When looking at careers in finance, you might like the concept of joining a fintech startup over a more corporate career, or even starting your own. Having a flashy name on your CV can go a long way when trying to become a founder, both for attracting talent and investors, but how necessary is it that you pursue a graduate job at the likes of Goldman Sachs before striking out on your own?
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Alexis Augier, founder of asset management infrastructure firm Vega, did just that; he spent seven years working across banking and private equity (PE) at firms including Goldman Sachs and KKR before becoming a founder. In an ongoing AMA on The Bubble, our new anonymous forum, he said that he wouldn’t have done much to change his career path except “perhaps working for a year or two at a high-growth startup.”
Augier followed the path trodden by some of the biggest founders in fintech. Nik Storonsky of Revolut was once a trader at Lehman Brothers, where he claims that he earned almost half a million dollars as a first year bonus. David Velez of $68bn fintech Nubank started out as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York. Kalshi founder Tarek Mansour interned as an equity derivatives analyst at Goldman Sachs before stints at Palantir and Citadel. Some, like Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong and Plaid’s Zach Perret, came from Consulting instead.
There are also, however, many successful founders with unconventional backgrounds. The Collison brothers of Stripe didn’t even finish university, dropping out of Harvard and MIT a year before founding Stripe. Klarna founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski met one of his co-founders while working at Burger King.
There’s a reason the background of successful founders isn’t ubiquitous; Augier said that corporate experience can be “helpful for things like fundraising, but finance won’t teach you the day-to-day reality of building a company.” Other ex-Goldman founders we’ve spoken to that have said that life as a founder is completely different and involves working even longer hours across multiple disciplines (Augier said that “if you start your company you will think about it 24/7”).Â
The issue with a corporate route for banking and PE roles in particular is that you won’t be doing too much technical or engineering work (beyond Excel). This can present issues when creating a technology firm but Augier said “the key is to be able to hire people who complement your skillset and who are rockstars in their field.” Surrounding yourself with these subject matter experts is “a big part of the job.”
If you want to ask Augier more questions about his time in banking, private equity or fintech, you can sign up to The Bubble and comment for free here. His week-long AMA ends tomorrow, so act fast.
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