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So you could work for an investment bank, make a lot of money, use as little of it as possible and save the rest, then after a few years, quit and use the savin

by mvalle 16y ago

So you could work for an investment bank, make a lot of money, use as little of it as possible and save the rest, then after a few years, quit and use the savings to fund a start-up? Sounds like a plan to me...

nostrademons 16y ago
This is basically what every investment banker does. Virtually every investment banker has "their number", the amount of money they need to quit investment banking and go do whatever it is they want to do with the rest of their life. Very few of them ever actually meet it - or rather, they'll meet their initial "number" early in their 30s, but by then their number will have grown by a few million more, as they realize that sticking with the job for just another year or two will give them another half a million more or some insane amount. It gets to be a treadmill - every time you're about to quit, there's another carrot dangled right in front of you, and it takes a lot of willpower to say "No, I'm done" and leave. The head of BizDev at the financial software startup I used to work at was one of the lucky ones who got out (and he told me the above observation). You occasionally see other ex-financiers in the startup world, eg. Jeff Bezos or Joshua Schacter, but in general you don't see very many ex-investment-bankers. Most of them seem to still be working on Wall St. BTW, this applies to other professions as well. An engineer frequently will see "just one more technical challenge that needs solving before I can get to the good, world-changing stuff." (I'm dealing with that now - I keep getting distracted from the ideas I really want to do by the various low-hanging fruit.) An experienced teacher will think "Just one more year with the kids, then I'll retire." Startups are nice in that they have clearly delineated endgames; most salaried professions are not like that.
ig1 16y ago
Yep. That's what I'm doing. With the full support of my bank as well (they know I'm working on my start-up in my spare time, they've arranged to pay me in a fashion that's tax efficient allowing me to invest my money in my startup pre-tax, etc.). There are plenty of people doing it, at any start-up event I go to (in London) I run into current and former banking peeps.

by mvalle 16y ago

nostrademons 16y ago

This is basically what every investment banker does. Virtually every investment banker has "their number", the amount of money they need to quit investment banking and go do whatever it is they want to do with the rest of their life. Very few of them ever actually meet it - or rather, they'll meet their initial "number" early in their 30s, but by then their number will have grown by a few million more, as they realize that sticking with the job for just another year or two will give them another half a million more or some insane amount. It gets to be a treadmill - every time you're about to quit, there's another carrot dangled right in front of you, and it takes a lot of willpower to say "No, I'm done" and leave. The head of BizDev at the financial software startup I used to work at was one of the lucky ones who got out (and he told me the above observation). You occasionally see other ex-financiers in the startup world, eg. Jeff Bezos or Joshua Schacter, but in general you don't see very many ex-investment-bankers. Most of them seem to still be working on Wall St. BTW, this applies to other professions as well. An engineer frequently will see "just one more technical challenge that needs solving before I can get to the good, world-changing stuff." (I'm dealing with that now - I keep getting distracted from the ideas I really want to do by the various low-hanging fruit.) An experienced teacher will think "Just one more year with the kids, then I'll retire." Startups are nice in that they have clearly delineated endgames; most salaried professions are not like that.

ig1 16y ago

Yep. That's what I'm doing. With the full support of my bank as well (they know I'm working on my start-up in my spare time, they've arranged to pay me in a fashion that's tax efficient allowing me to invest my money in my startup pre-tax, etc.). There are plenty of people doing it, at any start-up event I go to (in London) I run into current and former banking peeps.