Save 50% on a 3-month Digiday+ membership. Ends Dec 12.
For financial analysts slogging away for long hours, an escape plan becomes enticing; entrepreneurship looks like a seductive dive into uncertainty after endless scrolls of spreadsheets.
Often, these unfulfilled financiers find their ways to careers in fashion.
“If you spend a lot of time in finance, you eventually want something radically different,” said Diana Melencio, co-founder of the personal shopping service Quinn, who had worked for nine years on Wall Street at a handful of investment banking firms before starting her company. “My days had consisted of 12 to 18 hours of spreadsheets, and I wanted something … not like that. It comes from a desire to innovate, to be a part of the fashion industry, which couldn’t be more different than this sterile environment.”
Wall Street, from heavyweights like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan down to boutique firms, is a vessel for fashion startups. These former analysts-turned-founders can build financial models for new companies in their sleep and talk the same language as potential VC investors. And, after years of analytics and data sheets, left-brained people in the field are looking for creative outlets. The frustration and lack of stimulation, combined with a close proximity to the industry, leads to idea light bulbs.
More in Marketing
‘A trader won’t need to leave our platform’: PMG builds its own CTV buying platform
The platform, called Alli Buyer Cloud, sits inside PMG’s broader operating system Alli. It’s currently in alpha testing with three clients.
Why 2026 could be Snap’s biggest year yet – according to one exec
Snap’s senior director of product marketing, Abby Laursen talked to Digiday about its campaign automation plans for 2026.
‘We just did the math’: The new baseline for ad tech transparency
Ad execs said the industry is shifting toward a renewed transparency push driven as much by day-to-day operational pressure as by principle.