Strategy Consulting or Implementations Consulting?

Hey,

Given your goal of starting your own business again, strategy consulting is the better bet. It pushes you to think about markets, competition, and big-picture decisions, which is exactly what you’ll be doing as a founder, while your marketing and ops background already gives you a lot of execution muscle. Strategy roles also tend to open more doors into startups, corporate strategy, and investing.​

Implementation consulting is still solid experience, but it’s more about rolling out and managing plans that someone else has set, and it is typically more technical so it leans you a bit more toward pure delivery and operations roles. Instead of applying to everything, narrow your focus to strategy-focused teams (MBB, Tier 2, and strategy arms of Big 4) and really sell your story as “ex-founder who knows how to both think strategically and get things done”

That's a very smart move to narrow your focus, especially since you have a clear, long-term goal of starting another venture. Applying broadly in consulting is a recipe for thinly spread effort and subpar case prep.

Given your ultimate goal of entrepreneurship, you need to focus your base on Strategy Consulting. The goal of a strategy consultant is to frame ambiguous problems, structure solutions, and convince senior executives of a direction. This provides the highest leverage training for a future founder/CEO. You learn market sizing, competitive analysis, how VCs evaluate opportunities, and perhaps most importantly, how to prioritize resources when everything is critical—a daily challenge for a startup.

Implementation consulting, while offering highly valuable skills in execution, change management, and operational efficiency, often means deep-diving into specific platforms or detailed process maps. Those are critical skills for a COO, but the initial, high-level decision-making muscle gained from Strategy work is what you need to master first to secure funding and set the vision for your company.

Use your applications to target firms that allow you to touch areas like Corporate Strategy, M&A/Due Diligence, and Growth/Market Entry. These practices give you essential experience in valuation modeling and competitive landscaping that translates directly into writing a solid business plan and pitching to investors. You’re not just chasing a brand name; you're acquiring a specific mental framework.

All the best with the pivot!

Hi, 

If your long-term goal is to become a founder, I’d strongly focus on Strategy Consulting. It gives you the sharpest problem-solving toolkit, the strongest CV signalling, and the broadest exposure to how CEOs/top level management think. You can always build operational depth later.

Best,
Lukas

Actually, when you start looking closer at how many opportunities are out there (not that many actually) it's not really an open fire plan. 

I would recommend you start top down by making a list of all the firms you'd want to target.

Then research for each of them the roles they have available. Even better, try to get in touch with the recruiter from your target office to see what they have open in strategy OR implementation. See which role is most relevant for your past experience. 

Then make a plan based on that. 

As in, I think you're now concerned about a problem you might not actually have once you get going. 

Best,
Cristian

Strategy.

As a previous founder - you already know how to get things done :)

hey there :)

For your long-term goal of starting a business, strategy consulting is usually the stronger path, it gives you broad problem-solving, market analysis, and strategic planning experience. Implementation roles are valuable too, but if your focus is building a foundation to run your own ventures, strategy will likely offer more transferable skills. You can always pick up operational experience later.

best, Alessa :)