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How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

blog.zactownsend.com

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Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#11

Post by throwanem »

MPSFounder wrote: post #7
throwanem wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As an engineer," you've probably yet to realize "technical cofounder" is p97 a polite way to say "second-class citizen." You get more equity than a "founding engineer," I hope. So there's that.

Here's a tip to every reader. If your founders or co-founders are not technical (and never have been) and are pitching stacks using buzzwords, run. Equity is worthless if the startup goes under

Here's another. Exit and product are totally orthogonal.

I would rather work for someone honest than for a bullshit artist. But I wouldn't necessarily decline to work for the world's best bullshit artist. Just that you want to be very sure you know who at the table is the sucker.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#12

Post by yodsanklai »

comrade1234 wrote: post #8

My wife made a McKinsey consultant cry… she hired McKinsey for some internal project. One person on the project was a recent Harvard grad. They were in a meeting going over the deliverables along with the McKinsey partner on the project and in the meeting my wife said something to the effect that their work wasn’t up to McKinsey standards. The junior guy started crying in the meeting. Like just blubbering. My wife st…

McKinsey employees are people too

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#13

Post by jajko »

throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

Nothing new or revolutionary, just the usual race to the cost bottom with corresponding quality bottom.

Author ignores the fact that any normal market there are variously priced insurances, yet somehow not all people flock to the cheapest one, in contrary (at least where I live). Higher fees mean ie less stressful life when dealing with insurer.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#14

Post by sieabahlpark »

throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

[dead]

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#15

Post by johnobrien1010 »

Wanted to point to the startup the author seems to be running, which is to sell insurance somehow tied to Bitcoin: https://meanwhile.bm/

For the record, that strikes me as seriously improper. Life insurance is a heavily regulated offering intended to provide security to families. It is the opposite of bitcoin, which is a highly speculative investment asset. Those two things should not be mixed.

Also, the fact that the disclosure seems to limit sales to being only occurring in Bermuda seems intentional. I suspect that this product would be highly illegal in most if not all US states, so they must offer this only for sale in Bermuda to avoid that issue.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#16

Post by TrackerFF »

In my home country (Norway), I've met plenty of startup founders that come from MBB consulting. Actually a pretty "normal" path here, compared to jumping straight into entrepreneurship out of college. But that also has something to do with how risk-averse investors here are, compared to the US (no one here is going to give inexperienced college kids a bunch of money, unless they've proven themselves to be bona fide serious people) - and the fact that consultants actively get to see market needs in real time, and in positions where other external people might not.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#17

Post by biker142541 »

comrade1234 wrote: post #8

My wife made a McKinsey consultant cry… she hired McKinsey for some internal project. One person on the project was a recent Harvard grad. They were in a meeting going over the deliverables along with the McKinsey partner on the project and in the meeting my wife said something to the effect that their work wasn’t up to McKinsey standards. The junior guy started crying in the meeting. Like just blubbering. My wife st…

Genuinely funny. Had to once interface with a small team from Deloitte on a project, and pushed hard during an early meeting for them to outline the problems and scope. Just complete incompetence... I didn't make anyone cry, but definitely squirm a lot. Just asking questions about their understanding, process to close gap of understanding, and project management plans were enough to make clear to the main executive stakeholder on our end that this was going to be a trainwreck. They were fired shortly after.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#18

Post by lostlogin »

throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

I agree. And then I recall my last few interactions with insurance companies.

Dealing with a machine is unlikely to be worse.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#19

Post by shitpostbot »

comrade1234 wrote: post #8

My wife made a McKinsey consultant cry… she hired McKinsey for some internal project. One person on the project was a recent Harvard grad. They were in a meeting going over the deliverables along with the McKinsey partner on the project and in the meeting my wife said something to the effect that their work wasn’t up to McKinsey standards. The junior guy started crying in the meeting. Like just blubbering. My wife st…

[dead]

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#20

Post by xp84 »

throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

> dispute resolution, customer service, etc

There's a huge assumption in your comment -- that having 100,000 employees necessarily guarantees (or even makes likely) that you will have some human to help you.

More likely, those 100,000 humans are mostly working on sales and marketing, and the few allocated to support are all incentivized to avoid you, and to send you canned answers. A reasonably decent AI would be better at customer support than most companies give, since it'll have the same rules and policies to operate with, but will most likely be able to speak and write coherently in the language I speak.

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