This as-told-to essay is based on conversations with Sofia Jiang, a 23-year-old marketer and founder, based in NYC. Her words have been edited for length and clarity.
Last year, I was so grateful to get an investment banking job after I graduated. Then, about four months after I started, I quit.
Investment banking is a prestigious and high-paying industry, so it feels like people admire you for getting the job, and it looks great on a résumé. However, once I was actually in the role, it became super clear to me that this wasn’t the place where I’d learn how to run a business, which is ultimately what I wanted to do.
I felt it was kind of silly and too risky to quit a job I had worked so hard to get, one that a million kids would take in a second, but I didn’t leave without a plan.
There was a lot of hype around investment banking
I went to school at Georgetown and studied business and global affairs. It was a dual degree program. My first internship was at Diane von Furstenberg, where I worked on partnerships and collaborations. I enjoyed it, but I still wanted a fuller understanding of the business behind consumer companies.
While I was in school, there was a lot of hype around investment banking, and I was very intrigued by the whole atmosphere. There was such a level of security that I could land a job offer before graduating.
During my junior year summer, I got an investment banking internship at Morgan Stanley, hoping I’d land the full-time return offer for after graduation. I ended up getting the return offer, and I was so relieved that my whole senior year, I knew what I was going to do after I graduated.
I got a business idea while working at my internship, and started targeting my future customers
During my internship, I had such a difficult time finding work clothes I liked that weren’t super expensive and didn’t require dry cleaning. That’s how I got the idea for my clothing brand, SofSet.
I knew that if I was going to have this consumer brand one day, the hardest thing to make a brand successful is getting people to know about it. So I started posting content on TikTok that I thought my future customers would want to see. While also slowly laying the foundation for the designs on the side.
I started by making Day in My Life videos at Georgetown, then in investment banking, and they went pretty viral. I built my TikTok audience of over 30,000 followers, and every piece of content I post is what I think my brand’s target audience would be interested in.
I quit Morgan Stanley and started a new job right away, using my network
After I realized I didn’t want to work at Morgan Stanley, I felt guilty about wanting to leave.
I knew that if I stayed longer, I’d be more afraid because I would have sacrificed two years of my life and delayed working toward my larger goal. I asked a few friends what they thought, but I knew that it was my story, my life, and everyone has a different career path.
When I was thinking about leaving, my content was doing really well, and my friend Myles, who’s a founder, was looking for someone to do marketing and help him position his content at a small VC-backed startup. Around the same time I decided to leave my job, my friend offered me a formal position.
I left Morgan Stanley and started working for him the next week.
My current job came from cold emailing every fashion tech person I could think of
I stayed at that startup for around three to four months. It was an incredible opportunity for me to get a lot of hands-on experience, work on a very small team, and gain more confidence, but I knew it wasn’t a forever thing. I wanted to break into the fashion tech startup space.
I was cold emailing everyone at fashion tech companies, from employees to the CEO to the recruiters. I’d also sometimes email the company’s investors if they had just raised a round. I used either LinkedIn or an email scraper called ContactOut, which was super helpful.
A lot of people didn’t reply, but what worked well for me in the outreach message was keeping it as short as possible while explaining my background in one to two sentences. Then, at the end of the message adding how I could provide value to them or ask them for advice.
If I knew that someone wasn’t really hiring right now or there were no job postings online, I’d keep it to asking for advice. If I were emailing an investor who had just raised a round, I’d ask them about their investment thesis, show interest in them, and make it clear that I’m interested in the company.
One of the people I reached out to connected me with the HR at a VC fund that invests in fashion tech startups. I spoke with her and made it very clear that I was interested in fashion tech and marketing. She connected me with the CEO of my current job, whom I interviewed with. I had one more interview with someone on the team, and shortly after, received an offer.
Now I run my business on the side and work full-time in fashion tech
I’ve been slowly building my brand on the side while working a full time job in marketing that I love and am learning so much from. I think the best thing I did was really sit down and think about what I wanted my life to look like.
A year ago, I still had the same idea of what I wanted my life to look like and what I wanted to do, but I didn’t know how to get there, so I thought investment banking was the best path. Then, when I looked at the people who were my bosses in investment banking, who were technically going to be me 20 years out, I didn’t want the life that they had.
It’s easy to compare what I used to earn in investment banking and what I earn now at a startup. My base salary was $110,000 in my first year out of school. Right now, I don’t make nearly that much, but I feel like I’m building a future for myself that will pay off in years.
Do you have a similar story to share? If so, please reach out to the reporter at [email protected].
