IB to Startup Founder: The Honest Odds

A lot of people in IB think about exiting to become a startup founder and quietly worry about whether they have what it takes. As someone who knows a genuinely large number of people who've actually done it, I can tell you the picture is real, and it is not the one most people have in their head.

The fantasy, and the actual odds

I want to give real numbers instead of vague encouragement. Among the people I personally know who left IB specifically to found a startup, I can count the ones who did genuinely well on one hand. One standout example built a company doing AI-powered due diligence tech for IB and PE firms, a business that speaks directly to the exact expertise its founder already had. On the other side, I can count well over 25 people, more than two hands and feet worth, who tried and eventually went back to a corporate role or joined someone else's startup instead. There is nothing wrong with that outcome. It is simply the honest base rate, and I think people considering this jump deserve to know it going in.

In IB you execute. As a founder, nothing exists yet

The core shift people underestimate: in investment banking, you are fundamentally following an established process and executing within rules that already exist, a deal structure, a modeling convention, a deck template, a chain of approval. As a founder, none of that exists yet. You are starting completely from zero. I say this as someone who has actually founded a SaaS company, run an agency, and built other businesses since leaving IB: it is genuinely not easy, regardless of how strong your prior pedigree is.

The real leverage IB gives you, and its limits

IB pedigree does give you real leverage in specific ways. It can help you attract strong cofounders, people from FAANG-tier companies are often more willing to partner with you if you both come from recognizable brand names, since it signals a certain caliber to each other and to early hires and investors. That's real, and it's worth using deliberately. But I want to be direct: that leverage makes the starting conditions better, it does not make the actual work easier. Life as a founder is still hard, full stop, regardless of what your resume looked like on day one.

Why a big exit can still mean almost nothing

This is the part people chasing the founder fantasy almost never account for: taking VC funding means real dilution, round after round, and you can genuinely exit a company at a large enterprise value and still walk away with almost nothing, once liquidation preferences and other deal terms actually run through the waterfall. A large-sounding exit headline and a large personal payout are not the same thing, and the gap between them is decided by legal terms most first-time founders don't fully understand until they're already living inside them.

$0 income is not prestigious

There's a quiet mythology in IB circles that founding something is inherently more prestigious than staying in finance. I'd push back on that directly: making $0 a year is not prestigious if you have no savings to fall back on. Prestige doesn't pay rent. Before you romanticize the founder path, be honest with yourself about your actual financial runway, not the story you're telling yourself about how the story is supposed to go.

Nobody is checking your work anymore

The question I'd actually ask yourself before making this jump isn't "am I smart enough", it's whether you're genuinely okay with your career looking different from the traditional path, and specifically whether you can function without a staffer or a senior person checking your work. In IB, there is always someone more senior reviewing what you produce. In the startup world, there is no one checking your work. That absence is disorienting for a lot of people who came up in a heavily structured environment, and it's worth honestly assessing whether you thrive or struggle without that structure before you give up a stable seat to find out.

Compare yourself to yourself

One piece of advice I give consistently: don't compare yourself to other startup founders you see online or hear about through the grapevine, compare yourself to yourself. Founders come from every direction, tech, consumer, B2B, even agencies that aren't venture-backed startups in the traditional sense but still run with a real software or SaaS layer underneath the service work. There is no single template for what a successful founder's background or trajectory looks like, and holding yourself to someone else's specific path is a fast way to feel like you're failing even when you're not.

What this actually means for you

If you're in IB and thinking about founding something, take the real base rate seriously: far more people I know went back to a normal job than built something lasting, and that's not meant to discourage you, it's meant to set your expectations honestly. Use whatever leverage your background gives you deliberately, cofounders, credibility, an initial network, but don't assume it makes the actual work easier. Understand the mechanics of dilution and liquidation preferences before you take VC money, not after. And be honest with yourself about whether you can function without someone senior checking your work, because that, more than intelligence or pedigree, is the real test most people underestimate going in.