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In truth though, and I say this as someone with no love for management consultants, a lot of very successful businesses are started by ex-MBB. Is that because they’re typically smart, ambitious and well-connected, or because they’re successful MBB consultants? That’s harder to say.
Definitely a chicken and the egg problem. Winners are gonna win, and they often do winner stuff (i.e. McKinsey, Harvard MBA) even when they don't necessarily need it.
A lot of my dyspeptic feedback here is derived from a deep hatred for the PMC types who come out of these kind of backgrounds. It's not that everyone from McKinsey is bad. In fact, I'd say that most aren't. But there is an often over-represented few who collect all the merit badges (Ivy education, McKinsey, maybe a stint in government) and sort of skip-level-up to real positions of influence ... to totally shit the bed when it matters. My current poster child for this is one Tony Blinken.
I don't care if a bunch of McKinsey dudes get together, raise capital, and then set that cash on fire trying to do Uber for Cats or whatever. I do care when they somehow get hired at an already growing company (or an established one) and then try to continue to coast on buzzwords and handshakeful-ness while failing to lead and make decisions. They'll probably end up failing upwards to do it all again. This is the true curse of the PMC. They are parasites who often face little to no consequences while those they "manage" can experience real career setback and failure.
Private Equity types have, at least, a very cut and dry success rubric. They often are also more transparent with who they are and what they're trying to do. PE as a career is much more results oriented and its hard to coast by with just the right merit badges.
Somewhere at McKinsey, however, the person who was flying high on the DEI accounts for the past several years is now "strategically pivoting" to a role as an "expert" in AI ... or AI ethics / alignment / effective altru-shitism. And that is a $500k / yr parasite.
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