Pros
Opportunity to get involved in a lucrative industry
Cons
Both of the founding directors are hardly "on the ground" in terms of the business at all. In my time at VP, I never once saw Matt Benaron "on the ground" learning about and helping on the engagements. Often, he was just MIA on company wide calls in addition to not being in the office; while often precluding himself from company social events. He does take every excuse to travel though, I'm guessing that most of his time is spent tending to growing the value of the brand and the book of business so he can sell a material stake in the company at some point. Though I'm sure he's worked hard over the years, he basically started a capitally minimal business with insane margins because he worked at the software company that develops the software he implements before he started this business. In my time at Vantagepoint, the human knowledge capital deployed was not nearly enough to sustain a healthy business at the given level of client volume in this industry - which was widely known and talked about by principal consultants and engagement managers. Even so, they're hell bent on increasing growth as fast as possible. This narrow emphasis on business growth without balancing legitimate mechanisms for quality delivery leads me to believe that the founding directors are specifically/only interested in boosting the consultancy's financials for an eventual spin off/offering (my own personal opinion). This really became clear as I was working on one of their largest clients where we had a MAJOR deliverable approaching and aside from a single general manger doing his best to help the situation, the "head honchos" were no where to be found when it was clear that the probability of failure to meet the contract terms/deadlines of the engagement was CRITICALLY high - which for a relatively small company in terms of employee count, is dumbfounding to me. Mind you the entire engagement team was still expected (on a very unsaid basis) to work VERY late hours as well as over the weekends to a point of unhealthy levels (during this period my effective average hourly wage was reduced ~$15 when using my salary and hours worked to derive the rate). If the collective base of employees at the company is a car and these founding directors are the driver, than a valid parallel would be that the driver completely understands the car's oil hasn't been changed in over 25,000 miles but the driver still persists to press the gas pedal all the way to the floor while trying to upshift into a delusional "11th gear." Sure the company comes with a few perks (including trips and such) - which happens to be very tax deductible in almost every single case - but don't let the façade fool you, they will wear you down to the bone if it means they can add another bp to their % growth rate.