Why Ivy Leaguers Should Build Their Careers Like VCs

An Open Letter to My East Coast Friends,

You are smart — really smart, curious, and ambitious. You are attracted to hard work, not scared of it. You worked hard not only to get into an Ivy League school, but to crush it while you were there.

Now what?

Wall Street firms want to lure you into their hedge funds and use your analytical skills to help bald guys in Greenwich make more money.

Strategy consulting sounds sexy, but you have friends who did that, and something happens to them … they ended up being less human, and it’s weird.

You have friends doing startups, and that seems amazing and exciting. Cool office space, ridiculously hard work, existential crises.

But you’ve seen several of them fold up their tents and go back to get “real jobs” because apparently startups don’t always work. Besides, you have student loans and bills to pay.

Just because you need to collect a salary does not mean you need to do old-school banking or consulting. If you are joining a company today, you should join a company with a hyper-growth trajectory.

Consider three of these opportunities from 15 years ago:

• Google, founded 1998
• PayPal, founded 1998
• Salesforce, founded 1999

The diaspora of successful people spun out of these three breakout companies is staggering. If you had joined one of these companies five years after founding, you would know dozens of incredibly successful people, you would have made good money, and you would have been right in the mix while the magic of hypergrowth was being conjured.

You would now be a leader at one of the 100s of companies that have spun out of those successes, and your career would be off to the races.

So who are the hyper-growth companies of today? The ones that will provide you with an unparalleled network, unreplicable experience, and a pattern of success that will propel your entire career?

Business Insider provides a list here. Breakoutlist.com has a list here.

My choice is XANT, which appears on both lists.

But whether or not you consider InsideSales, you should consider Utah. InsideSales, Qualtrics, and Domo are Utah companies featured on these lists. All three are classified as “unicorns,” as are two other Utah companies: Health Catalyst and Pluralsight.

Right behind those are Utah companies MX, Grow.com, Lucid Chart, Bamboo HR, Needle — all venture backed, all hypergrowth, all starving for talent like YOU.

But for the love of all that is holy, whatever you do, please do not sell out to yesteryear’s model.  

Banking and consulting are not for you. Old-school manufacturing and retail are not for you.

Hypergrowth is your best choice. That’s where all the talent is. That’s where all the energy is.

Take a cue from the VCs and look at where they are placing their bets and invest your own career where they are investing. Come join my team.

Or join another similarly talented team who is creating real value in the real world, building a real company with real growth.

That is where the action is. That is where your talent is best applied. That is where you should launch your career.

Momentum is XANT’s premier services offering, reserved for organizations who require the highest level of focus on business outcomes. Momentum works with sales leadership to design and deliver Sales Transformation programs, including people, processes & systems.