E71: Non-target to BB IB Analyst | Bain Venture Associate | HBS | VC Partner
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In this episode, Joe shares his non-traditional path from a non-target school (University of Wisconsin) to breaking into investment banking at Merril Lynch right before it was acquired by Bank of America. Perhaps more impressive than that feat was his ability to land a highly competitive buyside associate role straight into Bain Capital Ventures and then break into Harvard Business School a few years after that. His latest move was to pivot after several years at Samsung's venture arm to found his own venture capital firm. Not surprisingly, that is also going well for him...learn what he thinks set him apart and why he spent an extra year in college.
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WSO Podcast (Episode 71) Transcript:
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis, your host and chief monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, Joe shares his non-traditional path from a non target school, the University of Wisconsin, to breaking into investment banking at Merrill Lynch right before it was acquired by Bank of America. Perhaps more impressive than that feat was his ability to land a highly competitive by site associate role straight into Bain Capital Ventures and then break into Harvard Business School. A few years after that. His latest move was to pivot after several years at Samsung's venture arm to found his own venture capital firm. Not surprisingly, that is also going well for him. Learn what he thinks set him apart and why he spent an extra year in college. Enjoy. All right, Joe, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Voices podcast.
Joe: [00:01:12] My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Patrick (CEO of WSO) [00:01:14] So you'd be great if you could just start out with a short bio for the listeners. Sure.
Joe: [00:01:17] So I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, and attended University of Wisconsin, where I studied business dual major in finance and real estate. Yeah, it was kind of a badger since I could walk with all my parents and grandparents having attended the university. So I was super proud to call that my home for five years, which we can get into later. But yeah, so I went from there and was fortunate to land an internship at Merrill Lynch M&A in New York City, where I ended up summering and then spending two years in the banking world and jumped from that to Bain Capital Ventures in Boston at the time, kind of. The Boston office was the main office. There was less of a presence in New York and S.F. So got to have some exposure to venture capital and growth equity while I was there and then attended Harvard Business School for two years, also in Boston and Cambridge. And following that helped to build out Samsung's venture capital team in New York City, which was a high tech software practice. I was there for about three years before doing what I'm doing now, which is running a venture capital fund called Studio VC, along with one other partner.
Patrick (CEO of WSO) [00:02:27] Great. So there's a lot of thought to unpack there. Let's start all the way back in undergrad. So you were a badger and going through that school, was it was it a school you kind of had targeted since you were in high school was like, you said kind of your whole family went there, I guess, right?
Joe: [00:02:44] Yeah. And yeah, I mean, I practically grew up on campus. So my first informal job was I started parking cars for football games on football, Saturdays at my parents house and then being a young and budding entrepreneur started to buy out all of my neighbors lots and eventually turned into a nice little business, which was helpful because my whole plan was and kind of out of necessity was to put myself through undergrad. And so, you know, the cost was right to stay in state and also, you know, really valued the fact that I could get right into the business program pretty early on.
Patrick (CEO of WSO) [00:03:19] Are your parents entrepreneurial like that or was that just something?
Joe: [00:03:22] My mom was a teacher. Special needs teacher. And my dad has been in sales and entrepreneurship for almost his whole career. But yeah, between the two of them they launched. I try to count it up the other day, but it was something like seven kind of part time or full time businesses. And so, yeah, dinner table conversations were everything from a new pet treat that my parents worked on together to a crazy bumper sticker idea that my dad came up with and sold. And the latest thing which my dad is pursuing is a cheese curd business, which is cheese curds. Yeah, cheese curd. Yeah. So it's kind of Wisconsin's favorite food, and he's now evangelizing it around Florida and the rest of the East Coast.
Patrick (CEO of WSO) [00:04:07] That's awesome. That's awesome. So it was kind of in the blood. You, you're. Kind of doing well for yourself, putting yourself through school, mostly through this parking business, or how did you?
Joe: [00:04:17] Yeah, I mean, it was it was that in a variety of other odd jobs. I guess my first formal job was I was a caddy at a golf course. So that was a big part of my early life was playing competitive golf and competitive hockey. And you know, while I was not quite good enough to play at Wisconsin, I did use those to get into the industry and work in the golf industry for a little while to help pay my way as well. But yeah, I mean, I was super passionate fan of the Badgers and then, you know, heard nothing of good things but good things about the business program as undergrads there. So yeah, I was really excited to go, you know, I had a couple of schools that I thought would be neat to try out. but at the end of the day, that kind of cost benefit and staying in-state was was right for me, and I was fortunate to have a ton of friends that kind of went from my high school to college and was able to maintain those relationships, which was kind of like a built in frat without being a frat.
Patrick (CEO of WSO) [00:05:08] That's awesome. And so did you you know, you said you had known about the business program before you went, but was banking kind of what everyone put on a pedestal? Or was it even known? When did you kind of know to even target investment banker and what it was?
Joe: [00:05:25] Awesome question. I can speak for myself, and I really did not know what an investment banker did when I started at at Wisconsin. And as I started to dive more into the curriculum and learn about some of the folks that had found success coming out of Wisconsin, it became more apparent that investment banking was an amazing first career and fantastic way to learn business schools drinking from the firehouses. I'm sure people say all the time on here, but you know, I didn't really realize that until I was a couple of years into my undergrad, and I actually had the opportunity to internship do an internship at SC Johnson, the large consumer products company that makes things like Glade Plug-Ins and and things like that and cleaning products. But while I was there, I was working in corporate development and, you know, kind of went into that thinking, Oh, this is going to be great. I'm going to get to see all these big corporate deals and maybe even get to work on an acquisition or a divestiture on behalf of this big company. And even though I had a fantastic time in the team, there was like just terrific to work for and like, especially at that young age really did. Did the hand-holding necessary to sort of like bring me into the workforce? you know, what I did learn was that like deals were not happening left and right within the context of corporate development. And so I started to think, Well, if I want to get my hands on actual, meaningful deals, what's the career for that? So I came back from that internship and said, I really want to do investment banking, and unfortunately, I was pretty late to realize that. So this is me coming back from my junior year, going in to see Johnson and coming into my senior year and sort of hoping to do investment banking was seemed unlikely. So I decided to actually add a major and treat my post senior year as another internship opportunity, which is how I landed. Merrill Lynch M&A,
Patrick (CEO of WSO) [00:07:18] You know, I've heard of that. Is that a thing now where people when they find find out about investment banking too late and they miss that kind of sophomore or junior summer internship? Have you have you heard a lot of kids doing that now staying an extra a whole year because didn't have the financial incentive at the time? it's for whatever reason, it's relatively common at Wisconsin. People have a number of majors. It's a very large school. And so when I was graduating on time is difficult on its own, but let alone
Joe: [00:07:46] Wanting to add an internship. So it kind of worked out in my favour and allowed me to sort of mature intellectually and professionally a little bit more and also just learn the tools and interview skills and spend a lot of time probably reading your website, trying to get ready for an investment banking internship. And so, yeah, I mean, I think I had a few investment banking internship interviews the first summer around, and I think If I had a video of those, I'd want to light those tapes on fire. But you know, coming back the next year was just so much more well prepared. And that was, you know, partially thanks to a lot of my peers at Wisconsin that sort of showed me and others the ropes in terms of what it takes to get an investment banking internship and full time job. And you know, then in the future, we try to pay that forward after coming back from our internships and seeing what the real work looks like and be able to tell the folks a year younger than us kind of what it what's necessary to get on Wall Street? Yeah, it's
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:45] Interesting that, you know, did you feel like were you doing a lot of mock interviews with those people or was it more just like being able to talk to? Oh, I've spoken with XYZ person. What was what was the most helpful part about that? mock interviews were
Joe: [00:08:58] Super helpful, But I think we were pretty deliberate about really learning the skills, the skills and sort of topics that were necessary to understand and have command over before doing the mock interviews. I think just diving into the mock interviews without knowing some of the questions and preparing for them and like having a unique but accurate answer for them was the best part about it. So I started with Prep. We had, you know, seniors teaching juniors and juniors, teaching sophomores, You know, everything from like three ways to model a company or value a company to accounting questions to the quirky trick questions that come up in banking and visit
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:39] A club. Was it like a club?
Joe: [00:09:40] It was. Yeah, it was called the investment banking club. And it was founded, gosh, maybe one or two years before I got involved with it, but ended up taking a leadership role there. And, you know, we've expanded it, but at the same time tried to keep it relatively manageable just so that we didn't have, you know, 150 kids trying to learn investment bank skills. It's always been sort of between, I think, 20 and 40 students that were interested in the space. And as a result, we were able to be somewhat selective about who participated, but also, you know, cultivate a good learning environment that wasn't the size of a large lecture.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:16] How is that done nowadays? Where is the club obviously like GPA can be part of it, but like, what else is, do they have to be finance majors, economics majors? What's the cutoff or like they have to interview to get into the club?
Joe: [00:10:29] Yeah, we did use to have interviews and obviously like a resume type screen, you know, I mean, we were looking at sort of like, what are the likely traits that would help somebody land a job on Wall Street because we were trying to like our number one KPI was are we going to place people on Wall Street or, you know, in comparable banking situations? And so, you know, we would review resumes as if we were recruiters from investment banks. And so, you know, I was the first vetting mechanism and the second was like, you know, willingness to be collaborative and help teach others eventually and things like that. But yeah, it was pretty multifaceted. I mean, we were students teaching other students. So was It's, I'm sure, become even more formal over the years. But you know, we did everything we could And it was it was fairly selective. So I was really happy to be a part of that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:15] Cool. So you OK, so you figured out what you want to do. You start actually preparing through this club and then. You start dropping your resumes again, kind of as a as a second junior kind of a second.
Joe: [00:11:30] And how do you kind of went with the flow? Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:33] Did did banks ask you any questions about that? Was it on the resume drops? Or are there any like in your first rounds where they like, Hey, what's this fifth year all about or expected date?
Joe: [00:11:43] Yeah, good. Good question. Remembering back, you know, I didn't get a lot of pushback on that. I think it was more like, Hey, it's great that last last summer you had somewhat relevant experience looking at whether or not you did deals or not. at least you looked at deals and like and tried to evaluate deals from a large corporate perspective, which Is, you know, pretty relevant to banking without being banking.
So net, that was definitely a positive. And, you know, just to double tap on what you said about the resume drops coming from Wisconsin. We kind of we didn't benefit from a lot of banks coming directly to us at that time. Now they're starting to become much more open to it since we have a little track record. But at the time it was really like, who do you know? Which badgers do you know which people in the Big Ten? Do you know? And then, you know, we all kind of paid our own way to come out to New York and really camped out for like four days at a really cruddy hotel in Midtown and set up. I think we probably met with 10 or 12 investment banks. Basically, whoever would have us and covered a lot of ground and some of those banks were kind of nice enough to even interview do some screening while we were out here and others said, you know, drop your resume. We'll see what happens after this. But during that trip, some of the some of the folks, myself included, got you interviewed by a bunch of banks and then were able to come back for super days and things like that later on. how did the. It's really
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:08] Interesting. So you guys want guys and girls went as a group. How many of like that trip that that New York trip that you guys at, how many of how many people went on that when you guys, you got your
Joe: [00:13:18] Probably almost every single junior or kind of junior level person in the club. So that was probably like 15 or so.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:28] It's a pretty good group, and
Joe: [00:13:29] I want to say that like. I want to say that like the seniors versus the juniors versus the sophomores and sophomores, we're pretty rare, but we would have about like 15 seniors, 15 juniors, so, you know, 30 to 40 people in the club at any given time.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:43] But it was their success rate where, like the seniors were too late by that point where they so a
Joe: [00:13:49] Lot of them, a lot of them were just kind of still involved to like, do more of the teaching and continue to prep on their own side and do case studies and things like that to get ready for their full time roles.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:00] But wouldn't they already have full time offers by the time they are? Yes.
Joe: [00:14:03] Yeah. Some of the some of the seniors who like helped facilitate a lot of this out. The trip was comprised of like ninety five percent juniors, if not maybe even one hundred percent juniors, but it was certainly facilitated by the folks who had had positive experiences at, you know, places like Merrill or Goldman or, you know, JP or wherever. But yeah, like I said, we ended up having enough connectivity to get in and at least sit in a conference room and learn about, you know, folks like I just mentioned and a bunch of others. But it was like 10 banks in three days. And some of those yielded kind of immediate call backs of like, Hey, we reviewed the 14 or 15 resumes of the people who came and we'd like to have a quick conversation with, you know, the following six and some of those ended up leading to, you know, follow up to New York. Was it competitive,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:52] Almost entire inter-group? Because it's kind of like if they're only going to interview a certain percentage of you, it's going to feel a little like intimidating. I guess you're kind of rooting for each other because you're all together doing it. but yeah, it was. We were. We're very
Joe: [00:15:05] Team oriented. And I think fortunately, in most of those cases where they did interview, you know, on the spot, so to speak, it was very much like almost everyone got that 30 year, thirty minute or forty five minute first screening interview. So there wasn't too much competition there. But then, you know, as things progressed and, you know, two out of 10 made it to the Super Day and the other eight didn't. Yeah. Fortunately, I think, you know, people made it to some bank at the rend of the day, whether it was like a mid western bank or a Wall Street bank, I think everybody landed, you know, the hit rate was very
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:41] High. The place, the placement was great even early on in those days because it was such a small group and the focus group was just
Joe: [00:15:47] Super scrappy. And we had had a couple at least one year of interns preceding us that had done good work and kind of paved the way. And so, yeah, those kind of first guys who guys and girls who busted through the door really, really helped. The follow up years.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:05] That's awesome. And so do you feel like I know there's other there's tons of investment banking clubs all around the country. do you feel like they're becoming more prevalent? I know I've heard this many times that they're like, really important to get into your summer. Really competitive. Do you feel like if somebody has an offer to stay in state? And they have like a competing offer, it's a good it's a good path still, potentially if they really focus on getting into that club. And like what happens if you don't get into that? Like what happens if you don't get into that club for whatever reason? That's why I was asking a little bit about it because I'm sure it is that Wisconsin, but it's also like you missed. You missed a Penn State. Like all these, all these schools that send a lot of people to Wall Street. But yeah, overall, it's a very small fraction of the student population.
Joe: [00:16:52] Yeah, I think I think back when we were doing it like 2005, six, seven, kind of when I graduated undergrad, really our best comp at the time was Indiana University, I think had the best and earliest investment banking and just kind of the Kelley School of Business, which is widely known as pretty well represented on Wall Street. so that was one of the ways we modeled ourselves and what you just mentioned. Like, I wasn't even aware of all those different clubs at the different schools, but yeah, certainly fantastic to hear. And I mean, whether or not you get into the club or not, I think you can benefit from a lot of the same things that we did, which seem Really low level, But things as simple as like basically memorizing like the Vault Interview Guide to Finance and the vault interview guide to investment banking. Like that's where all of our mock interview and material and questions that we prepared for came from in the first place. And then and then, you know, once you get some boots on the ground on Wall Street, you sort of get that echo effect of people saying, Well, you know, we thought they were going to ask lots about accounting, but they actually didn't. They focus more on like finance and valuation Or, right, you know, real world learning's like that is opposed to like purely theoretical learnings that you might get out of a book or a guide.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:05] Know for sure. Yeah, I mean, for us, we have our we have an interview course actually for investment banking now. And so we the vault is like old school man, you're dating yourself.
Joe: [00:18:15] It was like just getting other stuff that we all printed out, too.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:18] There's much better options out there. So the interesting part is, so you guys all, it's interesting that you all kind of made it somewhere into investment banking or at least somewhat comparable careers. You yourself and one other seem to have made it to kind of the best firms or a bulge bracket firms. Is that accurate?
Joe: [00:18:41] Um, yeah, I mean, my ear there was there was folks that made it to a variety of the bulge bracket firms, so some of those folks have even stayed on. So yeah, I mean, Goldman, Morgan, JP, you know, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, all those sort of who's who. I think we had representation at the whether it was my year or the year behind me. so. And then you was good. I mean, and now I think you have some folks who've stayed on, some senior folks like at GS, where I still have a close friend who's now becoming pretty senior. And you know, the representation of badges has increased over time as well, which is great to see.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:15] And I guess going back to those this trips and those screens, was there anything you felt that was? Different about how they interviewed your group or different about what set you apart from the people within your group, that would be helpful to someone listening, like, is there something that you could point to say, OK, that makes sense. This is why I got through in this person, got through in this person. Didn't was it more just how well-spoken you were, how well prepared you are? What was, do you feel like was the most important factors?
Joe: [00:19:46] I think failing the like, failing at the interviews, what I mentioned, I wanted to like burn those videotapes from the year before was really helpful. It was like, I basically got to get a major league at bat that didn't really accrue to my stat sheet, so to speak, like I got to go interview with, I think Robert W. Baird Investment Banking and Piper jaffray. And I probably was very woefully underprepared in my junior year, as I said. And so when I when I came back to interview the next time around, I was like, I know exactly how hard it's going to be. I know how intense it's going to be and how intimidating some of these folks can be. And so like, there were fewer surprises. So I think that definitely helps on the poise side just to be able to like. Know what you're getting into and then obviously having a full year to brush up on the content and hone my own story, which is, you know, kind of like I started describing earlier, which is kind of like entrepreneurial from a very young age and like, interested in business from a young age, always love math, love business. Put the two together. You get an investment banker there.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:50] So your story was more convincing, more genuine. By that point, you had kind of worked on it for a good year.
Joe: [00:20:56] You know, we're all kind of we're all kind of interesting and different for good or for bad in the sense that we weren't coming to them through the typical channel. Like the interviews I'm describing, we're like one off random days that they put together just for us. Yeah. you know, and then if we made It through, then we would go to like something like a Super Day, which was the typical process. But we were coming from this like kind of left field angle where I think we probably got some credit just for being scrappy, like, how'd you guys get in here again? Who do you know and why am I interviewing you? That's like, you didn't go to my alma mater. Right? So for good or for bad, we were interesting because of that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:37] Ok, fair enough. So you're starting. So you didn't have or you did have a normal internship then the summer before. So were you nervous that like you weren't going to be ready or weren't going to get the return offer where the return offers high that summer return offers were? yeah, they were pretty high.
Joe: [00:21:55] So I think that was 2006 going into 2007, right?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:00] Everything had collapsed. Yet everything still look pretty
Joe: [00:22:02] Rosy. And then, yeah, the two years are just short of two years that I spent at Merrill M&A, you know, led right up to 2009 and the eventual acquisition and takeover bank of America and Merrill Lynch. So got to see that kind of on the inside track and fortunately had already, you know, pretty early on in the process lined up the Bain Capital Ventures offer. and so I was happy to be an innocent bystander, but it was it was interesting to see the drama unfold from inside the bank where, you know, some more senior folks were had a lot more at stake than I did as somebody who was prepared to make my exit anyhow. but yeah, wild times. But, you know, certainly a great learning experience and learn a lot about myself and learned a lot about kind of finance and deal making, even though I also learned that it probably wasn't a career that I was going to pursue for the rest of my life.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:54] Was it something about the banking? So you were. What group are you in again? You were in. I was in the majors in acquisitions. So you were an M&A. Did you get a lot of deals done in the two years you were there? I assume it was like busy and that dried up completely or what?
Joe: [00:23:07] Yeah, I mean, I wish I had more completed deals to talk about. I did work a bit on Anheuser-Busch In Bev, which was obviously a huge $60 billion plus deal and then a variety of other deals that, you know, just never made it across the finish line. but yeah, now you're exactly right. It's things started to slow down as banks and bankers started to get, you know, fighting and smelling the blood in the water, as there was a lot of change coming about in the market, broadly speaking.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:33] So yeah. And so then tell me about the process. Was there ever a thought of when you said you went, you went Bain Venture, which is kind of a yeah, going banking straight to venture is very uncommon, at least from what I've seen. Tell me a little bit about, did you consider private equity? Why not go private equity? Did you interview there? What was the whole process like in terms of why venture?
Joe: [00:23:55] Yeah. So I guess about five or six months into my full time role is when at that time when the head hunter started sort of like banging down the door and setting up preliminary meetings. So it was literally like the holiday season of my first year that I started sort of engaging with the head hunter community. And, you know, mostly it was oriented towards like, do you want to do hedge fund or private equity? And I kind of pretty quickly thought I wanted to do private equity because, you know, as much as I enjoy public market investing, I just I thought my personality and skill set would lend itself better to just sort of doing deals where you have more ownership and control. And so definitely thought I was going to do private equity and immediately started interviewing, you know, with the help of all these head hunters of which there were probably eight that I was working with at the time. but, you know, took the interviews with Carlyle and Apollo and Cerberus. And just like. Are kind of everybody you could you could think of, but we went through some process multi-step process with folks like Carlyle and others. And, you know, really thought for sure that's where I was going to go. Yeah. And was, you know, had the quick rejects elsewhere and then had some long processes with other PE firms. But during that process, I was reached out to about Bain Capital Ventures and they said, Hey, look, they do, you know, venture and sort of some growth type checks and interesting tech enabled businesses and technology companies. Would you be interested in meeting with them? And I said, Sure. So the one thing I can say about that interview was that I had two hour long interviews with the Bain capital Ventures partners right to start. And, you know, I just kind of left left that meeting, and I remember calling up my mom at the time and just being like, that was the best interview I've ever had in terms of
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:48] Your performance or in terms of just
Joe: [00:25:50] The oh, not not my performance, like was still probably unsure of at that point of how the performance went. But it was more so like I could tell that the people who are interviewing me were going to be a strong cultural fit for me and incidentally, one of them was Midwestern. So it kind of made me feel like I was talking to my one of my dad's friends. So just like culturally was a good fit. But then the second part of it was really just that like it felt tremendously, intellectually engaging. So it was more about like, let's process a market, let's process a new business idea. Let's think about it both financially and strategically. Let's put it all together and evaluate an opportunity together. So I kind of left like, Wow, that was a really cool, much more like a case study rather than the Super Day at Carlyle, where I remember being put in a room and like building a model in in an hour, right, which to me felt a little bit more rote. I mean, it was certainly high pressure, and it's a huge part of the huge part of the job. But I didn't I didn't like leave that, that exercise feeling tremendously fulfilled other than I was like, Well, I got to an answer. I'm happy, like I was able to crank this out as fast as I needed to. But the Bain Capital Ventures, I just kind of like left and I was like, Boy, I want to continue thinking about the opportunity we just discussed. That was really interesting
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:10] So did you get offers from the mega funds or tell me about the timeline? So you had started some processes with the megaphone? I know it can be crazy fast when it starts and then, like, done within the weekend, so did Bain Cap kind of come in the second wave or what was the I?
Joe: [00:27:27] I I don't know. They were pretty early because I remember some of these other processes that I mentioned were still underway at the time. And I'm sure I'd got like a few quick dings, but some other processes were going on longer. But you know, once I started engaging with Bain Capital Ventures, they move pretty quickly as well. And so following that, the first two partner meetings, I think the next step was flying to Boston and meeting really with all the rest of the partners, which I think at the time was like eight or eight or nine more partners, which is the entire partnership at the time. So their Super Day was like, you meet everybody and you get a pretty quick judgment. So it was and those interviews were more of the same in terms of like being less tactical and more diving into businesses and like ripping them apart from, you know, viability standpoint,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:19] A little more consulting kind of.
Joe: [00:28:21] I think that I think Bain Capital Ventures and Bain Capital Private Equity definitely have some of that consulting DNA, both because they hire from those areas pretty extensively, but also because they were just kind of birthed out of them. And so, yeah, you see kind of the way they approach diligence, you know, on the job is pretty reflective of how deep and wide. You know, I think a consultant would go if they're if they're mapping like an entire market, for example, right? And that filtered down to the Ventures group, which is like, OK, fine, you're looking at a $5 million series A.. But let's approach this from a pretty definitely not shoot from the hip, much more like deep, deep analysis and, you know, large decks that cover a lot of cover, a lot of ground. So for me, that was a great foundational place to kind of learn diligence and learn about growth investing.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:14] So you get the offer after that partner meeting, I'm sure, right after they call you up and give you the offer.
Joe: [00:29:21] And yeah, I know exactly where I was standing. Yeah, tell me. Yeah, I was standing. It was probably like,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:27] Were you still in Boston?
Joe: [00:29:29] Pretty late? No, I was back in New York. I was so Merrill Lynch's office was right down near where Goldman is now down on VC Street at the seaport in New York. and now that's not the seaport, but a world financial center. And so standing on the water, I popped out because I knew they were going to call. and yeah, I was pretty late at night because and I was still at my banking desk, but I popped out to take the call. And yeah, it was just like, thrilled to get the offer and was pretty sure I was going to take it shortly thereafter.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:59] And so that was what a year and a half before you were supposed to start. So it was still, I would call it, still on cycle. Let's call it still on cycle. But just yeah, yeah.
Joe: [00:30:09] So that was in spring of twenty. There are 2008, sorry. yeah, isn't it?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:17] And so was there any sort of pullback from the PE funds, do you think from afterwards? Since we were in the depths of the financial crisis, like the whole economy collapsing right around, then
Joe: [00:30:31] I think like fortunately being that it was still two thousand, you know, it was 2007 turning into 2008. I think the recruiting cycle was still really strong, which which is good. And as far as I know, like my other peers in the M&A group, you know, I think there was 12 of us, I want to say, and I think 11 of us left after after one or two years. But yeah, nobody like got a PE offer and then it was rescinded or anything crazy like that. As far as I can remember, at least not for my group.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:03] Ok. And so you had this offer. Things really started kind of changing the following year in your second year and. Was there any sort of like, hey, I want to get out of here, was it hard to work when you had that offer in hand? I can imagine I didn't have an offer until like three months before I left my banking gig. Oh yeah, I can't imagine it.
Joe: [00:31:22] Definitely both, because you're already looking towards your next, your next gig, but also because I didn't really go into the process. As we discussed earlier, I didn't go into it thinking, Well, I'm going to do VC growth. I was like, Boy, this is like a kind of a reorientation from these megadeals that I am like toiling away at two a.m. on to deals that frankly, I was more interested in smaller growth deals that were more tech driven. And so like, I also had this kind of like existential thing happening a side from just the, you know, showing up.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:56] Can I leave early and go on vacation and just take six months off before this?
Joe: [00:32:01] No, they still rung us out. Pretty good. But yeah, you know, I think I think you get the hard part about that was,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:07] Did you get time with that? Did you get time off before the jump?
Joe: [00:32:10] Yeah, yeah. So as I mentioned, I was I was there right up until the Bank of America merger. and so there came a time in the spring of 2009 when the the actual offices were combining. And so for people who are on like live deals, they said, OK, well, we're going to make you move from World Financial center up to Bryant Park and kind of join up with your B of a colleagues and you'll be there for like four months until you leave. And for folks who are not on live deals and who had offers, they were like, you don't have to make the move. So I actually had an extended period of time, which was really nice to sort of like, go reconnect with all the people that I've lost touch with while banking.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:53] Did you travel at all or are you just like, hung out? and I actually
Joe: [00:32:56] I went back to Wisconsin and spent a good deal of the summer there, which is the time to be there. And yeah, I mostly just spent time with my family and had some family illness that was going on. And so it was trying to spend more quality time back there and fortunately just kind of worked out that way.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:13] Nice. so you had a little bit of a breather. You kind of moved to Boston, what a couple of weeks before you start, a month before you start? And what was that like? So complete different culture. 180 what it was going from banking to venture? Tell me about that.
Joe: [00:33:31] So my associate class at Bain Capital ventures was myself and three other hires. All three of the other hires were consultants. So that was one interesting wrinkle. And then we also did kind of like a global training program for several weeks where we were all together with the private equity team as well and kind of intermingled for a period of time, which was interesting. But it just kind of
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:02] What was the training like is just like general, like consulting. like this is, Hey man, I'd have to look back and think I still
Joe: [00:34:09] Have some of the materials somewhere. But yeah, it was. I think for some of the consultants, there was probably some like valuation of finance, boot camp and for us, for, well, for me as a banker. And the venture group was kind of the opposite. So that was one kind of cool thing was that I think I learned from my consulting brethren like some of the skills that they were really good at and I had no exposure to as a banker and vice versa. so like, you know, financial modeling questions came my way and like market map, competitive analysis questions went their way. And so that was that was interesting. But yeah, trading was relatively brief compared to investment banking training.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:53] Yeah. And so then you started and what was the day to day like? What was like a typical week or a typical day? Was it just looking at opportunities where you sourcing? How did the whole what was the funnel like
Joe: [00:35:03] In terms of? Yeah. So the associate role there, you know, typically they would staff up a quote unquote deal team with like depending on how large the deal and what stage it was with a senior partner like a principal VP type and then an associate. So fairly lean, I mean, almost never more than really three people on a team, right? And then there was Also there was also an analyst level that at Bcf D, the analysts were really solely focused on sourcing.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:36] So I read that undergrad
Joe: [00:35:39] Because, yeah, most of them were right out of undergrad, and most of them also kind of transitioned out after a couple of years as opposed to having career track to associate and then MBA and continuing on, although some some of the really exceptional guys did do that. So, yeah, I didn't. I mean, I didn't come in with a strong network to go out and like source. And so it was more like getting staffed up on a live opportunity with a partner or kind of principal level person who had been shown a deal and wanted to dig in on it and start, you know, either modeling it out. On the later stage, or like just diving into the technology and sort of market positioning for the earlier stage stuff, but
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:19] So like, were you were you involved in like actually putting together like investment committee memos like you would in private equity and all of that and putting the deck together, getting the model together? Industry analysis, all that.
Joe: [00:36:30] Yeah, one hundred percent. And yeah, like I said a little bit earlier, we were, you know, even on the earlier stage stuff, you know, series A and sometimes earlier, you know, we were putting together pretty robust analyses. got it. So not your typical like couple of pages. still, the monster.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:45] So did you have to make it beautiful or were they more forgiving than the banking and your banking peers in terms of the perfect alignment of the fonts? I want to
Joe: [00:36:54] Say like, yeah, it would be rare that I would get like a stylistic nit at midnight. But you know, we still made relatively good looking, but your consultant
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:05] Peers probably had really good skills and Power Points. yeah, yeah. Yeah, stuff.
Joe: [00:37:10] So I think, yeah, the standard was pretty high for that. And also because, you know, the Investment Committee, whether it was a late stage kind of growth deal like Bain Capital invested in LinkedIn in the Series D or, you know, a series that I might have been working on both of those process. And those documents would make it through the investment committee, which was like literally, you know, 12 12 partners sitting around the room. And so like, there was a pretty high bar to get through those committees and definitely not a running gun kind of venture model where you see some like, especially now that I've been spending more time in venture, you see some places where, you know, partner likes a deal, partner does the deal right and Bain Capital was a little bit more like formulaic and applied that same formula and process to some early stage deals, which I think they've probably they've probably massaged that process a little bit to accommodate. They've been competitive at the early stage
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:06] And been forced to loosen it a little bit.
Joe: [00:38:08] Well, especially with early stage deals. And obviously, I can't speak to It as much since I've left many years ago. but yeah, just to stay competitive with sort of the Silicon Valley types that move much faster and can kind of like get through a process on an early stage deal within a short time frames.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:25] So you're there for a good couple of years, you? I assume learned a lot. But then, yeah, it was
Joe: [00:38:34] A really good opportunity to learn that asset class just having exposure to the growth deals was that was very comfortable for me because it was very much like banking in terms of like building a large, you know, multi $100 million and sometimes billion dollar investment valuation in case. And then on the early stage stuff, it was just really piqued my interest and I kind of discovered that I loved emerging technology at that time. And so, yeah, just like a lot of other folks in my class, it was really usually a to an out program and almost everybody went to business school or in some cases, joined start ups, but. But before class three of us went on to business school, myself and one of my best friends there went on to HBS and then one to Wharton and one stuck around for s little while at BCB.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:25] But you didn't do that or you did. You actually?
Joe: [00:39:28] You went to I went straight from there to,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:30] Oh, you went right after there, because that makes sense. You did two years banking, two years venture, then HBS, and then you went to PE. Yeah, or no, no. Then you did internship in PE and then P
Joe: [00:39:43] And then tell me exactly that was that was really, I think, like to satisfy my like the voice in the back of my head, which, you know, as we talked about earlier in banking, it was like, Well, you're going to go from banking, then you'll go to private equity. And it's sort of like a done deal. Well, when that didn't happen, I always kind of thought, Well, If I have the skill set and I find the right group that I would enjoy working with, you know, private equity is a pretty darn good career. So maybe I should scratch that itch and test it out. And so I did, you know, super fortunate to find a group Norwest Equity Partners based in Minneapolis. Not to be confused with Norwest Venture Partners, which is similarly has a similar LP base, but its focus on venture is on the West Coast. But the middle market private equity firm Norwest Equity Partners is where I spent my summer in at Harvard Business School and I had an absolutely amazing time there. So like I guess part of the challenge for me was that I, as I thought about like whether or not I would like private equity. I just I loved the team there and I had some like friends of friends and even some family friends that knew people there. And so like, it was an instantaneous fit. A lot of the same interests and like I said earlier, kind of a cultural fit there. But. You know, as I was, I was dating my now wife as I came back from that internship, I was like, Gosh, everything was so good, I had an offer in hand, so I'm coming back to business school with an offer in hand. And obviously, like, very, very excited and proud to have received that offer. But, you know, a lot of late nights and deliberation and fortunately, good advice for my now wife. but about, you know, what is this what you really want to do with your life and what keeps you up at night in a good way? And what wakes you up in the morning in a good way. And for me, that wasn't middle market private equity. Unfortunately, even though the team and the offer were fantastic, and I think I'll say this, if I did private equity, it would have been there, but I think I was just kind of to bit by the growth bug. And so back to the drawing board and started interviewing.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:53] Yeah, you were you. You're willing to kind of coast in your second year, although to be fair, you had, you know, coming from HBS, you know, you're probably going to get other interviews.
Joe: [00:42:04] So your interviews, yes. But like, I think the scariest thing was, you know, first of all, like the venture capital community, I think is probably as small or smaller than the private equity community in terms of jobs. and then also, there's just fewer junior roles, I think, because you have a lot of venture capital firms like the one that I'm a part of now or we have like two senior people and really like, no, no real junior people, right? And so as a result, there's not a lot of like associate and senior associate seats just sitting out there like they are in private equity. So that uncertainty was certainly scary for me to go back. And, you know, I ended up having to interview, I think, for like from the time I turned down the offer from Northwest, I think I interviewed for like, you know, off and on. But, you know, as much as I possibly could for like 10 months before accepting an offer
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:53] And was that because you just weren't finding the right fit? Or did you were you trying to get back into a venture fund aggressively?
Joe: [00:42:59] I mean, I was talking to a bunch of venture funds and then and then some of the some of the ones were like that I was really interested in were West Coast only, and I kind of wanted to stay in the Northeast. Yeah. So there was that angle, then there was just the frequency was there were a fair number of people looking to get into VC and not a lot of interviews. so I was certainly interviewing fairly regularly. but if I had stuck with P, I think it would just there would have been probably more opportunity and so just had to be patient and wait for somebody to come along. That was interesting and compelling and also venture.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:33] So how close were you to graduating before you? Did you come close to graduation without an offer in hand?
Joe: [00:43:40] Yeah. So trying to think, gosh, it was like, yeah, right around the time of graduation. And I ended up locking it up, and then I ended up starting that fall at Samsung. So Samsung was going through kind of an interesting they're building a new group from scratch that was focused on tech and software, and they had an M&A arm and a VC arm. and I was fortunate to be, I guess, the first hire underneath the managing director on the venture team. So yeah, that was a fantastic opportunity to get back into the venture game and to see it from obviously like a different angle working at a corporate. but yeah, working in a huge company like Samsung with a lot of brand recognition, it made building the group a little bit. building it from scratch was a little bit easier.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:26] An internal like an internal venture fund within a large corporate like that. How how is it structured in the sense of like, are you guys given a mandate of a certain amount of like funding, like assets like it's not a typical a.m. model or you raise it outside phone with LPs, right? So are they like here's five hundred dollars go, you know, go have fun or how does it work? Or you just kind of force deals.
Joe: [00:44:49] So there's so many different flavors of it, as I'm sure, you know. But yeah, we had the benefit. So the group I was part of is now called Samsung next, and we had a predecessor that is still also still operating, called Samsung Ventures. And so they had actually established like a fund of their own. And we were able to kind of piggyback on that in order to get up and running quickly. And there was talk about like having our own dedicated fund with dedicated capital from the from the company. And I don't think that's I still don't think that's happened to this date. But there was just there were a lot of like tactical things just with regard to getting the whole group stood up and operational that, you know, I think just having assets to deploy was was the number one goal. And while I was there, you know, we had we had plenty of capital to deploy and we're still kind of feeling out our mandate, which, you know, depending on who the CEO or who the, you know, oversight of of the corporate was, you know, would change over time. So you saw this sort of like sinusoidal change between being super strategic versus being super financially oriented.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:58] And so what do you think in the three years that you were there? How? Did it change, like how did that, how did that wave kind of change? Yeah, I
Joe: [00:46:06] Mean, well, so I guess what I what I'm what I'm describing is kind of it would change almost like quarter or biannually. So, you know, that made it sometimes difficult where like you'd find and that's probably why I'm not there any longer was that I came from Bain Capital, where it was like our number one goal is to make fantastic investments and achieve great investment returns. So my orientation as a business person and as a VC, even as young as I was, was towards that. And then, you know, I had to like, learn some new tools and techniques at Samsung in order to, like, play the game and get stuff done, get deals done that we're both financially oriented and also made a strategic impact on Samsung. and that required me to be me and the whole team to be more political and like learn the ropes of a of a company that was, you know, thousands and thousands of miles away. And that, you know, we were we were fundamentally trying to find software and technology to invest in knowing full well that we had something like 75 of the 75 thousand of the brightest engineering minds, you know, over in Korea that we're going to like, help us to either review or shoot us down or think that they could build something better. And so there was that kind of ongoing tension between not invented here syndrome and other things that played sometimes worked against us.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:21] So were you were you not able to? You were able to get deals done? But was it not at the rate that kind of satisfied you or like? Was that a frustration?
Joe: [00:47:29] Yeah, it was. It was definitely. You kind of hit the nail on the head. I think it was
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:34] Partially that would be really frustrating.
Joe: [00:47:36] Well, that's at that stage in your venture career. Like, I think the more ownership you can have over a deal number one and the more deals that you can put on your track record just really build that over time. Those are two really important things. And so I was starting to get really good ownership over some of the deals, which was good as in like being able to like, lead and bring deals to the table on my own as I got a little bit more senior there. but yeah, the frequency of getting deals done was not as high as I would have probably liked. And then, you know, you would get a you get a no go decision for like a variety of different reasons, which was difficult to navigate and sort of difficult to swallow over time where we might do a very strategic deal one day that didn't feel like a great financial decision, from my perspective. And then the next day, we would do a financial deal that wasn't very strategic. So I think the consistency of like how we made decisions has gotten a lot better over time. but, you know, while I was there, we were still filling it out. so it sounds like that
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:40] Played a lot into the reason going out on your own. Tell me a little bit about kind of that whole process because it's kind of daunting, I'm sure to, I mean, branch out.
Joe: [00:48:51] I think it all it all sort of grew out of what I what I just was mentioning, which is like, get your own track record, build your own book like live or die by the sword, so to speak. Like you have to do your deals, you have to validate that you have good decision making and and also good guidance of your companies once you've invested. And so I think the only way for me to do that in the most like clear and scorecard driven way was to really do it on my own. And and also notably probably not within the context of another large firm like Bain Capital, where, you know, you would have still had at least one layer of sort of oversight as in like a managing director that would
Have taken many, many years to get to that level. so, yeah, I met my current partner, who was an entrepreneur, a successful entrepreneur and an angel investor, and he was actually an angel investor into a deal that I was deeply diligent. And through that process, we both started kind of co mentoring the CEO of that company. He was an investor in it, and I was just an interested party who wanted to help the entrepreneur. And so over the course of, you know, probably 18 months, I had, you know, monthly or quarterly check ins with this young founder. And through that process, my now partner sort of saw, Hey, not all VCs are bad, like he was coming at it from the entrepreneurial side. And then he got to see that I really like to be operationally involved with the portfolio companies, whether I invest it or not. And so we got to know each other through that entrepreneur in our sort of shared interest in in the space that he was operating in. and fortunately, my business partner sold his business. And so he was looking for sort of a new full time way to deploy his time. And he had a great angel track record that I was able to sort of take a look at and validate that, hey, this is a great operator and great entrepreneur, but also be somebody who understands how to invest. And so I thought, Boy, that's a pretty rare breed and a nice complement to somebody like me who really came from like the financial and investment world and less operational. So we came together to to start studio in about three and a half almost four years ago now. And we're in the process of raising our second fund right now.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:08] Congrats, man. Thank you. Super exciting. And so you think how many of us have you guys made in fun one.
Joe: [00:51:16] So 14. Fun one was very small and we've gotten off the ground as fast as we could and made 14 investments out of that fund and have now started making investments out of our second fund, just committed to our fourth deal out of that fund. so we're continuing t raised, as I mentioned, but you know, candidly, I think that was part of the impetus for going off on my own, which is like if you want to make a career out of this business, you need to be able to obviously have the track record, get the experience and be sort of like the first call in the in the on the call sheet for an entrepreneur when they say, like, Hey, I either have a great opportunity in front of me or I have a huge challenge in front of me, am I going to call an associate or am I going to call like managing director or the answer is really easy. You call the managing director and so you want to be that call, right? Which which now fortunately, I'm in that position to be that call. You know, that's that's sort of what I was aiming for, but the last part of it was you've got to be able to raise capital and build relationships. And so I think if you want to make a career in this industry,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:17] Obviously you're your role from being venture to now is shifted dramatically. You're not putting the investment committee together. You're doing a lot more of the outreach, I assume, and the the networking, the building and those relationships in the specific spaces you want to you want to be in is that is that accurate?
Joe: [00:52:34] Yeah. I mean, it's it's constantly managing a large and growing funnel. I mean, always growing the funnel, but also trying to be efficient in sort of validating and passing things down to that funnel and prioritizing continuously with just two partners. I mean, it's hard the hundreds and hundreds of deals a year. And so just trying to trying to get through that, as is a pretty big effort. But you know, it's also the most exciting part about the job is that like every day, I wake up to an inbox full of great ideas and some not so great ideas. But you know, the great ones are what really gets you excited and like, you just want to, like, talk all day about it. And like I said earlier, it keeps you up at night in a good way.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:14] Yeah, that's great. Tell me a little bit about the actual jump from Samsung to doing your own thing because it was the was the initial capital used in Fund one. Did you raise it outside? Did you have LPs or was it mostly through the funding of your partner and your own capital?
Joe: [00:53:29] So I was fortunate in that my, my business partner and current partner had sold his business very successfully. Right. And so he was able to put up a significant amount of the first fund. And so that was enough to sort of get the boat off the dock. And then when I when I joined, we ended up raising from a total of about 27 LPs, of which, you know, many, many, if not most, came from him because he had been doing it, been raising the fund on kind of his own for a little while. And then when I hopped over, I was able to bring in a few others and round it out. So now as we go to fund two, you know, it's like a lot of the relationships have become shared and we've continued to build those LP relationships, which fortunately with our with our different backgrounds. You know, Liam and my networks are fairly complementary, so that's trying to trying to leverage that and continue to scale the fund.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:54:22] What do you think's been the hardest part about kind of going out on your own, just getting all the operational stuff set up? Or what's the do you need a lot of virtual assistance help or what?
Joe: [00:54:30] What's the yeah, that's the hardest. It is. There's nothing that doesn't fall on your plate. I think whether it's like health Insurance, know pay checks, whatever, and it can be a huge time sink. So I think like leveraging outside and inside resources, you know, with a limited kind of asset base is is key. And I think prioritizing and maintaining your core focus, which is finding amazing entrepreneurs, making sure the top of the funnel is full and the bottom of the funnel is full of the best distillate. You know, I think you just have to really try to take the 80:20, meaning that you guys are finding great deals in the toe is keeping the the train on time.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:55:13] Are you thinking of potentially in fun once you have fun to raise, potentially bringing on some junior help, some interns, anything like that? Or have you thought about that?
Joe: [00:55:20] Yeah. So we've had a few interns over the years, mostly like summer interns from HBS and other places. and so that's been a that's been a huge help. And I think, you know, looking back, as I said, there's not a lot of venture seats out there. So it's I think it's a benefit that goes both ways in the sense that, you know, this is a this is a a mentorship driven business and so like to have an intern who's exceptionally smart but doesn't have a lot of VC experience, I think can be a win for us. And so we'll certainly look to do that again in the future. And then, you know, depending on how large the fund is, when we when we kind of wrap it up for fun too, we may have the opportunity to add to the team at the associate or analyst level, but it's certainly not a necessity. I mean, I think we've become pretty accustomed to managing the deal flow with just two partners, but would certainly be nice to have another set of hands sometimes.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:56:12] For sure, for sure. So before we wrap it up anything, just looking back at your career that you kind of want to give yourself your younger self some advice in terms of things you would have changed or things you'd tell the younger listeners in terms of advice as they kind of map their career.
Joe: [00:56:28] Yeah, I mean, I think I spoke a good deal on how difficult the decision to turn down the northwest private equity offer was, and I think like that enabled me to do a lot of soul searching and seemed like and self assessment, which was forced because like it was a necessity, it was part of making that decision. But I think looking back, I kind of wish I had done that more and earlier in my career, rather than just saying like, where's the best next place to land? And you know, for me, that was like investment banking, private equity and then like, you know, business school. And it turned out that my path was some of that, but some of some not that. and so I think being open minded and doing a self-assessment, as I said, to learn that like, Hey, what I really care about is, you know, working directly with people who are changing the tech landscape, changing the world, coming up with new ideas. that's what I'm really passionate about and whether or not I can build a, you know, an LBO model in an hour, that's fantastic that, you know, you can learn that. But on the other hand, if that's not what you want to do all day, it's good to learn that earlier rather than later. And so, you know, I was fortunate to learn when I did, but I think being self-aware earlier on in your career can be really helpful.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:57:49] Great words to live by. I think we'll end it there. Well, Joe, thanks so much for taking the time to come on.
Joe: [00:57:55] My pleasure. Thanks so much. Great to connect and look forward to keeping in touch.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:57:59] And thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street, Oasis Dotcom and till next time.
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