, and consultants do this exceptionally.

The second-to-last project I worked on was a GTM strategy project for a large media company. If you had typed the SOW (statement of work) into ChatGPT, asked it to spit out a final consulting project, and compared it to the final deliverable we eventually produced as consultants, I believe about 98% of it would have been the same.

IMO, the amount of new insights a consultant brings is diminishing with the emergence of AI.

2) I felt so far away from the topics that interested me the most, such as startups and AI

This one was more unique for me than others—most consultants don't have a background in tech/startups before coming into consulting (they usually do consulting first, then leave for a startup), but I did.

I accepted my job to work in consulting the month before ChatGPT launched, and the AI space was becoming increasingly impressive each day. The more this happened, the more I realized how far away from that space I was using outdated tools like Lenovo Thinkpads and sending emails in Outlook (without the ability to use Superhuman!).

I had a severe sense of FOMO, being so far from AI, which will be the next great tech wave (following the internet and the cellphone).

3) I felt we preached using AI to our clients and to win new business, but didn’t preach it by encouraging consultants to use it internally

Every partner (the person who sells the projects and makes the most money doing so) I worked with as a consultant wanted to pitch our "AI services" and add slides in our decks about how AI is going to change what they're doing.

However, when I tried to utilize AI tools for internal meetings, such as note-taking via Otter.ai or Fathom (so that I can fully listen and not take mundane notes), my hand was slapped as partners/EMs didn’t love us using these tools internally

There felt to be this "fraternity effect" (more below) as well - "That's not how I did things, and I am pissed that you might be doing this a different, better way, but stop doing this and do it the one way so you suffer as I did."

There was a clear gap that felt slightly hypocritical between what we sold and advised on and what we practiced internally.

4) The "fraternity effect" that is in professional services was apparent

I was in a frat in college (sick, bro).

As a pledge, there was hazing to "earn your right" to be in the frat. Once I was in, I hated hazing so much that I didn't do it personally (I was too busy striking out with potential mates at 1 am than wanting to haze pledges).

However, those who chose to haze said, "I had to do this to get in, and you'll do the same."

In the fraternity example, I get the reasoning behind it - you want to ensure someone is working hard to feel like they've "earned it." However, we could have focused on plenty of other tasks to make pledges earn it rather than outdated hazing tactics. Instead, we were riddled with this “fraternity effect” of ensuring the incoming rank had it just as bad as the old guard.

I see a similar rite of passage in professional services. This is even worse in banking than consulting, but I've seen it in most professional services (even with my wife, who works in Big Law).

When I finished my work too fast, and they were suspicious, or if they saw me using AI for the mundane tasks in my jobs, I had an engagement manager (the person I reported to) say, "Enough with these AI tools. You need to learn consulting the manual way before you've earned the right to use AI." I tried to do things better (as is the mentality in tech) and more efficiently with tasks that were boring/mundane, and I believe he was projecting his frustration that he didn't get to do that himself.

In his eyes, I had to do things manually to "earn it" in consulting and suffer as he did on tasks he was forced to do but didn't want to, and now I was pissed I could avoid them. That wasn’t the environment I wanted to be in.

I could write a whole article on the fraternity effect and its relationship to professional services, but I'll save that for a future Yuppie Junk post.

5) The technology that consultants use in 2024 is lacking compared to that of startups

Steve Jobs is one of my idols, and Apple is my favorite brand.

I've had a MacBook since high school and have always disliked PCs—their performance, aesthetics, etc. So, I realize I am slightly biased here, but the tech we are forced to use in professional services is subpar to that used in tech.

On a professional level, I was lucky to use a MacBook Pro for 6 years before going into consulting. It was fast and sleek, and I was excited to use it.

In professional services, you are forced to use a PC and, even worse, a Lenovo ThinkPad as your laptop. A few reasons for this:

• "Excel sucks on a Mac" - this was true in 2008, but not valid anymore and IMO is dogma. Also, how much Excel does a consultant use? Not intense at all (I get it for banking, more-so)

• "This is just what we've used and how we do things here." - I think partners, some of them probably still have an AOL email address for their personal life (truly not a dig and just a statement of fact), are tech-laggard and too late in their careers to want to change the tech/the way they do things

• People are obsessed with their Microsoft shortcuts on a PC (pride themselves on not using a mouse) and don't want to learn something new, even if it's better.

Even worse is the use of Microsoft products. Outlook, Slack, Notion, Airtable, and Pitch.com/Google Slides (the tech defaults) are much better (in functionality and UI) than the Outlook/Teams/Word/Excel/PowerPoint suite. We still use these tools, which look like the user interface has not been updated since 2004.

I compared the tech stack in professional services to that at startups, like watching a movie on VHS vs. Netflix. Sure, you see the same movie in both cases, but one way of watching the movie is so much better than the other.

When I knew Netflix existed, I felt like I was watching a movie through VHS while a consultant, and as someone who always wants to use the latest tech, that irked me. It wasn't the main reason I left, but it stood out.

6) I didn’t love the work, and I missed really enjoying what I did for work

The most innovative companies in the world (think OpenAI or Tesla) don't use MBB or other consulting firms to help them drive their business forward. They poach from those firms to join their teams internally, if anything.

Old-school companies, like slower-moving Fortune 500 companies and their executives, use consulting firms to justify the actions they would take anyway. As mentioned above, a large consulting firm is more an insurance company/data clean-up service than a firm that provides new insights.

Strategy is the opposite of execution. Smaller, more innovative teams see consulting firms as the opposite of what they're trying to execute.

The work you’re actually doing in consulting —> it’s not cool whiteboarding sessions; it’s moving logos around/changing background colors in PowerPoint, and cleaning up numbers in Excel. Few found this fun/stimulating, but most didn’t and I wanted to act to get out.

7) No skin in the game

I was grinding on PowerPoint decks to help make partners richer without having any of the upside I would in sales (with variable compensation) or startups (with equity).

Startups haven't been around for a while, but 20 years ago, you didn't have another option at a young age. You just had to grind till you made partner and got a stake in this upside.

Tech firms have aligned this better in a more attractive way, and in 2024, I wanted something other than having equity + more upside. I wanted a stake but also to bet on myself more, and it felt more entrepreneurial/controlling of the outcome.

I remember that at one firm I interned at during my time at business school, the head of the firm addressed the firm's financials last quarter after a struggling quarter where growth slowed. She said, "Business is slow right now, but it's about to pick up, but that is good for you all."

This talk track wasn’t ideal based on the incentives we had, but it was good for her since she had equity in the firm and stood to benefit from the upside of more revenue coming in. A consultant looking to work less after a 70-hour week benefitted from working less because they'd get paid the same regardless.

At another firm where I worked, a similar speech was given to motivate us to do things better and faster. I felt they were poor motivators as leaders and didn't have the self-awareness to know what they were saying was just fugazi.

8) The frustration of advising without operating

I want to clarify that I don't find ALL consulting a dying industry. It is just the model when you consult before operating in that industry/function yourself.

I've been a GTM advisor for startups before (almost like a fractional sales rep, too), and my advice given came from past mistakes I not only saw first-hand but did myself.

However, in my career, I realized I had a lot of operating left to do rather than advising without doing so. I just felt like a fraud advising as a strategy consultant on marketing topics to the CMO of a Fortune 500 company.

The consultant role felt too much over-analyzing without doing, and there was a lack of bias for action. It's just the nature of the job, and I realized I needed to do more before consulting on a topic.

Steve Jobs puts it best here on consulting vs. operating, and it's spot on.

• "Coming in and making recommendations and not owning the results, not owning the implementation, is a fraction of the value and the opportunity to learn and get it better."

Operating --> advising on what you operated on is the model it should be.

9) I found people are way happier in tech than in professional services

I've had a unique career so far - former CPA —> tech sales —> tried founding a startup —> consulting —> GTM @ early-stage company

People will see this and say, "he's all over the place, has shiny object syndrome, etc." I get this take, but with the utmost conviction, I know where my skills/interests align best - it's early-stage GTM work. I know this because I tried a lot of different things.

Some people who have been at 2 companies will proudly say that "they stay at long companies for a while."

Job hopping every 6 months is bad, and you shouldn't do it. You need a long stint on your resume to show you can do it, stick with the hard times/come out better for it, and build skills. I was in BigTech at one company for almost 5 years before moving to my first startup.

One thing I've noticed from consulting vs. startups is that there has been a clear difference in people's energy levels in certain jobs:

• When I was in Big4 public accounting, people didn't love what they did. It makes sense; accounting is super dry

• I thought strategy consulting would be different, but it wasn't - people generally didn't love what they did (a few did, but most didn't)

• In tech/startups, people just like their jobs a lot better. Full stop - they're happier, there is better alignment of incentives, etc

I am inspired by people who have energy when they are working, and like what they're doing to an extent/have a good Ikigai alignment. I saw this the most in early-stage tech, and I want to continue to be in that world. It's way more inspiring.

Reminds me of Peter Thiel’s quote about why he left Big Law (which parallel a lot of why I left consulting):

• “From the outside, everybody wanted to get in; and from the inside, everybody wanted to get out.”

10) I didn’t love the culture of working late for the sake of working late + wearing it as a badge of honor

I want to mention, though - that you work hard at both a startup and a consulting firm, and a ton of hours at times.

However, long hours were glorified in consulting and professional services, even when unnecessary.

It showed people, "Hey, at least you can't say I am not working hard; here I am sending emails/team messages at 1 am." The funny part was you had to vocalize this a lot of times, or else people wouldn't know. Such as starting a morning standup with "Yeah, so Sarah and I were up late/early this morning talking about this, and XYZ."

"Working late" became a way to show commitment, not results, and there seemed to be a culture of overwork for its own sake. So much of this could have been streamlined with AI, but as mentioned above, this was not something in the culture yet (but it will, eventually. I wasn’t wrong, I was just early).

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I couldn't be happier being back in tech and on my way to one of the greatest cities in the world (SF).

Please shoot me a message for those looking to get out of consulting and break into a startup. I'd be happy to help share any learnings from my process, as I went deep on it starting in early 2024.