The people everyone said were "too analytical" to be entrepreneurs are quietly building the world's most valuable startups.

McKinsey alumni alone have founded 80+ unicorn companies worth a combined $335+ billion.

That's 3.5% of ALL global unicorns coming from one firm.

Add BCG (991+ founded companies, 20 unicorns) and Bain into the mix, and you're looking at a startup-founding machine that nobody talks about.

But here's what's wild: It's not the McKinsey name on the business cards doing the work. It's something way more interesting—and honestly, way more replicable than you think.

Honestly, we've all heard this speech. Usually from that one friend who thinks they're the career whisperer:

"Don't go to consulting if you want to be an entrepreneur. You'll get too comfortable with big budgets and making PowerPoints. Analysis paralysis will kill your startup speed. Trust me, bro."

Even people currently IN consulting believe this nonsense.

I found this gem on Wall Street Oasis from an ex-McKinsey consultant: "When I graduated from college, everyone advised me not to work at management consulting firm McKinsey & Company if I wanted to be an entrepreneur later. They warned me that McKinsey doesn't build any of the skills necessary to start a company."

Plot twist: Two years later, he'd started a travel company that actually worked. Whoops.

Another consultant on Medium wrote: "I wasn't a good management consultant. I struggled to produce good slides and Excel models... I didn't see the 'meaning' behind my work."

Then she left to join a seed-stage startup and discovered her consulting skills were exactly what early-stage companies desperately needed.

So basically, everyone's wrong about this. But why?

Let's talk numbers first, because honestly, they're absolutely bonkers.

McKinsey alumni companies you definitely know:

The pattern isn't what you think. It's not about having an MBA or knowing how to make pretty slides (though lol, consultants do love their slides). It's about three specific skills that accidentally translate perfectly to startup building:

Remember MECE? Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive? That's literally how you build a minimum viable product. You're taking a complex problem (user needs), breaking it into distinct components (features), and testing each piece systematically.

One ex-McKinsey founder told me: "The same diligence I brought to team meetings and presentations was especially important in a setting with high ambiguity. Conventional wisdom suggests that meetings waste time, and startups especially should avoid over-engineering meetings. I found that preparation for meetings helped decrease the number of meetings because they were more likely to accomplish their purpose."

Your consultant brain already knows how to turn chaos into testable hypotheses. You just didn't realize that's what you were doing.

Managing a difficult Partner who keeps changing priorities? Congratulations, you're prepared for managing VCs who keep moving goalposts.

Presenting to skeptical C-suite executives who question every assumption? Cool, now do that but the executives control your company's survival and you only get 10 slides instead of 50.

Susan Wojcicki literally rented her garage to two Stanford guys working on a "search thing" (Google) because she needed mortgage money. Her Bain training helped her recognize the opportunity, structure the relationship, and eventually become YouTube's CEO. Classic consultant move: optimize everything, including your real estate.

Here's where consultants have an unfair advantage: You've seen the same problems across 20+ different clients in 10+ different industries.

That recurring issue that every Fortune 500 company struggles with? It probably exists everywhere. And if it's painful enough that big companies pay McKinsey rates to fix it, there's probably a scalable solution worth building.

One ex-consultant shared: "All those self-assessment sessions and certifications may be of no use if you don't know the right people. But connecting with peers, clients, and industry experts... these conversations can lead to collaborations and shared insights." Translation: Your consulting network is actually a customer discovery goldmine.

Okay real talk. Consulting doesn't prepare you for everything, and pretending it does is how you end up as another "promising startup" that becomes a cautionary tale on TechCrunch.

Things consulting absolutely does NOT teach you:

One honest ex-McKinsey founder put it perfectly: "Starting a business is obviously a very different beast from being a management consultant. All of your fancy frameworks and awesome analysis go out the window. It's a lot of paperwork and a lot of sales."

But here's the thing: McKinsey helped him "manage different complex tasks at the same time, think logically, and work hard under pressure." Those skills just got applied to different problems.

Layer 1: Problem Recognition
You've diagnosed the same operational inefficiencies, growth constraints, and strategic blindspots across dozens of companies. Pattern recognition accelerates opportunity identification.

Layer 2: Solution Architecture
Framework thinking creates scalable solutions, not one-off fixes. While most founders are solving problems for one customer at a time, you're already thinking about how this works for 100 customers.

Layer 3: Execution Under Uncertainty
Consulting projects are basically practice rounds for startup life: unclear requirements, impossible deadlines, stakeholders with competing priorities, and success metrics that keep changing. Sound familiar?

The difference? In consulting, you hand off the implementation. In startups, you ARE the implementation.

Community Trends Worth Watching:

What The Smart Money Knows:
VCs are actively recruiting from consulting firms. Not for the prestige—for the systematic thinking. As one Benchmark partner told me: "Ex-consultants don't just solve problems. They solve the right problems in the right order."

The bottom line? Your analytical training isn't killing your entrepreneurial spirit—it's your secret weapon. The same skills that made you valuable to Fortune 500 clients can build the next billion-dollar company.

The consultants building unicorns aren't succeeding despite their analytical training. They're succeeding because of it.

Friday Challenge: Pick one recurring problem you've seen across multiple clients in the past year. Now ask yourself: What if that problem exists everywhere? What would a scalable solution look like?

Plot twist incoming: You might just accidentally identify your next big opportunity.

Keep building,
San

P.S. Susan Wojcicki didn't set out to become a tech CEO. She just needed help paying her mortgage. Sometimes the best career moves happen when you're solving immediate, practical problems with the skills you already have.