What I’ve Done Since Leaving The Corporate World
I left the corporate world without a clue of what I was going to do. I think most people’s money was on me falling back into another bank, but I was determined not to let that happen. Here’s how I managed to avoid it:
Worked at a not-for-profit
Given I didn’t like the big corporate world, why not do the exact opposite? I worked at a not-for-profit that had 4 staff members. It ticked a lot of the boxes for what I was looking for out of the corporate world – small team where your contribution made a genuine difference. After 10 months though, I realised it was probably too far in the opposite direction…somewhere in the middle was required.
Raised capital for start-ups at various stages
Fortuitously, I ran into a friend who had left M&A but was still doing some capital raisings on the side, mainly for start-ups. So, I teamed up with him and went through some intense three-week blocks getting businesses set up to raise capital.
It was a real crash course in building financial models, IMs, understanding how to deal with investors and just understanding how start-ups work, and one I’m very thankful for.
Worked at a start-up as the first employee
It started as 4 people crammed into a tiny (and crummy) office – the start-up dream! We started as a food delivery business, where work started at 2am (yes, that’s started) and turned into a tech business that provided SAAS options to food wholesalers – all within 6 months.
Started my own business and raised capital
I started an e-commerce business with the plans to build a place that stood for all the right things and a place that staff loved going to, to work hard, learn and improve as people. In the end, it was a small-fry business when you look at it in lots of ways, not small-fry in terms of learning.
From dealing with international suppliers, to creating advertising campaigns and concepts, to learning about an infinite amount of marketing tech platforms that exist, there was a lot that I didn’t know…but now I do. Plus, I have free underwear for life.
Other things
I might be going out on a limb here, but I think computers might play a part in our future. I think that being able to talk to computers is going to be beneficial in any way you look at it, so I’ve spent some time learning to code.
I’m building a website that will track all the books you read, and provide you with data to ogle over about your reading. Currently it can group books into a genre (amazing right?); if it can ever do more, I’ll share it.
The other things I love are music (The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys etc.), sport (AFL, cricket and soccer mainly), reading and I’m currently quite into solving these problems on brilliant.org.