Sales & Trading at Nomura to Start-up Entrepreneur. Humble and Eager | WSO Podcast E47

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Member @Phillysfinest shares his path from a liberal arts college to working in Nomura's structured products desk. How he got promoted to associate, how much he was paid and why he decided to leave all of that behind to start his own company.

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WSO Podcast (Episode 47) Transcript:

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:05] 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.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:22] It.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:25] In this episode, member Phyllis Finest shares his path from a liberal arts college to working in numerous structured products desk how he got promoted to associate, how much he was paid, and why he decided to leave it all behind to start his own company. Enjoy. Philly's finest. Thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Voice podcast.

Phillysfinest: [00:00:54] Yeah. Thanks for having me, Patrick.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:56] You'd be great if you could just give the listeners a quick summary of your background.

Phillysfinest: [00:01:01] Sure. So I went to, I guess you call it a non-target small liberal arts school and jumped into an internship in sales and trading, which converted into a full time offer at Nomura. So I joined their structured products desk for a sales guy, spent, I guess, three and a half years doing that before leaving to start my first startup and have been in the startup world ever since.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:33] Cool. So let's go back to the liberal arts college because I went to one as well. I was at Williams, so we have a little bit of common there. So was there any in terms of like how you landed that internship that turned in that sales and trading that turned into a full time offer? Can you tell me a little bit about that? Was it junior year typical? Did you start your sophomore year? How did you know? Like trading was something you wanted to do.

Phillysfinest: [00:01:54] Yeah. And actually be curious to hear your thoughts about this, because I think that obviously. Williams, you probably consider it a target score at this point, but we did have a bit of an on campus presence. So I started sophomore year and got an internship in private equity just basically through networking. But one thing that I've kind of seen is as the recruiting cycles moved earlier and earlier, you know, it's it's almost the kids at liberal arts schools are at an advantage. I mean, I don't know how the numbers exactly work out, but for us, we had Barclays, Goldman, Nomura and a few others on campus. And given how many fewer kids are competing for those spots every year, it seems like those that were smart and networking and had their head, their shit together could actually seize those roles over competing with maybe hundreds of kids at a bigger school. That might be a target.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:49] Yeah, and I think that's fair. I think at Williams it was a similar thing, although the FT, the the ties into Wall Street, into finance in general are pretty strong for Williams I'm sure for your school as well. But yeah we did have a lot of on campus recruiting. The timing of when I graduated wasn't great it was 2002. So is right after 9/11. The recession was pretty bad. So but in other more normal years I would say that yeah, if you, if you're interested in it and you go after it, it's it's a pretty good, pretty good place to be small, small kind of liberal arts.

Phillysfinest: [00:03:27] College that places like Williams and Colby. You know, the likelihood that an alum will talk to you just because you have that on your resume, I think is increases a lot. I know friends who come from, you know, these bigger schools and the alums at the kind of networks they're running into, just they can't they don't have the time to talk to every kid that reaches out. Right. But for example, whenever anybody reaches out to me, I'm always happy to talk to them just because of how much smaller it is.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:52] Yeah, know for sure. So you kind of did your own hustling for sophomore summer. Sounds like you got a private equity internship. Was that just like through LinkedIn? How were you doing that networking?

Phillysfinest: [00:04:03] So that was networking actually.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:06] Alum and stuff like that for friends and family.

Phillysfinest: [00:04:08] From alumni networking into a conversation with someone who an alumni put me in touch with, who's actually from Philly where I'm from, and you could tell by the username which converted into into the into the internship offer.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:22] Got it. And so what did you do there? Was it mostly just like busywork or just helping them do like review sims and stuff like that or.

Phillysfinest: [00:04:30] Yeah, I mean, I would say that that shop is much more forward looking and uses your interns because they think that eventually it'll be good for the interns to appreciate them having had that opportunity. So it was a lot of, you know, reading Sims and bringing notes to them, even if they were on past deals and just trying to learn about the process. So they were they were kind enough to put us through several of the training in the street, Wall Street prep sort of modeling courses. And we're really not trying to use us in the traditional sense where you'd use interns for for grunt work. Obviously, a lot of this a lot of us were actually sophomores, so that's great. It probably wouldn't wouldn't it be very useful to do that anyway?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:13] Awesome. Sounds like a great experience. So you finished that up. Do you feel like that internship really helped you in the the summer analyst recruiting the junior year or the junior year?

Phillysfinest: [00:05:22] Yeah. I mean, I think that I think that the what I got most out of it was just sort of learning what to say and what not to say and just general exposure to the terminology, which, you know, no matter how much you study in school, is pretty hard to get how people actually use the terms that we use in finance. Right. And I think that it gives a sense of humility that, you know, college kids often think that they know so much about trading or IB from what they read on Wall Street, Oasis and everywhere else. And it's a bit humbling to be amongst the actual professionals.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:56] Yeah. And then you see how little you actually know.

Phillysfinest: [00:05:59] Exactly right. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:00] So I think so you kind of head into junior year, your is trading kind of on your radar here at this point. You did a private equity internship. Was IB there was what was the thought process going in there? And then curious, was it still on campus recruiting? So the firms were coming actually on campus for the interviews, or was it all like, I don't think the video interviews had come out yet, right? So it was still kind of they were coming on and doing the interviews right there. Correct.

Phillysfinest: [00:06:25] Yeah. So for me, I was still a bit undecided about whether I was going to go the IB route or the trading route. I was basically just taking every interview that I got just because Colby you know, the easiest way for for me and for my peers was the seats that were set aside for Colby kids. So, you know, they had to define number of those for IBM and find a number of sales and trading. So I just applied to all of them, basically. Got it.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:56] And then, like, was it was it around like ten resume drops on campus around that year? 20?

Phillysfinest: [00:07:01] Yeah, exactly.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:02] And how many do you think you probably like? Yeah. How many think you converted to first round?

Phillysfinest: [00:07:07] A little more than ten. So I think I had 15 interviews.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:13] And so you did it. You had a good conversion. You had a really good conversion from resume drop to interviews, first rounds.

Phillysfinest: [00:07:20] Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:21] Why do you think that was? Why do you think that was just the internship, the private equity?

Phillysfinest: [00:07:25] Because by then I had done so much networking. I think I didn't do a single resume drop that was just into general pool. Got it. Always had someone who hadn't worked my way in to try to put a note on my resume.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:40] Mostly. Mostly. Mostly through alum. Still.

Phillysfinest: [00:07:45] Mostly through alums. Yep.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:46] And again, LinkedIn or just was the school giving you some just their contacts directly and you're just emailing them?

Phillysfinest: [00:07:51] I think that the I mean, at least for us and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this, but the alumni web page and resources are totally underutilized. I think it's a lot more compelling to receive an email that you can see someone's put some thought into versus LinkedIn, which honestly is obviously a great medium for connecting with people, but it runs the risk that whomever is on the receiving end just isn't checking it that often.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:16] Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, I think people I think Lincoln is a great place if you can't find it elsewhere, but if you can get the emails, it's more valuable. The open rates are probably higher and more frequent, obviously, especially if you structure it in such a way where it's short, punchy to the point and it's not like giving them your life story.

Phillysfinest: [00:08:34] Yeah, which is a big mistake. 60 words.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:36] Yeah, exactly. So, okay, so you're coming into your you're taking a bunch of interviews. You had like around ten first rounds or 15 first rounds. How did it go in terms of performance Iby versus sales and trading? Did you feel like you were underprepared, overprepared? Yeah. Tell me a little about that process and how you improved.

Phillysfinest: [00:08:57] I definitely feel like the first few went very poorly and the results indicate that because I didn't was not invited back for super days, etc. there. But I think I did better in the banking interviews than I did in the trading ones just because having been on the other side of those interviews and I'm sure you notice as well, it's when when someone in sales and trading is unprepared for an interview and oftentimes someone just grabs you and says, hey, can you do these five interviews? You don't have defined questions as you do in investment banking. So you just sort of ask whatever it might be. And if you get a trader that's having a bad day, as I did in several instances, you can really get smoked.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:38] Yeah. So they're just testing you. They're asking you like all these crazy brain teasers and stuff, or was it more product specific about what they were trained to see what you knew?

Phillysfinest: [00:09:48] It was it was a lot of brainteasers. I was actually pretty surprised, and I think it's probably changed since I was interviewing.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:54] But no, they're still brainteasers. They're still brainteasers. There's they're still there. Maybe less so, but. So tell me a little bit about just so did you get multiple offers? Was this was Nomura the one offer you got or was it like, at least for me, Rothschild was like my last offer, my last interview. And granted, it was 2002, so it was a tough year, but it was literally the last chance I had and I grabbed a seat. Was it similar to you?

Phillysfinest: [00:10:24] So when the dust settled, I had Nomura on the sales trading side. And one banking offer that I would say is not bulge bracket but sort of the next tier down. And having talked to at this point, probably 200 people in the industry and sort of knowing that I wanted to use this as a stepping stone, opted for the lifestyle and what I would learn on the trade for obviously you get more responsibility quicker if you can politic your way around the trading floor than you do in investment banking.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:03] Talk to me about it. Talk to me about that. Talk to me about that a little bit. That's interesting to.

Phillysfinest: [00:11:07] Me.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:08] We haven't had too many people. We haven't had too many people in sat on the on the pod. We've had traders and stuff like that, but not like not the sales and the sales side as much. We've had more like prop traders and commodity traders, but not so much like the people who are, like you said, having to politic around. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that so people can get a better sense of what it's like day to day.

Phillysfinest: [00:11:30] Yeah. I mean, I think that one thing that goes pretty unsaid in sales and trading is especially at a bank like Nomura, where there's a huge range of quality in the trading desks. You know, we were pretty strong in mortgages. We were pretty strong in rates, not so much in FX at the time that I was there. Mm hmm. And, you know, you don't always get your choices for when you're doing the rotation. And for for me, you know, as I was doing the rotation, it still wasn't clear who had a head count, who didn't. So they ended up having to scrap all of that. I didn't actually rotate to mortgages during my internship. They made everyone do a full set of interviews when we got there. So I think, number one, if you're going into sales and trading, I think my advice would be to do a ton of diligence on what desks your bank is strongest at. And from there within that desk. What pods is there most upward mobility in? So I think you can you can often find examples where there's a senior trader trading some product. He might only have one junior guy. And if you go in and take that junior role, you'll have a lot more responsibility just by definition of the team being lean than you would being the six guy on a bigger products desk. So I was fortunate enough I impressed, I guess, one of the top producers who took me under his wing on the sales side of things and then sort of coached me on what to do when there's accounts up for grabs, how to make sure I had sponsorship within some more senior levels of the firm. And it's those kind of things that I think as you're paying your dues and investment banking, so to speak, are a lot harder to access.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:20] Can you tell me a little bit more about the sales side and what how how students should think about that in terms of trading? Is is trading right? There's flow. You're actually doing your executing orders, stuff like that. Right. Tell me about the sales side in terms of what your day to day is like. So can you give me an example of like a day you'd come in? What would you be doing?

Phillysfinest: [00:13:39] Yeah, absolutely. So I think that much like trading the first year of sales, you will not be doing anything that's particularly value add until you learn the ropes. I think it's hugely, very in terms of products. But for for mortgages, we covered such a range of products from non-agency agency CLO, still under mortgages at all SFC securities. So you're trying to arrange things and show at this point your bosses client list things that make sense from a risk and yield perspective. So you're actually sort of being this filter of information and you're going through the products that you have on offer and the products that are out there in the market available for bid and trying to match those up with what, you know, your clients will be looking for both on the real money side and on the cash money side. So you're trying to digest and sort through and make sure that they have the best quality of information for the products they care about.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:37] So tell me tell me about let's back up on that, because I think that's let's unpack that a little bit. So specifically, when you're looking through what your your boss's clients want. Is that like when we're talking clients, we're talking what, Fortune 500 companies, everything from pensions, endowments, what what type of institutions are the clients typically hedge funds Like what? How should I think about. So would that be prime brokerage guys?

Phillysfinest: [00:15:02] I think our desk was a little bit unusual in a sense that most of the sales people covered both real money, meaning pension funds, money managers, insurance companies and hedge funds and fast money clients. So we would cover a lot of the big West Coast money managers, insurance companies. And then on the flip side, the people that are looking for higher yield would be the New York based hedge funds.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:28] The New York based hedge funds. And so specifically, when you're looking for information, is your boss telling you like, hey, we need this type of issue, we're looking for this type.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:38] Of.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:39] Security, this type of yield, And you're looking you said, to what's out there on offer, but also what what is being created in house or like, how should I how should I think of that? Because, you know, explain it to me like, I don't know anything because I really know very little about sales trading. So so explain it to me.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:54] Because explain.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:56] To me as if it's like my first day on the job, like the basics. So I come in there and you're like, this is what we do. We are we are helping our clients get into the right type of risk reward securities, or how should I think about it?

Phillysfinest:  [00:16:11] That's exactly right. And especially on the structured products desk, you know, you're taking something and you're breaking it out into multiple strategies. So you have a senior lower yield less risk tranche, obviously, that if we're talking about this at a super high level, would be directionally a fit for someone who isn't necessarily looking for high risk levered return. And then the bottom piece of that, your subordinate tranches might have a much higher yield that would be a better fit. And that's I guess that in a nutshell is sort of the purpose of structuring.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:49] And as a as a first year, you're really just learning a lot of that. We're learning the ropes as a second year. What how does that change your responsibility? Like how are you actually your. What tools are you using or is it all in Excel? Like what is it all through Bloomberg Terminal? How should I be thinking? Like, how are you screening all this data coming in?

Phillysfinest: [00:17:08] Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of Excel. It's a lot of Bloomberg data. You know, at this point, every trade your desk is ever done with a given client is going to be in your friends record. Yeah. So I would say that the people that go above and beyond actually will pull up the bonds in Bloomberg will run the bonds for non agencies case. We use a tool called Intex and try and figure out exactly why those clients like those particular bonds. What are the characteristics that made those appealing? And can you replicate that as you're looking at running bonds that are coming out more continuously.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:42] And you say coming out, that's from other banks, That's from you guys, It's from everybody.

Phillysfinest: [00:17:47] Yeah. I mean, your bank is going to create some, especially on the agency side of things. You have clients will be selling them on what's called Buicks, which is bid wanted in competition, which is basically an auction. Got it. And then you're constantly working at least when I was there for out of com trades, which are bonds, you can pull out from one client and sell it to another and not have to be fighting everybody on the street for that allocation competition.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:12] Fair Okay. Thank you for that. Kind of a little mini deep dive, I'll call it. So tell me a little bit about like what you were kind of directly below, kind of somebody who was doing well as a senior person who's doing well. And so you had a lot of exposure. How did you said you impress them? How did you impress them early on? What do you think set you apart? To get that. See, it's pretty funny.

Phillysfinest: [00:18:36] Because I would say for the first year I did an impression and we had a bit of a contentious relationship because he thought I was underperforming and then something flipped. Sort of at the time that you start to get your feet wet and actually understand what a bond is and what you're doing. And I would say that the number one thing in sales and trading is you just cannot be afraid to be the guy that's trying too hard. I told this to interns all the time. It's like, sure, you might get laughed at from your friends if you literally run down the street to go get that lunch order or whatever it is. But people are going to know you as being the guy who's willing to do that and willing to go that extra mile. So I think what what sort of flipped our relationship was when he saw that I was willing to put in the effort to see what his clients wanted, what they were doing, go above and beyond to make sure that everything was in order for our teams pod from trades to color being sent out to our clients. And I think more, more so than anything, it's just about how you position that with seniors and sales and trading. It's a lot. You have a lot more room to go outside and find ways that you can add value than you do in banking. Because a lot of these sales and trading personnel are people that have been around the street for a while. So what do you think? Learning things like how.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:03] Yeah, what do you think flipped? Like what do you think flipped suddenly where you started figuring it out? Hey, it'd be really good. He'd actually prefer it and he just tell you, Hey, you need to start giving me some more like, feedback. You need to start digging deeper into, like, what my clients want. Add more than just being a process process monkey. Like, what was the what was the feedback he gave you or was it just something that you grew into?

Phillysfinest: [00:20:24] Uh, no. I mean, it was it was a lot of the feedback that he was giving me. And I feel like at a certain point, you stop becoming afraid of your own shadow. You stop worrying that you're going to screw up a trade. And I think what he appreciated and what ultimately I appreciated in my junior people was when they wouldn't say, Hey, can I show this bond to so-and-so? Or Hey, should I do this? They would just they would wouldn't be afraid to just go do it. And oftentimes they're going to be right. And when they're wrong, when you're wrong, you can get shown sometimes discipline, but mostly shown why you're wrong, which actually proves to be a lot more valuable than just constantly asking for permission to do something.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:05] Gosh, it's almost being a little bit bold. Once you kind of feel like you have the ropes and doing things that make sense.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:10] Like when you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:11] Go in and just having that confidence. Got it. That's helpful. So you're you're kind of going through this. You're you're getting your feet wet. You're starting to perform better. Your boss is happier with you. It does pay. Take a big jump in that in terms of bonus. And do you mind talking a little bit? It can be total. It can be ranges in terms of pay. I know, I know. It's pretty standard. The the bulge bracket pay coming out of school, but then bonuses a little bit more of a black box.

Phillysfinest: [00:21:38] Yeah absolutely. So for me, the the analyst years were pretty defined. I would say that no more is probably a bit more levered in a sense that if you do really well there, you can get paid really well. And if your desk doesn't or things or you're not doing particularly well, that can also reflect on the downside.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:02] So the meaning, a meaning you get like you can end up with zero if your desk does really poorly but you get rid of.

Phillysfinest: [00:22:09] I haven't heard of any analyst setting up with zeros, but yeah, it's certainly more susceptible to swings in the market fair. But you get the benefit of the flip side of that as well. Yeah. So my analyst years were pretty defined standard street range. And then the associate year I spent I got one full associate paycheck there. And that's when it took a big jump.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:33] And so like 250 plus or around there in that range.

Phillysfinest: [00:22:37] Yeah. 250 to 350 I would say would be I mean I was fortunate enough to have have a good year as a bank that year. Okay. Um.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:46] Fair enough. So it looks like you were promoted then right from after your second year straight to associate?

Phillysfinest: [00:22:52] I was, yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:52] Yeah. And so tell me about the the thought process of staying on for a third year.

Phillysfinest: [00:22:59] I mean, for me and I think I'll put this in the in the AMA, but I was totally happy there. I think that if you end up in a situation where you have a mentor that really backs you, you have a good client list. Your day to day in sales and training is pretty awesome. It's not susceptible to deal flow related, 100 hour weeks, etc.. I love the work that we were doing. So it was really a no brainer for me at that point to stay on for another year.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:33] You felt like the work was interesting enough and diverse enough where and you were learning enough still in that third year where it made sense to stay. And plus, you knew there was going to be a pay jump, too. So, I mean, that helps.

Phillysfinest: [00:23:44] With the process itself. Yeah. I think that as an associate in sales and trading, especially for something that is has as many products that fall under mortgages, once people sort of trust you, you have a bit of freedom to go out and spend your time on a given day on what products you think are interesting are going to be value add for your clients. And to me it was that sort of.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:15] Creativity.

Phillysfinest: [00:24:16] Entrepreneurial aspect of it that was super fun.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:21] That's cool. So you basically and is the associate promote is that pretty standard now going to your analysts up to associate or should it what should I think of in terms of like the split between people who go analyst Street to associate versus like MBAs or is it more like CFAs in the trading side?

Phillysfinest: [00:24:40] I think in sales and trading, it's it depends very much so on the bank. At least when I was going through this. Nomura was pretty standard, two years as an analyst for an associate. But I know that some of the bigger banks make you do three. I think Goldman is still three, if I'm not mistaken. So it's bank specific, but at the end of the day, it's generally two or three years.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:05] Got it. And then what would you say in terms of percentage of associates that are like MBA versus versus not? Is it like pretty pretty small percentage? On the trading.

Phillysfinest: [00:25:15] Side. Yeah. For us it was a pretty small percentage.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:19] Like, is there, is there more CFA, is there more, is there more CFA or just nothing or just people go straight through.

Phillysfinest: [00:25:27] I would say that there are definitely more CFAs MBAs, but most of the people were just kind of rising through the ranks.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:36] Fair. So you're you're there. Things are going well. You're learning now. You're getting paid pretty well. Why leave?

Phillysfinest: [00:25:46] Yeah, This is something that I really struggled with.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:50] You're just starting to get paid, man. Come on. And you're.

Phillysfinest: [00:25:53] You're enjoying your. Was there? No. Everyone told me I was crazy.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:58] Looking. Looking back. Were you crazy or have you done well?

Phillysfinest: [00:26:02] You know, I think that for me, I'm really happy with the decision, but I think that had a few things not gone my way, I might be singing a different tune at this point.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:16] So tell me a little bit about your first start up kind of coming out of Tulsa. Like what? What made you confident enough to actually make that leap to go from, you know, well into six figures to potentially nothing?

Phillysfinest: [00:26:32] Uh, naivete was definitely the first thing. Fair. A little bit of misplaced optimism. Definitely some misplaced optimism. At the time. So I'll disclose here, Patrick. So I'm working on a startup right now called Find Eggs, which I actually had the idea for while I was on the trading floor at the time that I was thinking about quitting to start finding eggs. A friend of mine was executing a pivot on Seeded, which is a restaurant technology company, and he asked me to join in what we both thought was going to be a short term capacity, a few months consulting agreement to help him figure out how to get the sales process fired up there. Ended up staying there for almost a year and a half and seeing the company through a couple of major funding rounds.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:31] So tell me a little bit about about that in terms of. You know, deciding to join them and then having ended up kind of sticking around there longer than you anticipated. Tell me, was it initially viewed in your mind as a kind of a bridge to what you wanted to do? Is that fair?

Phillysfinest: [00:27:48] Yeah. I mean, I considered it to be sort of a stepping stone, you know, getting my feet wet, because at this point, I knew very little about startups.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:58] Did they already have funding? Did they have funding?

Phillysfinest: [00:28:01] When you. They did? Yep. Yep. Okay. So it was it was a bit less risky than jumping in and trying to raise my own round with no start up experience and just sort of a Wall Street that made a point to and that I'm enormously thankful for. Because if I had tried to start findings coming right out of Nomura, I am very confident that we would have gone belly up.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:27] Fair. So what did you learn? What did you learn at the at sea? What kind of lessons do you feel like have been helpful now that you've kind of been a year in at findings?

Phillysfinest: [00:28:40] Yeah. I mean, I think the one thing about startups that is extremely similar and I would argue even more palpable, is the effects of networking. So I would say it's you. Did I learn the ropes and how to fundraise and how not to fundraise, and that in the same way that if you're going to break into a bulge bracket from an on target school, you really need to have some sponsorship or some really good story. It's the same startups, you know, trying to trying to raise money in. So many people try and raise money by cold emailing VCs. And this is why I say networking is more important because that really doesn't work. It's almost a test of entrepreneurship. If you're able to get a meeting with a VC through a warm intro. So it's really networking, dialed up to 11. So that side of things is something that is required to make a business run. You need to have money in a startup unless you've got some product that's already operating at a break even. So learning all about that and then learning just how much goes into a consumer business from growing customers to thinking about your unit economics, doing everything you can to onboard businesses. I mean, that that is a side of things that that the Wall Street mentality can prepare you to learn, but certainly doesn't prepare you with the knowledge for time.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:04] A little bit on the marketing side, did you guys where you I mean the unit economics I'm sure played into that in terms of cost, customer acquisition versus the average customer lifetime value, all that good stuff. Is that what you're talking about in terms of.

Phillysfinest: [00:30:17] Exactly, yeah. And you know when to pull those levers and make sure those unit economics are above water.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:26] I feel like that's almost impossible. I feel like it's so hard to do. It's so easy to say, Oh, here's my cost. But for us, it's like, so I know for Wall Street Oasis especially, it's super hard for us. We get so much organic traffic, so much natural traffic that it's our cost of customer acquisition is actually incredibly low. But we also have a very low customer lifetime value because the majority of people who visit the site are just browsing and getting information and saying thanks and heading on their way versus having something where it's a specific product or a specific transaction you're looking is like where the business is centered. I think it's almost easier in the sense of like, you know, whether it's.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:02] Working.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:03] Earlier versus like trying to build a community and then trying to monetize. You're just like literally from day one, it's like you have the product and now who's willing to pay for it, right?

Phillysfinest: [00:31:14] That's exactly right. I mean, it's a totally, totally different calculation when when things are defined versus undefined. But I mean, like what the example that I'm giving is, you know, you and I obviously have thought a lot about this at this point, but stepping out of a job on Wall Street, you know, even if you have a serious interest in startups, you're generally not going to be familiar with how a VC is going to think even about what we're talking about right now. And it's sort of that exposure learning like, hey, we have a low customer acquisition cost because a lot of this traffic is organic versus what's our LTV on the other side of that. It's almost similar to lingo that we use in bond trading and investment banking. It's a different language that's spoken sort of in adventure communities.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:54] How would you suggest people learn more about that, learning that language? Is there a place they could go?

Phillysfinest: [00:32:00] Yeah. I mean, in the same way that I think everybody who's interested in Wall Street should be reading Matt Levine every morning. Mm hmm. Ben Thompson is sort of his counterpart in startups. There are two two guys that I go out of my out of my way every single day to read when they're publishing. And from there, it's the news sources that are most startups. And we'll cover the lingo most in the same way that you'd probably tell people. If you want to familiarize yourself with the lingo of finance, you should read the FTC or journal. Techcrunch is sort of that catch all reading what comes out of all these venture blogs. So the preeminent venture firms are going to have dedicated blogs, first round reviews, really good search on capital's blog. And those just have a wealth of information, especially because it's coming from this side that's actually doing the investing.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:56] Very cool. So when you decide you ended up staying at seated for a little bit longer than you expected, almost a year and a half, you said, what kind of made you jump when you did? Did you like was there a round completed? And it was like a good time to kind of jump or I assume you still have some ownership in that business and you're helping them kind of time to time, or is it like a clean just buyout?

Phillysfinest: [00:33:19] No. Bryce remains one of my best friends. We looked at the business and what we had shaken it into. And there was a, I guess you call it a funding event that made us have confidence that that business is on the right trajectory. And he knew that I had had wanted to become a CEO and a founder myself. So I was fortunate enough to take care of me and let me continue to be an advisor there and leave with my shares. So it was a good outcome and certainly not a clean break. I still incessantly checked on on him into progress and the team.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:59] So you still have a share, you still have some ownership there?

Phillysfinest: [00:34:02] Yeah, that's.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:02] Right. Great. And so you you made the jump. How was that conversation with I mean, you guys are good friends, I think. I know when I started, Wall Street was a good friend of mine. I know it was a tough conversation I had to have in terms of like early on. I mean, it was super early. It wasn't making any money, but I knew I wanted to kind of keep going with it. And so I ended up buying him out. Was it something was it a tough discussion with him or is something where you guys had already kind of discussed this kind of coming in?

Phillysfinest: [00:34:31] No, I mean, it was, in a sense a tough discussion because when I joined, I was I was not supposed to be nearly as much of a figure there as when I left. Got it. So I started on what was really supposed to be a consulting agreement to help get the restaurant sales side of things organized. And I left as a co founder and the CEO. So as we were just putting our heads down, you know, things are going well and you start to take some ownership over that and you want to see it through to the end. But we'd always talked about needing to start findings. It was a question of when. So I think it's never easy. We work well as a team, but that conversation has been something that we were open about, which I think is probably the thing that has been the most positive for our relationship, is that it was not a it was not a surprise. Why?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:27] Why not? If things were going well, why not stay on with with them and just get because you wanted to be the number one or because you felt like this other thing was eating at you in terms of like you had to go for it. What was what was it? Because I mean, if if at least personally, I know if I found if I was running a business with one of my good friends, we were both doing it full time and things were on a fast trajectory. I almost want to stay put. Was it just because you had this other idea or. It just surprises me. That looks like it does look like they're doing well. It surprised me like that you would jump and take all that extra risk on all that extra risk on all over again.

Phillysfinest: [00:36:04] Yeah. I mean, I think part of it was looking at sort of the idea and the drivers behind findings. I really thought this was a model and there's a lot of similarities to the model. Yeah, just, just a totally different space. I thought the timing was right. I think the directionally, you know, findings within the rental real estate space and you've seen a huge rise to prominence of the rental real estate space over the last ten years. And technology just hasn't caught up. So we thought we had a really interesting model. We had a funding round pretty much already lined up and just thought that this space could be one, that you could apply a similar sort of dynamic rewards and loyalty program to. It really gave me the confidence.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:51] No, I think it's you want to tell people what it is a little bit. I think it's genius, but go ahead.

Phillysfinest: [00:36:56] Yeah, absolutely. So Findings is basically rethinking the entire renter and the landlord dynamic. Most people don't know this, but 80% of the US is still paying their rent physically, so most of that is by cheque, cash or money order. So findings first product lets anybody pay their rent from their smartphone and has an integrated rewards platform. So you'll actually get rewards for paying your rent. And ultimately what we're trying to do is be the one software company that dominates every aspect of renting an apartment, from finding it, applying, signing your lease all the way to paying your rent and daily interactions. We just know that this is such a pain point for consumers that we can solve first.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:38] Yes, it.

Phillysfinest: [00:37:39] Is. It gets us foot in the door. Cool.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:43] Is it is it proprietary or you're allowed to talk a little bit about how you actually execute that? Or is it like in terms of the software, is it some sort of software where it's like a bill pay type function? Because I know I can send checks through my online banking? Is that the idea or it's just people are putting in kind of.

Phillysfinest: [00:38:01] No, it's actually actually quite similar to that. And it's interesting. We've we've taken the process of getting your check to your landlord and we've automated that with a much better user experience than your bank bill pay, as well as an integrated rewards platform. And then when you're looking to move, you can actually take your history of rent payments and share that with your next landlord. So it's quite similar to bank Bill pay, the difference being that it's our core business and our business and banks for this is not a feature they want to promote. They don't make any money off of bank bill pay, so the software generally reflects that. It's pretty clunky.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:41] Yes it does. I use Bill plenty of time, so I know it does. Cool. Okay. Well, anything else? You know, just any advice you have to people who are looking back at either your younger self, your advice you give yourself, or advice you'd give to the younger people in the community in terms of career startups, anything before we call it.

Phillysfinest: [00:39:02] Um, you know, I think the one thing that has certainly been reflected on Wall Street Oasis that helped me really early on to discover is everything, all the modest achievements that I've had in my professional career to the power of networking. And I think that, you know, no truer words than 100% of the shots you don't take. I think that the first step is to really refine a message and run it by a lot of people and make sure that you sound humble and eager and sending that to as many people that are one or two degrees removed from you as possible will lead to some really interesting conversations.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:44] For sure. Let's let's end on that, I think humble and eager. Maybe the title of this pod. Anyways, man, thanks so much for for taking the time. 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. Com. Until next time.