The Slumdog Millionaire Way to Think About Your Career
Article in 1 Sentence: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” - Steve Jobs
In Slumdog Millionaire, the main character doesn’t win the 20M rupee prize because he planned perfectly.
He wins because every strange, random experience ends up being the exact preparation he needed.
That’s how I think careers should feel.
Not linear but in hindsight, it looks inevitable.
Most “business” people, especially coming out of elite institutions, have a few set choices: Finance, Consulting, Big Tech, Startups, or Venture capital.
I feel lucky because I’ve been able to spend 12-years across all of these opportunities.
I want to share my perspective across each of them and my own Slumdog Millionaire moment:
Consulting: Think and Operate Clearly in Messy Situation
I spent 6+ years at McKinsey, where it really rewired how I approach problems and communicate clearly.
You learn how to take ambiguity and turn it into structure. You learn how to synthesize. How to prioritize. How to communicate clearly to people under pressure.
It’s elite training for judgment and general management (especially at McKinsey, Bain and BCG), and if you survive a few years (which is a big if), you get comfortable walking into situations where no one really knows the answer and still make progress.
The most underrated benefit of consulting is that you get to work with a different manager every few weeks (vs. just 1 in typical corporate roles).
And from that experience, you get a rare lesson on who are top tier leaders and those that just suck. Advice: avoid suck at all costs or else, your daily life will suck.
You’re probably expecting me to say that the biggest qualm with consulting is that you don’t execute implementation or see impact.
I would disagree: I’ve personally seen whole industries shaped by just 4 people in a windowless room working 90+ hours per week for 10 weeks straight.
My biggest qualm is that the travel gets absolutely brutal on a regular basis, not owning your own calendar is also difficult, and at times, it can be quite academic and theoretical.
Finance: Seeing How the World Works in Spreadsheets
Investment Banking at Credit Suisse (RIP) and private credit investing at Bain Capital trained me to see what actually drives value.
I learned the “drivers” of a business and how to predict the future with numbers.
I also learned how incentives quietly run everything.
Management behavior, capital allocation, and even strategy are usually just reflections of what people are paid to care about.
The technical skillset that you build (especially if you never studied Finance) is incredibly powerful and you become dangerously good at calling BS quickly.
Over time, though, you also realize how pattern-based the work becomes.
You get very good at analyzing businesses and eventually, skepticism becomes a default lens on how you view the world.
Buffett’s line that the “greatest lies in the world were told through spreadsheets” starts to feel very real once you’ve seen clean model forecasts consistently collide with actual messy businesses performance.
Big Tech: Learn How Products Shape You Daily
During my 2+ years at Meta, I learned what it’s like to operate a product inside a massive machine with incredibly scale.
You consistently think about user journeys and the minute details on what users experience.
You see how small decisions can affect 100M+ people and disrupt whole sub-industries that rely on the ecosystem.
But, this is a double-edge sword because speed and ownership change.
Process, scrutiny, and layers of decision-making slow things down.
A lot of work becomes about downside protection and optimizing something that already exists.
For me, I realized that my personal operating model required a faster pace to remain fully energized.
Founding Startups: Finding Product Market Fit is Brutal and Lonely
I’ve pursued entrepreneurship in two ways:
Starting a “VC-backed” company that was supposed to disrupt Craigslist (which reached 100K+ people in Brazil)
Bootstrapping various “solo-preneurship” ventures online that reached nearly 7-figures in total revenue
My brutal lesson that I learned is that finding product-market fit is harder than people think and a very lonely journey.
Distribution is even harder with growth rarely being one “viral” moment, but a long chain of small, unglamorous wins.
To top it off, there’s no brand or established team to hide behind, so imposter syndrome is always close by.
Early on, I dealt with this by playing a role of what I thought a founder was supposed to be: wearing the same t-shirt like Zuck, writing 1-page memos like Bezos, building 20-page business plans because an HBS case study said so.
Later, building alone, the challenge shifted. The loneliness was real by not having anyone who fully understood or celebrated the daily swings, small wins, and quiet stress.
But this is also where you build real resilience.
You learn how to move without permission. How to ship. How to solve problems without a safety net.
And the first time you make real money on the internet by yourself, something clicks.
You stop seeing the world as fixed and start seeing it as malleable.
Venture Capital: Teaches You How Markets and Momentum Work
I spent about a year helping start a $200M VC fund.
We invested in some wonderful companies like SoFi and HotelTonight (acq: Airbnb) before we stopped (story for another time).
During that time, I loved meeting founders and hearing how they saw the future. It felt less like evaluating businesses and more like deciding which long shots you were willing to believe in.
That experience also changed how I see what VC actually is.
From the outside, it looks like conviction and contrarian thinking.
Sometimes it is.
A lot of the time, it’s about timing, access, networks, and momentum. You learn how ecosystems form. How reputation compounds. How a small number of outcomes drive most results.
In practice, a big part of the job is convincing great founders to take your money instead of someone else’s for a small, competitive allocation.
And for every other opportunity, it’s learning to say “no” to 99% of the time, even when the story is compelling.
High Growth Startups (Runway): Where It Came Together for Me
For me, Runway has been my “Slumdog Millionaire” experience.
It’s the first time where every skill I’ve picked up actually shows up in the same job.
On any given week, you’re analyzing like an investor, structuring like a consultant, thinking about
product like Big Tech, and moving with the urgency of a founder.
There’s no clean separation between strategy and execution. You don’t just recommend, but you ship and live with the results.
This pace would have been uncomfortable for a younger version of me.
Now, it’s exactly what I want.
Looking back, it’s obvious why this is where I landed.
And another personal reminder as to why the future cannot ever really be planned
Conclusion:
Careers rarely feel inevitable while you’re living them. They feel messy, sideways, and sometimes like you’re wasting time.
Then you look back and realize you were just collecting tools.
That’s why I like Churchill’s line: “What a tragedy if that moment finds [you] unprepared.”
Most people aren’t held back by lack of talent.
They’re held back by staying too safe for too long or by not trying at all.
So if you ask for my advice, it’s this:
Take the path that gives you reps.
Take the role that teaches you something real.
Take a listen to what your gut is telling you.
Your Slumdog Millionaire moment won’t announce itself in advance.
You’ll only recognize it because you’re already in it.
