A former BCG partner reveals how leaving consulting taught him to build

Daniel Dantus, now a senior vice president at Skan AI—a startup that analyzes how work flows through an entire organization—shared his journey from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to building new ventures. He entered consulting as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, joining a student consulting club that led him to BCG’s Chicago office as an intern and later as a full‑time employee. From his first week of training, he was thrust into real projects: within days he was on a manufacturing floor with a major food‑and‑beverage client, traveling to Dallas and Mexico to visit plants. At age 20, he learned quickly how to navigate new environments, forge relationships, and create impact.

Dantus spent eight years at BCG. The first six years rotated through different clients, cities, and teams—a pattern he loved despite firms’ emphasis on continuity. His work covered operations in manufacturing, supply‑chain, and financial services. After moving to San Francisco, he pivoted to technology, focusing on sales and product strategy. When promoted to project leader, his focus shifted from delivering assignments to figuring out where he could build a business. He realized he wanted to keep learning and creating products, something long‑term consulting projects rarely allowed.

He took advantage of BCG’s paid transition period, using the time to pause, reflect, and network. He compiled a list of intriguing companies and people, conducted roughly 100 conversations, and treated the job search like a sales process—high volume begets results. This effort landed him at Harbor Freight Tools as Director of Marketing, where his mission was to expand the firm’s digital‑marketing capabilities. It was his first “real job” after consulting, and he initially wondered how PowerPoint skills would translate into measurable outcomes. By launching and scaling HFT’s digital channels across search, social, and display, he proved that they could.

Two years later, Dantus joined Juul after reconnecting with a former BCG colleague who had moved there to build a new capability. He started on the corporate‑strategy team, then led global travel retail and product. The period was volatile: headcount ballooned from roughly 1,000 to 4,000 and then fell back to 1,000. It was also his first long‑term business leadership role. In travel retail, he learned the realities of rejection, tough negotiation, relationship building, and standing firm.

During his final two years at Juul, he oversaw product and e‑liquid development—his first technical role alongside his business responsibilities—and gained firsthand experience bringing a product to market.

Later, Dantus returned to BCG as a partner, focusing on strategic due diligence for private‑equity clients. Looking back, his advice to anyone leaving consulting is straightforward: no single job is indispensable. Take time to pause and reflect, reach out proactively, and keep an eye on inbound opportunities. If a role doesn’t work out as expected, another one is always within reach.

He rejoined the startup world last year when he reconnected with Skan’s founders. The timing felt serendipitous. Five years earlier, he’d considered the company’s core challenge impossible: using passive observation to decode complex workflows, such as a two‑month insurance claim process. Today, generative AI has lowered the barrier to automating tasks where data—documents, databases, calls, chats—already exist. Yet a crucial gap remains between surface‑level clicks and the tacit knowledge that explains how to execute a business process, representing one of the biggest opportunities in enterprise AI. After more than a year at Skan, one truth stands clear: AI is simply accelerating the hard work that has always needed to be done.