The traditional path to the C-suite—grinding through middle management, learning how cash flow actually works, understanding why your predecessor made that weird inventory decision—is officially too slow. A growing cohort of freshly minted business graduates have discovered a faster route: borrow money, buy an established company, install yourself as CEO, and pray the loan officers do not read the business plan too carefully.
The logic is almost admirable in its confidence. Why spend five years learning operations when you can spend five minutes on a term sheet? Why negotiate with a board of experienced directors when you can be the board? It is Monopoly, except the bank is real, the money is real, and when you land on “Go to Jail,” you actually go.
The surreal part is not that this happens—capitalism has always rewarded audacity. It is that it happens with such frequency now that it barely registers as news. A 22-year-old with a fresh MBA and a 7-figure loan from their parents’ equity line is not an outlier; they are a market segment. LinkedIn profiles now read like startup pitch decks: “Acquired manufacturing firm at 23. Implemented AI-driven synergies. Currently exploring Chapter 11 opportunities.”
To be fair, some actually pull it off. But most discover that running a company is not a game where you can reload your save file. Debt is real. Payroll is real. Suppliers get cranky when you have not paid them in six months. The humbling part—the part that makes this genuinely funny—is watching someone who aced their corporate finance exam realize that the textbook answers and actual employees are not the same thing.
The entitlement is magnificent. The results are instructive.