The internet has become captivated by a booming genre of content: corporate professionals sharing day-in-the-life TikToks that chronicle their aspirational lifestyles. Allison Sheehan pulled back the curtain on her routine, sharing videos of her mornings making elaborate cakes before her day job as a wealth manager kicked in. Her double life as the “Investment Baker” led to the end of her Wall Street career, but also marked the beginning of her next act as a founder.
It was 2024, and Sheehan was juggling her wealth-management day job at Goldman Sachs with a budding baking presence on social media. She would document the intensity of her days; 5 a.m. wake-ups leading straight into whipping buttercream, frosting tiered heart-shaped cakes, and filming content before picking up her shift at an undisclosed company. At that time, she had around 1,000 social media followers and a growing list of notable clientele—including Goop, Valentino, Love Shack Fancy, Brooke Shields, and Gigi Hadid.
The Gen Zer was baking and selling three cakes a week, posting content to a growing community of viewers. But after one year into her content creation, she says Goldman Sachs’ compliance team brought her in for a hard talk: taking issue with Sheehan’s use of the word “investment” in her TikTok and Instagram handles, the firm instructed her to take down every post on both accounts. Goldman’s exact social media rules aren’t public, but the company’s code of business conduct and ethics instructs employees to “exercise good judgement” and avoid making content that “can reflect negatively on the firm.”
Giving in out of fear and the pressure of being in trouble, she temporarily took her content down, despite widespread acceptance among her work team.
“I did not think that anything was wrong with what I was doing,” Sheehan tells Fortune. “They loved it, always asking, ‘Allison, what did you make this morning? Show us! Are you gonna bring one in?’…Even people on my floor were like ‘Oh, you’re the baker,’ or, ‘Are you baking for the Halloween party at the office?’ Everybody loved it.”
Eventually, the entrepreneur decided to unarchive all her social media posts and put them back up. Sheehan had her sights set on attending Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and needed the accounts back to prove her entrepreneurial track record. But this time, it only took three months for Goldman’s compliance team to come knocking again. After being torn apart, she decided to call it quits on her Wall Street career and pivoted to a life as a founder. Now, the 27-year-old is running her Investment Baker socials followed by tens of thousands of users, helming her cake business, and pursuing her MBA at Northwestern. And she’s even looking to build a CPG empire in leveraging business skills from her Wall Street days.
Fortune reached out to Goldman Sachs for comment.
From sorority side-hustle to the ‘Investment Baker’
Sheehan’s earliest childhood memories were spent watching her mom mix and whisk up pastries from biscuits to pavlovas. And that same passion filled up her spare time from an early age; but it wasn’t until her senior year of college that she recognized the economic opportunity. The undergraduate student began selling two cakes a month to her sorority sisters at SMU Cox School of Business, charging around $100. Her micro-bakery operation quickly scaled out to the whole student body, and even extended into the broader Dallas area. But despite amassing a customer base, the fervor wasn’t enough to sway her towards baking as a full-time career. Corporate America was still calling, and Sheehan landed a job at Goldman right out of college.
“I didn’t see [baking] as a viable career. I definitely fell victim to the herd mentality of ‘You have to work a corporate job, it’s the only way to make money,’” Sheehan says. “So I fell for it, and I’m happy that I did that. Honestly, I had a great experience in finance up until the end.”
Sheehan briefly worked in equity trading operations at Goldman’s Salt Lake City campus before finagling a job at the company’s New York City office. And she had big plans for when she touched down in the Big Apple in September 2022, starting by reviving her baking Instagram account—later renamed to the “Investment Baker”—which then had only about 500 followers. She stayed consistent and updated her accounts three times a day, posting day-in-the-life vlogs, expertly shot cake pictures, and clips of towering heart-shaped desserts for her clients. At this point, the home-baker’s cake production bumped up to three a week.
It wasn’t paid advertising or viral fame that catapulted her success—Sheehan credits her growth to word-of-mouth buzz. And only six months after she moved to NYC, she started landing bigger customers. Wellness brand Goop hired the amateur baker to make a cake for its birthday campaign; she’s also whipped up a confection for brands like Love Shack Fancy and celebrities like Gigi Hadid. In a bid to expand her business, the young wealth manager rented out a commercial kitchen in the Lower East Side for six months. But juggling while working full-time on Wall Street proved to be too much, so the second time Sheehan got in called in for her accounts, she officially ditched the corporate career to fully realize her academic and business dreams.
“I got fed up by denying like 90% of my orders while I was sitting at my desk at work, doing some dumb estate planning that I didn’t care about,” the 27-year-old explains. “I just wanted to be baking.”
New horizons and scaling AlleyCakes into a CPG brand
When the Gen Zer quit her 9-to-5 job at Goldman to pursue her cake business, it was all hands on deck. Production increased by 300%, with Sheehan churning out 10 to 30 desserts every week from mini confections to statement wedding cakes. Without her cushy Wall Street salary, she could no longer afford to rent out a commercial kitchen space. So to make ends meet, she wound up convincing her neighbor—who was out at the office every day—to lend her kitchen in exchange for free dog walks.
But Sheehan wants to be known for more than being the custom-cakes girl. And as her product line has expanded, so have her entrepreneurial aspirations. The home-baker is currently weighing the option of scaling her operation into a CPG brand, Alleycat Baking Co., while getting her master’s degree from Northwestern. Opening a brick-and-mortar store is also on the table.
“I could either open a storefront and open a bakery, maybe become the next SusieCakes or Baked by Melissa. Or I could launch in retail and try to just expand my footprint via baking mixes and frostings,” Sheehan says. “I have a deep interest in consumer goods.”
The entrepreneur has already been testing the waters. She’s worked with 14 suppliers to bring her CPG vision to life—including raw materials suppliers, graphic designers, product developers, food scientists, photographers, sales representatives, retailers, and logistics professionals. And Sheehan credits the skills she developed at Goldman for helping her out; the bank taught her the importance of responsiveness, even though retail moves at a snail’s pace compared to finance.
Running a small business comes with its hardships; progress moves slowly, and Sheehan says she’s still learning how to relinquish control. Being your own boss and betting on yourself also comes with a lot of responsibility; her income as a graduate student running a food start-up also pales in comparison to what she made working at the $322 billion bank. But she’s never wavered on making her business a success.
“I’m so much happier, and I would not trade what I’m doing to go back to working at a desk ever,” Sheehan says. “It took so much confidence and conviction for me to take the leap, but I’m really proud of myself, and I am so confident that it’s going to work out. It’s important to retain a level of delusion if you’re going to be a founder, because you just really have to assume that it’s gonna work out.”
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Emma Burleigh