13 successful founders who launched their careers at consulting firms
Sarah Jacobs
- Consulting attracts young professionals for prestige, pay, and flashy exit opportunities.
- Many consultants go on to found hugely successful companies.
- DoorDash, Warby Parker, and Faire were all founded by former consultants.
Young professionals are drawn to consulting for its prestige, competitive pay, and breadth of on-the-job experience — but also for its exit opportunities.
It's why many young consultants say they don't plan to stay in the industry for the long haul. Instead, they plan to put in a few years for the doors it will open when they leave, as well as the wide range of skills they expect to pick up very quickly.
Consultants often end up in the C-suite at the world's biggest companies, or launching businesses that go on to become hugely successful.
A LinkedIn career history analysis conducted by the small business-lending platform OnDeck in 2023 found consulting firms were the most common places for founders to begin their careers. The analysis found the companies that produced the most founders were Bain & Co., Oliver Wyman, and McKinsey & Co — all of which are considered leading management consulting firms.
From eyewear to healthcare and travel to e-commerce, here are 11 successful companies founded by former consultants.
Wharton Magazine
Founders: Dave Gilboa, Neil Blumenthal, Jeffrey Raider
Three of the cofounders of Warby Parker worked in consulting before starting the popular glasses brand in 2010.
Jeffrey Raider spent two years at Bain & Company from 2004 to 2006, according to his LinkedIn, before going on to business school at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Going back to school to get an MBA, especially from a prestigious program, is common for young consultants.
Dave Gilboa also worked at Bain from 2003 to 2006 before attending Wharton, and Neil Blumenthal had a brief stint as a summer associate at McKinsey while he was attending Wharton.
Raider, Gilboa, Blumenthal, and Andrew Hunt, another cofounder, launched Warby Parker while they were still students at Wharton.
Warby Park went public in 2021. The company reported a net revenue of $771.3 million in the 2024 fiscal year, a 15% increase from the year prior, with a market value of $1.8 billion, according to CNBC.
Harry's
Founders: Jeffrey Raider and Andy Katz-Mayfield
Raider, the Warby Parker cofounder who formerly worked at Bain, also founded the popular shaving brand Harry's in 2012 along with Andy Katz-Mayfield, another former Bainie. Katz-Mayfield worked at Bain from 2004 to 2007 and later got an MBA at Stanford University, according to his LinkedIn.
Harry's was valued at $1.7 billion during its Series E funding round in 2021, making it a "unicorn startup," or a privately owned company valued at over a billion. Reuters reported last year that the company filed for an IPO. In 2020, Harry's was set to be acquired by the shaving and skincare conglomerate Edgewell in a $1.4 billion deal, but it fell through after the Federal Trade Commission sued to block it.
DoorDash
Founder: Tony Xu
Before founding the massively popular food-delivery service Doordash in 2013, Tony Xu worked as a consultant at McKinsey from 2007 to 2009, his LinkedIn said. He went on to work at eBay and get an MBA from Stanford before starting Doordash with Andy Fang, Stanley Tang, and Evan Moore.
DoorDash had its IPO in 2020. The company reported a 24% revenue increase year over year in 2024, generating around $10.7 billion.
Kayak
Founder: Steve Hafner
Kayak founder and CEO Steve Hafner worked a couple consulting jobs early in his career before founding the travel search engine with Paul English in 2004, according to his LinkedIn. Hafner spent three years at Boston Consulting Group from 1997 to 2000.
"One of the best powerpoint monkeys on their staff," he wrote under the job history on his LinkedIn. "I quickly realized that producing one good slide a day kept me on the payroll."
After its IPO in 2012, Kayak was bought by Priceline.com, now called Booking Holdings, in 2013 for $2.1 billion.
Hafner also served as the CEO of OpenTable from 2018 to 2025.
Marcus Ingram/Getty Images for Bonobos
Founder: Andy Dunn
Dunn, cofounder and the first CEO of the clothing company, worked at Bain for three years early in his career, according to his LinkedIn. His profile on the social networking site refers to Bonobos as "a remarkable brand, team and culture."
Dunn cofounded Bonobos in 2007 along with fellow Stanford Business School student Brian Spaly. The company was bought by Walmart for $310 million in 2017. It was acquired from Walmart by Express and management firm WHP Global in 2023 for $75 million.
Betterment
Founder: Jonathan Stein
Stein was the founder and board member of the financial robo-adviser Betterment and served as the company's CEO for 13 years, according to his LinkedIn. Stein remains on Betterment's board and has gone on to found Warmer, which focuses on client relationship intelligence.
Stein worked at First Manhattan Consulting Group for four years early in his career.
Ginger
Founder: Karan Singh
Singh, cofounder and COO at Ginger, which provides mental health services through an app, spent several years as a consultant at the management consulting firm ZS.
Singh was also appointed COO at Headspace, which also focuses on mental health, in 2021.
Wellhub
Founder: Cesar Carvalho
Cesar Carvalho is the CEO and cofounder of Wellhub, which was formerly called Gympass, a corporate wellness platform that serves more than 15,000 companies in 11 countries. Carvalho spent two years as a business analyst at McKinsey — from 2008 to 2010.
"During my time at McKinsey, I learned something fundamental that shapes everything we do at Wellhub: people matter," Carvalho told BI in an email. "The most successful leaders weren't just technically skilled — they genuinely cared about their people. This lesson has been the cornerstone of my approach at Wellhub. Being a good leader and being a good person should never be mutually exclusive. When you treat employees like actual people, not just resources, and give them the tools they need to be well, they naturally do well."
Komodo Health
Founder: Arif Nathoo
Nathoo, the CEO and cofounder of Komodo Health, spent seven years at McKinsey & Company before turning to entrepreneurship. He was a leader in McKinsey's medical affairs practice, where he focused on developing analytics products and services.
He cofounded Komodo with Web Sun, who previously worked at companies including Merck and Campbell Alliance, in 2014.
Komodo, which was worth over $3 billion at its Series E round in 2021, uses data, analytics, and machine learning to map patient insights.
"A lot of the inspiration for Komodo came out of a world where I was doing analytics on de-indentified data ten years ago and being constantly frustrated with the quality of it," Nathoo said in an interview with Axial in 2022. "The quality of the data that has existed in the market to date is massively inferior to solve problems that require, or that are, ones of machine learning — and where we kind of want to take the world."
Hippo
Founder: Assaf Wand
The founder and executive chair of Hippo Insurance, Assaf Wand, worked at McKinsey in the summer of 2004 and from 2005 to 2006.
Hippo went public through an SPAC merger in 2021 and now has a market capitalization of $720 million, according to Yahoo Finance.
Before launching Hippo in 2015, Wand founded Sabi, a company that sought to improve the functionality and design of everyday products. Sabi was acquired in 2015.
Faire
Founder: Jeffrey Kolovson
Jeffrey Kolovson, one of four cofounders of online wholesale marketplace Faire, worked at McKinsey in his early career from 2009 to 2011.
According to Kolovson's LinkedIn, he worked across industries from tech to retail during his time at the firm. He also noted that he was a member of the "SF office social committee" in which he was "responsible for officewide Friday Lunch entertainment" and "pioneered innovative gameshows such as 'Are you Smarter than an Intern?' and '2 Truths and a Pie,' a tepidly received program in which a contestant reveals two truths about themselves and is subsequently pied in the face."
From McKinsey he moved on to mobile payment company, Square where he overlapped with Faire cofounders Daniele Perito, Marcelo Cortes, and Max Rhodes.
Faire, which was last valued at $12.6 billion at its Series G funding round in 2022, connects small independent brands with retailers that can stock their products in their stores.
