You always have to start somewhere. In the case of many successful startup founders, this means working a day job before they are ready to strike out and start their new business.
So, where are the best places for future founders to work? Several big-name companies top the list, according to a new report from small-business lending platform OnDeck, which examined large U.S. companies with a high rate of former employees starting their own businesses.
Those big names include management consulting giant Bain & Company, financial services behemoth Goldman Sachs and even Twitter, the social media platform recently acquired by Elon Musk.
Boston-based Bain tops the list with 8.13% of former employees who go on to become founders of any company OnDeck analyzed. Notable alumni of Bain & Company who have achieved entrepreneurial success include Zynga founder Mark Pincus and Intuit co-founder Scott Cook.
Here are the top five:
- Bain & Company: 8.13% of former employees have started their own business.
- Oliver Wyman: 7.93%
- McKinsey & Company: 7.75%
- Strategy and: 7.44%
- Universal Music Group: 7.39%
To determine its rankings, OnDeck started with a list of the 100 largest employers in each state, based on data from the job-search website Zippia. OnDeck then analyzed the LinkedIn profiles of more than 228,000 employees who previously worked at those companies across the US to determine how many went on to launch their own businesses as sole founders or co-founders. went to do.
The top four companies on OnDeck’s list are from the consulting world, which isn’t surprising: Consultants at those companies are often tasked with helping clients improve their management and business strategies.
Should they eventually decide to put those skills to work for their own startup, their connections to investors and other deep-pocketed clients can give them a leg up in accessing the funding needed to start and grow a new venture. Huh.
Twitter is the highest ranked tech firm on the list, with 6.17% of former employees going on to start their own business. Having a big-name tech company on your resume is one way to attract the attention of potential investors, and you’ll meet other talented tech workers who you could potentially hire down the road.
Some of the tech workers who left — whether by layoff or choice — amid Musk’s acquisition of Twitter are already launching microblogging rivals like Spill. The company’s history of producing entrepreneurs even goes back to its own founders: Jack Dorsey founded payments platform Square after Twitter, and Evan Williams founded Medium.
If you work on Wall Street, you can connect with potential investors who may back future ventures. That was the case for billionaire Jeff Bezos, who quit his job at Wall Street hedge fund DE Shaw in 1994 to move to Seattle and start the e-commerce business that became Amazon, OnDeck noted.
Goldman Sachs leads OnDeck’s ranking among financial services companies, with 5.92% of former employees becoming founders. Those notable alumni include private equity billionaire Robert Smith, founder and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, and Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Coinbase.
By focusing primarily on large companies, OnDeck’s report does not provide an exhaustive list. Working at a startup before launching one can provide invaluable experience in getting a new business off the ground.
Indeed, entrepreneurs like Y Combinator’s Michael Seibel advise aspiring founders to work first for other startups they may be interested in in their industry.
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