My Life Story – How it all Started

I want to explain my journey through life – from childhood to university to the start of my career – and how I ended up in the position I am today.

Pay close attention, because you will essentially learn how each small step you take within your life, however insignificant you may think it may be at the time, can dramatically shape your attitude and your path down the road.

Growing up…

I grew up in a small town (think population of ~20K) thousands of miles away from Wall Street. My parents were not particularly ambitious, although they did manage to create a supportive middle-class lifestyle for me after leaving everything behind and immigrating to the US. They knew very little of finance/investing in general, so it was not until far later in life when I realized that I had a deep interest in investing – more on that later.

Even though my parents knew little about managing money, they still managed to live below their means and save enough so that we can all travel abroad every few years. It was a luxury that I did not fully appreciate at the time, but those few experiences traveling allowed me to start to understand that there is more in this world than the small town I grew up in.

While my parents probably made less than six figures throughout the majority of my childhood, I had a happy and stable life as I was not able to compare my family’s lifestyle to others. At the time, my perception of the rich/wealthy were those doctors/lawyers/small business owners making $200-400K per year. It was a small suburban town mentality I had back then, having absolutely no idea that there were Wall Street bonuses being paid that were the same as my parent’s life savings.

I would dream about high six-figure/million-dollar houses and never realized my perception of wealth would dramatically change once I left the suburban bubble.

What were your hobbies/interests?

I was mathematically inclined as a kid, so I was naturally drawn to logic and structure. Every time my older brother was frustrated with a Lego set or Algebra problem, I would sneak in and finish it for him. Learning to be patient and figuring out how to solve problems was a skillset that luckily came naturally to me.  

In high school I started to develop some entrepreneurial interests and began to learn how to build websites. A fellow friend and I were so frustrated when we learned that another guy in class owned a website that generated over $50K a year in revenue. Now an annual income of $50K does not sound like a lot nowadays, but as a high schooler that was BIG money. We thought if he could do it, we should definitely be able to.

Who would have known that six months later, we would have multiple sites up and running that generated a decent amount of traffic? What seemed like an impossible task for a couple 16-year old’s with little coding experience turned out to be one of the best learning lessons of my life – regardless of age or experience, whatever you put your mind to you can achieve. I know, very cliché, but understanding this very simple concept is what helped me break into banking and the hedge fund industry.

Why Banking?

That same friend turned out to be an invaluable mentor over the next decade. He went on to study finance then banking then private equity. I ended up following a similar path without really even thinking about it.

In college I had no idea why I wanted to do banking – I just followed the advice of my friend and took the predefined path that everyone else in school was trying to do. I was completely focused on getting an ibanking internship and luckily I somehow managed to get a job at a top investment bank very late in the recruiting process. I was denied by all my other options, but I kept searching and luckily a spot opened last minute.

Luck truly does play a big role in our lives when it comes to our careers. However, I have found if you truly want something in life and are completely focused on obtaining it, then somehow/someway a pathway opens.

Anyways, I completed the internship and was fortunate enough to receive a full time offer.

So, I made it! Finally broke into banking!

Except that initial excitement faded after just a few months of starting full time, as the stresses of figuring out what I wanted to do longer-term began to creep in. LITERALLY EVERYONE in my analyst class was talking about PE recruiting, so of course I thought I had to follow the crowd.

I went through a few interview rounds during that first season; however, it did not feel right and I ended up not getting anything after I half-assed the interviews. Just six months into my career I felt like a failure as my peers were landing jobs left and right. Looking back, I am extremely glad that this happened to me. While everyone else mindlessly went on to accepting PE offers, I had been forced to start thinking about exactly what I wanted to do.

Where did your interest in the public markets come from?

During my first year in banking, I was put on a large-cap deal where we advised a consumer management/franchise company on its sale to a larger public competitor. It started out as a public battle, with activists aggressively trying to force change through M&A. It quickly got intense, and for eight months we had to prepare for board meeting after board meeting trying to help the company figure out what to do.

This was the exact moment where I began to realize that I had a deep interest in the public markets. It became so obvious to me that the market was significantly undervaluing the company we were in process of selling. Over the next couple of years the combined company’s stock almost tripled.

All it took was this one experience to get me hooked. Over the next six months, I bought and read dozens of the best books on value investing to get up to speed as quickly as possible.

How did you break into the hedge fund industry?

I knew I was way behind others who also wanted to break into the industry. It was close to the end of my second year in banking, so I decided to do a third year in a different group to gain more experience in a new industry and to give me more time for hedge fund recruiting.

Luckily the brand name of the investment bank I was working for along with my good reviews (luckily I was a top-bucket ranked analyst my first year in banking) got me a dozen or so initial interviews at various hedge funds. I thought I was prepared after reading dozens of books, but one after another I was denied. After my 20^th or so interview, I finally landed an offer at one of the large multi-managers (ie. Citadel/Surveyor/Millennium/Point 72/Balyasny).

I was a little hesitant due to the perception of these large platforms as being too short-term focused, but at the same time I was ready to get the hell out of banking so I accepted the offer.

Little did I know…

The first six months in the new gig were both amazing and extremely intimidating. I worked in a small team that managed ~$1Bn and was in charge of covering ~60 names. I was learning a ton as my PM was teaching me everything he learned during his career. Once I ramped up and had all my models in place, I started pitching ideas and getting names in the book. $10MM here… $20MM there… a little intimidating but was starting to get the hang of it.

After the honeymoon period of the new job ended, I started to realize the investment style was extremely different than the value-oriented style that I really identified with. We were basing investing decisions on whether we thought a company was going to beat or miss next quarter’s earnings, not based on the true longer-term fundaments of a company.

I felt like a speculator and a trader, investing in a manner that was the complete opposite of the value mindset I really identified with.

What was initially the best ever hedge fund job I thought anyone could get out of banking turned out to be exactly not what I wanted to do.

I was 24 years old and on track to make over $500K per year in a good year and over $1MM if I stuck to it for a few more years. My boss probably thought I was dumb to leave. If all you ever cared about was money, then he was definitely right – no other job would pay a guy in their mid-20s that much. But after a year of working there I knew speculating on where stocks are going over the next six months was absolutely not what I wanted to do every day for the rest of my life. I failed again and this time it hurt so much more as I worked so hard initially to break into the space.

I quit that $500K per year job as soon as I had another job lined up at a single manager start-up hedge fund.   

Joining a start-up hedge fund

To this day, people continue to question why I left a stable $1Bn fund to join a $50MM start-up fund. The firm had no name brand, overall pay was significantly less and the opportunity was extremely risky given the lack of long-term capital.

When I joined the fund was up over 60% for the year and was run by two guys who co-founded a $10Bn+ hedge fund a couple decades prior. They had the experience, the network and the team necessary to quickly raise an additional $100-200MM. So far, everything seemed to be going extremely well. Most importantly, these guys had deep value/distressed backgrounds, so the investing style was exactly what I wanted to learn and do longer-term.

Nobody could have predicted what would happen next. Three months after I joined the funds’ returns got cut in half. The market was falling apart and for a few months people thought the world was ending. The fund faced redemptions due to the high volatility of the returns and shut down shortly afterwards. Who would have thought that a fund with such good potential would be closed down less than four months after I joined?

And in less than a year I went from potentially making $500K+ a year to being unemployed. I failed a third time and this time was the worst. I questioned everything about the decisions I made that led me to this moment and was trying to figure out what to do next.

Unemployment life is not all that cracked up to be…

For four months I went back and forth between taking the safe/easy route by going back to my old group in banking or continuing to look for a job at another fund. I have to admit after failing at two separate funds my motivation to transition to another fund was very low. It was the wrong time to recruit for a good single-manager value fund and only multi-managers hedge funds were hiring.

After a few months of unemployment, I started to go a little crazy. I worked day and night for the past five years and never had so much free time before. You may think it sounds amazing to have time off after working so hard for so long, but it drove me insane and negatively impacted my judgement. I was willing to go back to my old group in banking just to work again and get a steady paycheck.

Thank God I persisted and kept looking for opportunities at value-oriented funds. After interviewing at a few places, I was fortunate to get an offer at a ~$1Bn deep value/distressed fund. To this day, I am still working at the same fund.      

Why I started this blog?

After going through all the highs and lows throughout my life, I wanted to create a site where I could share my experiences and the lessons learned since the start of my career. From growing up in a small town, to learning how to build a website from scratch, to breaking into banking and the buyside, there have been many moments where I felt on top of the world and other times where I felt extremely humbled.

At the end of the day, YOU are in complete control of your life and have to accept the outcomes of the decisions that you make. You can either fall down and stay down after each failure or you can fall forward and continue to strive.  

This blog is for those following a similar path in life that need advice from someone who has already walked those very same steps. Don’t make the same mistakes I did and make sure to read the top 10 lessons I learned in my 20s.