So Entrepreneurship Backfired...

Hi everyone,

In an attempt to set myself apart in my career, I created a website two years ago based on the investment club I founded. The website had our investment performance, philosophy, strategy, etc as well as a ton of educational content derived from my own experiences, CFA material, books, and textbooks from graduate school. It was a pretty great site, and our club hadn't done too shabby, either.

That was until today when I was fired from my job for its existence. The firm had a zero-tolerance policy for sites or external work that mirrored the firm itself. I did not consider this a possibility at the time because the site generated no revenue, we didn't charge any members any fees, etc - it was out of pure passion and joy.Unfortunately, the dream of launching my own RIA from this has since crumbled, along with my fast rising career. Not to mention the inevitable delay of the wedding we started plan two weeks ago following our engagement...and I thought CFA studying was brutal.

At any rate, I'm determined to look forward and start an exciting and challenging new path for myself. I worked for an independent research company (competitor to Bloomberg) in Chicago. Over the past 18 months I was promoted to manager and had just recently received another merit based raise. I passed level 1 of the CFA exam in June while going to school part time and holding down a 4.0 in a Masters of Science in Finance program.

At this point, I'm reaching out to the WSO community for some networking possibilities here in Chicago. My background is in data analytics, processes efficiency (happy to supply more buzz words - did I mention I'm trained in Lean & somewhat Six Sigma?) and investment research. I'm happy to provide some more details about my career as well as the firms and jobs I'm targeting (MM, boutique, private investment management firms with equity research, Asset Management, performance analyst type roles). Thanks in advance to anyone who has contacts, ideas, and resources - greatly appreciated.