While working on a project at Katzenbach Partners, Claire Chambers discovered the huge market opportunity for selling women's lingerie. "It's the second fastest growing apparel category in the United States, and I saw an opportunity to completely change how women buy lingerie. I spent my last year at Katzenbach part-time-developing a business plan and testing it, looking for real estate, negotiating with suppliers, hiring employees, branding and developing a marketing strategy-pretty much the whole nine yards."

Firm members gave Claire valuable input; some even invested in her venture. "Traci helped me with the project management-how to get the store open by a certain date-and how to run it effectively. And Niko is so good at asking you all the right questions and zoning in on the areas you are weakest at. He intuits where you have the least amount of confidence, asks you these things, and helps you think through them intelligently."

"I'm very independent and self-motivated, but becoming an entrepreneur was much harder than I thought it would be. Often, you are one of only a few people who believe in your plan. Now that I can sense the results, it's immensely rewarding. But when I was slogging away on the business plan without all the energizing human contact I was used to, it struck me how important people are. It's hard to duplicate the types of people you have at Katzenbach. In many ways, I feel like I grew up at Katzenbach, as it was really the first career I had."