I'm currently in a unique investing role at a large asset manager where I have a wide remit to look across different areas of tech. From my vantage point, we are in the midst one of the most pivotal technological evolutions of human history - everything between AI, renewables, CRISPR, space exploration, etc. were all stuff of science fiction up until a few years ago, and now all these technologies are closer than ever to becoming reality.
With that being said, would love to get folks' thoughts on what the coolest finance jobs in technology are and will be over the next few years? Obviously there are very smart people working on big tech deals in PE and VC, but anyone heard of any unique/truly cool jobs that are working at the cutting edge of tech? This is not meant to be a career/recruiting related post, but more just open ended brainstorming around what jobs people (will want to) do as some of these novel areas of technology start maturing and commercializing
Strategic Finance in technology to me is really cool. At some companies, they get great sky level visibility and interact with the C-Suite. One of my former bosses has spent most of his career in these type of roles and I aspire to do something similar.
I have thought about this a good amount as someone with a science background in PE. I really like looking at cutting edge companies.
My assessment is that the investing space is incredibly saturated. No AI company has trouble raising money, and I’m not sure many of the investors will make their money back.
IMO, the cool roles are actually operating or developing these technologies. I plan to move into ops and eventually product at a science based company. I also think strategic finance is very interesting, if you really like finance. Personally I think I like the product/tech more than finance so I’m going that way, but I think strategic finance is cool too. The bottom line is that the real exciting roles will be at the right company / startup though, not in investing.
How do you break into these types of roles out of curiosity? Also, do you think prestige is important when it comes to these roles or will any general investment banking experience open these doors?
I'm not an expert so take what I say with a pinch of salt, but I think the easiest way to break in is to gain experience in the industry. Prestige is less relevant than actual startup/industry experience.
If you're in IB, the most obvious way is to find a strategic finance role in the industry you're passionate about (e.g., space). A STEM background is always helpful too.
Prestige is only helpful to assess your general cognitive skills and I think much less relevant than in PE. Nobody is going to hire you because you worked at KKR, they'd much rather go with someone that has experience and real passion for (industry X).
This is a longer range view, 4-8 decades, but I think as the space economy opens up there will be a whole segment of the finance industry devoted to interplanetary / interstellar commerce. Some of the natural areas that easily map to the terrestrial economy would be transit, fulfillment, import / export, insurance, futures, and maybe new commodities or a re-ranking of value.
New areas for finance that might emerge could be something adjacent to sovereign advisory where bankers would be negotiating the financing of spacefaring, colonization, territoriality / extraterritoriality agreements, and potentially advising new governments. Would not be strictly financial advisory but likely have a security or paramilitary component, like a modern proxy for Genghis Khan's treasurer, eunuch, and top general wrapped into one person / firm. Would expect to see a continued blurring of the lines between the private and public sector tech industry as bankers for regulated industries like A&D get the natural 'first dibs' as some of the people both close to the CEOs making that push happen but also being wealthy enough to be the first to purchase 'land' in the final frontier. Who wouldn't want to be Gansevoort in the 18th century buying what became top Manhattan real estate? Interesting to think about where this goes from now until the start of the 22nd century.
This would be a really interesting movie plot tbh
Omg bro that's really cool
I’m tryna be the Wolf of Mars Street
They seem to be looking for people with high finance backgrounds, 7+ YOE. Can't imagine a more interesting place to work in tech right now.
https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/62bde78d-6c8f-4fef-b6f3-f365d4f53689?ut…
Love the responses all around, particularly johnny-mnemonic futuristic vision of the space economy. "Space Genghis Khan's Treasurer" has a ring to it.
In the short term I tend to agree with Analyst 1's take on operating roles being the most interesting. On the investing side, too few bets are going to realize value anytime soon, with an outsized amount of investment (particularly in AI) coming from "hyperscaler" corporates who don't have return hurdles they are underwriting to. Until the cost to produce comes down and these technologies show consistent, tangible value-add, there will be a very limited set of opportunities for financial buyers that have compelling return profiles. I see much more upside in being an operator in the space - leveraging a business skill set via consulting, banking/PE, etc. to go somewhere early stage and build out an application or a product. By doing so you are still indexing your career to some of these longer term but inevitable tailwinds in next-gen tech, but no longer limited by a need to meet a risk/return profile to be involved in the space. There is still robust deal activity from corporates across all of these fields to maybe hope for a 1 in 1 million exit if you are at a company early enough (as long as you are comfortable with the inherent risk that comes along with an early-stage startup).
The harder question for me as an investor is the rate of change...for those that funded AI companies at absurd valuations, will they be left holding the bag when something bigger/better comes along or the market reorients to another use case entirely? This will likely be the case across all of these areas once they get past development inertia and start to prove out their products.
Interesting take. If you think A1’s view is the “short term”, what about the long term? I have been exploring roles in startups and tbh the “business skillset” of 2+2 is not super high sought after, even though I have top-tier experiences on all fronts + a STEM background. I’m mostly able to land ops roles (think palantir deployment strategist) which are very much second tier to engineers or even product. Curious if you have any thoughts there on the best kind of roles from such a background
I don't know if I have a satisfying response for this. If you are aiming for the likes of Palantir, they have ~4k employees, have been around for decades, and are organized like any other mature corporate. The operating experience upside I was referring to is mostly concentrated in early stage companies - Series A or earlier. Palantir and other tech companies of its size have less of a need for someone with general business experience, they've been around for a long time. If you go earlier, however, the 2+2 becomes a lot more valuable. Many seed stage companies have 10 people working there, and while you may have a product, GTM, ops people, everyone does everything because you are starting square 1. That's where your skill set becomes immediately valuable, if you've spent time in IB/PE, you know what a well organized company looks like under a demanding shareholder. You've seen what clean ops, reporting, and management looks like during a diligence process. While you may not have been involved on the ground, you have a vision for what to work towards. Your generalist business background becomes valuable in setting up protocols and processes, and since the team is small you can also have a say on product strategy, go to market, you name it.
Compare that to a much larger tech company like Palantir, they already have figured out the business part, they need smart technical people to keep up the innovation bar, and they have 100s+ people coming from consulting, IB, etc applying for those generalist business roles so competition is stiff. There is much less room for you to "punch-up" and make any impact on the business, and it will end up feeling like any other corporate role.
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