Jessica Yen, 33, was once a consultant at Deloitte and also served in many other similar roles but has now transitioned to entrepreneurship and runs Surfers Jewelry, an e-commerce platform built for surfers. Yen detailed her transition from her corporate job into entrepreneurship in an essay for Business Insider.
Straight out of UCLA in 2014, Jessica began her career as a technology analyst at Deloitte. However, the work at Deloitte wasn’t as glamorous as she had hoped, and it involved a two-hour round trip in traffic from San Francisco to Walnut Creek every day.
“In consulting, you don’t have much control over what projects you work on, and I realized I wanted more say in my career,” Yen wrote.
Yen then began interviewing for tech roles in San Francisco and landed her first data role as a marketing analyst at Salesforce in 2016. Salesforce marked her introduction to data analytics, and she quickly realized that marketing wasn’t her long-term focus and moved into business operations.
After Salesforce, Yen joined Yelp in a business operations and strategy analytics role. She later joined the self-driving car startup Cruise in 2019 that she states aligned more closely with her interest in people and decision-making.
However, after seven years in the high-stress field of data analytics, Yen was exhausted and realized that that level of stress wasn’t sustainable for her.
“Everyone wants your time and expects you to build dashboards, often with quick turnarounds. You’re responsible not only for the work but also for its absolute accuracy. I’d stay late testing dashboards and show up early to present results to executives, walking them through what the data meant and how to act on it. The stakes felt high,” she wrote.
Transition to entrepreneurship:
While still working at Cruise, Yen enrolled in a coaching program in the Bay Area and got certified and began taking on clients on the side. In August 2020, she left Cruise and wanted a break from corporate life while leaning into full-time coaching.
She launched her first product business in December 2020 called “Daily Work Journal,” which also acted as her first foray into e-commerce. She ran the company until January 2024 before selling it.
She then started Surfers Jewelry and is now focused entirely on her e-commerce business. I had confidence in my ability to run it because it’s e-commerce-based, like my journal brand.
“I always advise aspiring entrepreneurs to have a corporate career before striking out on their own. Whatever you specialize in becomes your edge as an entrepreneur,” she wrote.