Eric Shen says he went to law school for stereotypical reasons: "I liked to argue a lot and I was bad at math." Even though he had lost some of his original zeal for the law by graduation time, having "a ton of debt made the choice for me to go into Big Law." As an associate, he put every extra dollar he earned towards paying off his student loans as quickly as possible. "I wanted to make sure if there were going to be golden handcuffs, it was because I loved the feel of Italian silk and not because I had to pay school debt."
Shen is surprisingly upbeat when talking about his time at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom -- one of the biggest and most grueling law firms in New York. "I had a good time, relatively speaking. Hundred-hour weeks are not many people's definition of a good time, but within the expectations I had for working as a Big Law associate, I worked on interesting stuff, I had pretty good responsibility, I learned a lot."
So, why did he leave? "Being a Big Law associate still sucks."
Shen is a video game fanatic who regularly chose gaming over sleeping while working at Skadden. He found his dream job the old fashioned way: through a friend. A Columbia classmate who had left his M&A job for Zynga contacted him about an open product manager position in Dallas, Texas. "I was basically going from working, you know, 80, 100 hours a week to 40, and a very awesome 40, where I get meeting invites to prototype the latest game we're making."
The following startup founders decided to take the scenic route -- as opposed to the eight-lane highway -- toward business success. Here's what they were thinking.
