WSO Podcast | E100: Credit Suisse IB to First Employee at a Data Analytics Platform
About
In this episode, Joshua shares his path from Princeton to investment banking at Credit Suisse. Learn why it wasn't a great fit for him, his surprising transition out, the risks and benefits of not having a clear direction and how he landed at an exciting small business experiencing rapid growth. I really enjoyed this chat because there was a lot of honest reflection about burnout, private equity recruiting, trying to find your way and the importance of exploration and faith in your abilities to find interesting opportunities - many which you'd never know about unless you were actively looking.
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WSO Podcast (Episode 100) 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, Joshua shares his path from Princeton to investment banking at Credit Suisse. Learn why it wasn't a great fit for him, his surprising transition out, the risks and benefits of not having a clear direction. Now he landed at an exciting small business experiencing rapid growth. I really enjoyed this chat because there was a lot of honest reflection about burnout, private equity, recruiting, trying to find your way and the importance of exploration and faith in your abilities to find interesting opportunities. Many which you'd never know about unless you were actually actively looking. Also, with this being episode one hundred, I just wanted to give a quick thank you to all of my listeners. This podcast has been listened to over one hundred and seventy thousand times, which is just as inspiring and surprising given that we started at less than a year ago. So thank you again to all of you that tune in and as always, feel free to reach out, give me feedback and help us keep improving. Thank you. Joshua, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Oasis podcast.
Joshua [00:01:29] Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:31] So it'd be great if you could just give the listeners a quick summary of your bio.
Joshua [00:01:34] Sure. So I went to Princeton University, where I majored in politics and international relations when it became pretty clear that I wasn't going to be a diplomat. I started looking towards the finance world. An investment banking internship at Credit Suisse in the industrials group, enjoyed my summer, went back full time and did the beginning of the analyst program. There was there for about a year and a half. Dip my toes in the water when it came to buy side recruiting and realized that it wasn't right for me at the time, and neither was staying at Credit Suisse. So I left and took a finance and operations job at a music tech ad tech business in New York City called F Sharp. So is there for a little while running everything from accounts payable, accounts receivable to benefits to H.R. before leaving there for an opportunity at Conservative, which was actually called CBGB Partners at the time. I was the first employee there after the co-founders in Twenty Fifteen, and I've been there for nearly five years. It'll be five years in July. So I started there as a senior analyst and now I am the co-president and chief operating officer.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:56] Awesome. Congrats. Tell me a little bit more about what you guys do there.
Joshua [00:02:59] Yeah. So conservative is a platform where we advise and support high end professional services firms in some of their major spend categories, so we help them spend efficiently and save money in travel market data and research insurance and I.T. and our customers are investment banks, private equity firms, hedge funds and law firms, and we where we can aggregate their spend together and negotiate on behalf on their behalf as a group. So we get better buying power in those categories that I ran through.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:36] Very cool. I love the business model is really interesting. It's like one of those group. I've seen that in other spaces, not in. I didn't realize it existed in like the it's
Joshua [00:03:44] Pretty common in like health care benefits for midsize and small companies. And there's a big company called Core Trust that does like ups and pallets and things like that. So we've assembled a really interesting buying group of high end professional services buying things that are expensive in opaque markets and giving boutique midsize firms the type of leverage that's usually reserved for the JPMorgan or Goldman Sachs's of the world.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:13] Very cool. So let's go back to your story all the way back at Princeton. Let's talk about specifically, you know, even getting into Princeton. Super tough, so congrats on that. But just in terms of like your your life there and your major and kind of shifting what what kind of prompted you, you said when you figured out you weren't going to be a diplomat or whatever. What prompted you to like, be attracted to finance? Was it just because a lot of your buddies were doing it too?
Joshua [00:04:40] Yeah. I mean, if you're at Princeton, it's some crazy proportion of people go into investment banking or consulting. My path is a little bit less direct. I wasn't sure that's what I wanted to do for my first summer. After my freshman year, I just ran an sat tutoring business in my hometown, so it wasn't like I was predestined to work in investment banking.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:05] Serial entrepreneur Yeah, exactly.
Joshua [00:05:07] So I had, you know, I was interested in education and being entrepreneurial, so I did that. And then the following year, kind of by coincidence, I got a internship at ISI, which is an equity research firm that was acquired by Evercore. And that was really my introduction to the world of finance. And I liked it and I liked the research side of it, but didn't think that that's where I was really best suited. So I got back on campus the next year and a bunch of guys who were my mentors on a personal basis had we're a year ahead of me, had gone through that whole process and recommended that I tried out. So I bought the vault guide and and just rehearsed. And I think part of it was that
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:52] I can't believe we didn't buy the I the so guide. Come on, man. I just, oh no,
Joshua [00:05:57] We should have briefed ahead of time.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:00] That's fine. That's why I
Joshua: [00:06:01] Looked at every detail around. I'm sure. I'm sure I was on your side as well. So learn about, you know, get interview tips
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:08] And that's proof that this is not scripted.
Joshua: [00:06:11] Yeah, exactly. It's not, I can confirm. So I was also at a point where I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. My I intentionally went to a. The large school, because I didn't exactly know what I wanted to do, but then it got to the point where I was like, OK, I should really develop some skills that are marketable. So and one of the things that is being at a target school is that they come to you and the learning from people who are older than me was, OK, here's the process, which is these are essentially the interview questions that are going to ask you. You're too good answers to them. Here was my experience at this bank or the other one. So I felt really well prepared for it. And it was satisfying to me as someone who is driven academically without really knowing what I want to do with my life, to essentially have a path to follow and instructions to follow, which I don't know if that's super inspiring, but it's really the truth.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:09] No, I mean, it's similar to me. I mean, I was in the liberal arts as at Williams, and we were basically just I felt the same way. It's almost like you're you're good in school, but it doesn't mean you really know where you want to go or what you want to do. And for lack of a better place. I mean, there's a lot of people, a lot of smart kids fall into that same mode. It's like, Oh, you can go somewhere where you're paid really well. It's it's fast paced. You can learn a lot. Yeah. Like what's not like then you can live in New York. Exactly.
Joshua: [00:07:36] I mean, I had friends who knew they wanted to be doctors or friends who knew they wanted to be lawyers or friends who knew. One of my best friends is a philosophy PhD, and he's now a professor. That's great. But it wasn't what I wanted, but I did know I wanted, just like you said, something fast paced where I was surrounded by smart, ambitious people, and that was a way to get there.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:56] Did you have any sort of reservations? I know during this time, like while you were in school, there was a lot of like Occupy Wall Street. Did you feel ever any pressure like from family or whatnot not to go into this? Or are they in finance?
Joshua: [00:08:11] Well, I grew up in suburban New Jersey, right outside Manhattan, so my father's in finance and our parents are two. So I had to no active at the time, although that's a different topic. We said we wouldn't do politics, but that's fine. No, I mean, I
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:31] If you talk politics with me, I'm very I'm very much not educated enough to actually have any good opinions. So you can you can convince me of whatever or
Joshua: [00:08:43] But you know, that was part of the culture at Princeton, which was that there were those factors of Wall Street not having a great reputation, particularly investment banking. And but there is similarly a really large cohort of people who are that's what they want to do, which is just fine. So it wasn't really that controversial of something to be going into.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:06] Yeah, no. Makes sense, but where you live in like your social circles or your parents like whatever it's
Joshua: [00:09:11] Like, I knew those people weren't necessarily weren't evil because they worked in finance. So, you know.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:18] Cool. Ok, so you're kind of it's surprising me that you waited till junior year, given that your fault was your father an investment banker or was it was? Other people know he
Joshua: [00:09:28] Was an economist.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:29] Economists? Oh, interesting. So. He kind of had some inkling of what the industry was like, or he had potentially some friends in the industry and had you. Does it surprise you looking back that it took you to kind of junior year to be like, This is what I want to do? Or is it? Is it kind of like, you're young? Do you expect when you list like a lot of people listening to this or super young, right? Right? So do you feel like it's a huge advantage knowing earlier like the kids that did know earlier?
Joshua: [00:09:58] Yeah, I didn't feel disadvantaged, although when I think back about my recruiting experience, my junior year, it wasn't like every investment bank was banging down my door to interview. I was looking back and seeing the number of applications. I sent in a number of cover letters and my acceptance rate of even getting interviews was pretty low,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:19] Like five percent or 20 percent. What do you think?
Joshua: [00:10:22] Probably between five and 10 percent.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:23] Yeah, pretty low. That was, I mean, you're at a competitive school, though. Yeah. So like,
Joshua: [00:10:30] I was applying for investment banking and also sales and trading without actually being that interested, I think, in the sales and trading side. So I sent those interviews out and maybe it came through in my cover letters that I said. But, you know, I think that there were definitely people who were better prepared than I was, and they probably got more interviews and did better at those interviews.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:51] But how do you think they showed that they were more prepared just by having an internship like somewhat related to finance in their freshman and sophomore year because or GPA or like GPA?
Joshua: [00:11:02] I think my GPA was fine. I think maybe they had better answers for why are you interested in this? And my answer to why I was interested in it was probably pretty similar to how I just answered your question about it, which was like, Yeah, I don't really know what I want to do, but you're giving me structure, which is not that great of an answer when you're a job candidate. And so I think people who had had not just that were better prepared or had done the previous internships but had thought harder about why they were actually interested in doing it, were actually probably more successful than I was at the interviews.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:36] So do you feel like when you said you applied and around five, 10 percent, whatever was it was that the was that the application to interview rate? Or was it the application to offer rate? So you're saying you applied to, say, 20 positions on campus or on how many first round interviews did you get?
Joshua: [00:11:54] I think I got about five first round interviews.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:57] It's like twenty five percent. Yeah.
Joshua: [00:12:00] And then just two, did I like really move through the process on? Mm hmm. And it came down to City and Credit Suisse.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:09] Mm hmm. Tell me how you kind of thought about the process of making that decision. I know it's super hard. They're both great firms.
Joshua: [00:12:15] Yeah, no, they're they're both great. And also, there's a slightly different time in 2007 2008 than now. And you know, for example, Credit Suisse had a lot more focused on their investment banking, and I think they do now. And it was it came down to a lot of the people who I actually interacted with as part of the process. So that's not a knock on City at all, but you know you. And maybe that's not even a smart way to have thought about it, but it is how I thought about it, which is that you get introduced to the people who are your college's representatives, that on the recruiting side from the firm. And I just I bonded with some of the credit squeeze folks, some of them I actually knew previously on campus. So that really sold me on it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:58] So you make those applications, you kind of get through the the gauntlet, the interview gauntlet for the summer internship. Tell me a little bit about the ones you flamed out on. Was there specific things you think besides having a little bit too generic answers or anything? Was there anything else in particular where you were surprised by a certain technical questions? Behavioral is anything like that that you can remember?
Joshua: [00:13:24] It was, I will say, it really came down to the fact that they snuffed it out, that I hadn't really prepared as well as I should have for some of the more specific questions and even the ones that were obvious, I think it's really worth preparing for, which is why are you interested in going into investment banking and why are you particularly interested in our firm, in our firm?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:46] Those two, you have to have those two deals.
Joshua: [00:13:48] And like, it seems so obvious. And now, you know, I won't say how many years later it is. It's like, OK, Josh, you know, 20 year old, you should have figured that out, especially because when you're on these on campus interviews and it's true everywhere is that there's so much interest in the roles from the candidates. You're, you know, these were at our career services and I'm sitting in the waiting room with a hundred other people I know. So if you give a mediocre response, you're not going to move forward because they know they're there's a line of people who would like to give a better response than that. I think one thing that I was surprised about, but pleasantly surprised, is that they didn't really get technical at all. Maybe they knew from looking at my resume that I was a politics major whose liberal arts. Liberal arts, I they could ask me an air question, but they did ask kind of general questions to just say gauge whether I had any interest in the markets just to make it kind of vague. And I think I probably did well because I, you know, I am interested in and was at the time too, but I think I probably didn't have the light or specificity.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:55] And having a dad is an economist. It probably helped you talk a little bit more general market trends, fed interest rate policy, all that stuff.
Joshua: [00:15:01] Yeah, that's right.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:02] Interesting. Yeah. I think I could see how that would be my guess. Listening to you is that that kind of saved you because if you were able to talk and tell you what the market was like, OK, this kid, he gets it. You know what I mean? Even if you didn't have the
Joshua: [00:15:15] Dinner table conversations?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:16] Yes, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Ok, interesting. So your your internship, so your junior, your internship, you're kind of going into this thinking. Here we go. I got to land this full time offer so I can enjoy my senior year. Yeah. What was were you stressed out? What was the thought process going into that? Did you kind of know what to expect? Yeah. Grueling hours. All the all the stories you hear. Or was it less stressful?
Joshua: [00:15:42] I guess on paper, I knew what to expect. There's what the grueling hours, there's nothing quite like actually living it. Mm hmm. But the internship is still it feels fun when you're doing it because you're like, I'm kind of playing investment banker at that point. And I was it was. It was so exciting to like, be in Manhattan and living there and, you know, be subletting an apartment and being with my friends and having some of that freedom that I had a really good time. And it was my first like real corporate experience, too. So it was fun and I really liked the group of people I was with in the industrials group. So I really enjoyed it and I learned a ton and I realize now that I knew nothing. But, you know, given that I didn't have a ton, I didn't do internships like that. After my freshman or sophomore year, everything was new. Yeah, and it's funny because the next step after you get the offer, a few, they'll have a networking event a few months later and then you start ranking and preferencing which groups you want to be in. And I remember Googling furiously to like, figure out what a financial sponsors group was and because I was like, Oh, that's what everybody wants to do. Like, what the heck is it? And I was just really naive, and I didn't really know anything. And I ended up going to do industrials because it was just I thought it would be good exposure to a variety of companies and also every product that the firm had. M&a and I ended up being right about that, but my summer it was drinking out of a fire hose. But I think I learned a lot, but I had a really good time.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:24] Do you think you're working like seventy eighty hours a week, something like that?
Joshua: [00:17:27] Yeah, I think that's probably right. But then probably there were weeks where I did more, but definitely didn't have to. Where that was part of it was like, OK, I want to figure out what it's like to work these grueling hours and just to get a sense of it because you want to get the offer. But you also want to figure out, is this something I want to do? Is my job?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:48] And so do you feel like was the offer where the intern to full time operates high that year? I can't. I could look it up. Yeah, they
Joshua: [00:17:55] Were high that year. I think in our group, just one or maybe two people didn't get out of a place for like 12 or 15 people. Ok, yeah, it's a big group, but it's the kind of thing where you get different advice over the course of the summer, where some people will say, just don't screw up and you'll get it, and then others will say, you know, we're. Times are tough. We're only looking for half. So you do stay on your toes. And I definitely worked really hard that summer.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:26] So at least you're getting paid right.
Joshua: [00:18:30] So I think they paid us overtime.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:32] Yeah. So you're like, Whoa,
Joshua: [00:18:35] That's not an accident.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:37] Yeah. So interesting, see, you're kind of going through that. Tell me when you kind of knew you had. Tell me the process of like when they pull you in and they tell you, like, you said this thing until the last second or do you kind of start getting an inkling
Joshua: [00:18:49] That you're going to get it? I was pretty confident, but didn't want to be overconfident because then it would be devastating, but it wasn't a surprise when they were going to do it. It was essentially like, This is the second to last day of the internship, like, this is your time slot to meet with the CEO and we'll tell you yes or no. And I was extremely I would say I was relieved more than anything, but also because I didn't have to then look for a job. I was like, This is the difference between my senior year being amazing and slightly less amazing. So, yeah, definitely relieved.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:24] Cool. So you you go into that meeting, they tell you, congratulations. We want to extend you in full time offer. And are you expected to
Joshua: [00:19:32] Decide by, you know, 30 days from now if you want a bonus, essentially.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:36] Got it. Oh, tell me about that. What do you mean if you oh, if you want like a sign that
Joshua: [00:19:40] There was a signing, but I think it was a relocation bonus, but essentially it was phased. There were triggers on it, so I'll butcher exactly what the time frames were. But you know, if you accept it within 30 days, it was X. If you accepted within four months it was half of X and then you just lost it if you didn't decide. So I didn't shop my offer at all. I was. I like the group. I like the firm, and I realized that that's what I wanted to do. So I just, you know, perfect, perfect.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:10] So you sign you have a great senior year. I assume a blast. It was a blast. And as you're kind of approaching getting ready and moving to the big city, you do have roommates. What was the was the kind of,
Joshua: [00:20:26] Yeah, I lived with one of my good friends from growing up who had also had a job locked up, but in advertising or the hours were pretty normal. And I was able to push him to move to an apartment that was like three blocks away from the Credit Suisse building at Madison Square Park, so that to accommodate my hours. And then that summer, when you're in training again, it's pretty fun because there are all these networking events and you're meeting all these people. And you know, all the data room companies are throwing events for you, and you set the stage for your series exams
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:05] And the like the intro links of the world. And yeah, oh yeah, that's awesome. So I'm just turning off my notifications and getting beeped. And so I think so you're kind of loving the training, right? And then reality hits, you get out of training and it's like, Boom, you're thrown to the wolves. Yeah, I remember that time. It was like training like we were. I was with Rothschild and they flew us to London. We're training or like, I mean, like the best time ever. And then coming back a little more training in New York and then. You're kind of reality hits of real life, real world work, and it's tough, the hours are tough, it's grueling and I felt like I didn't even have an internship, so you probably were a little further ahead than I was. I knew nothing about like financial modeling. I was completely green. Yeah, so it was.
Joshua: [00:21:56] It's really tough. Even before you start thinking about the hours is that the kids had who had gone to undergraduate business schools were miles ahead of me when it came to the financial modeling. So I was pretty useless early on. And that's not a super comforting feeling when you're in a high paced, intense environment and you realize that you don't know what you're doing. And then the first time where that happens and it's 2:00 in the morning can be a pretty brutal feeling
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:28] Is incredibly stressful. Yeah, I remember like I have, I'm like a notoriously amazing sleeper. I can sleep like 14 15 hours in high school, and I remember my banking days, like the first few months I remember it was like one of the few times I had, like, hadn't slept for 20 hours and then I couldn't sleep. I had like insomnia. Yeah, because it was just like I was getting pushed by like an associate to figure out the model. And I think it's because he didn't know how to do it either. Because like in grad, he's like, Yeah, yeah, you're going to own the model on this. And I'm like, You realize I have no clue what they tell you. Yeah, exactly.
Joshua: [00:23:01] It was a really it was a hard life adjustment because my ratio of like sleep to exercise to caffeine was completely off, and that was compounded with being in an environment that's stressful. Even when you know what you're doing and really not having any idea. I didn't know how you know, one of the first projects I was stopped on was for a gold mining company. And I'm looking at these extremely complex. Forget about even the financial modeling, just like the operating models, and I had no idea what I was doing. And it's pretty scary to have no idea what you're doing when also the numbers that you're making calculations on or like an order of magnitude higher than anything. And you know, there's a lot of impact. So that's a pretty scary feeling. And it's it's an environment. I think this is probably a different group to group and firm to firm, but mostly the culture is not, you know? Oh, super. Like what's coming about, like asking for help and saying that you don't know what you're doing.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:05] So even early on, you didn't feel like that a little bit. I mean, I basically eventually the associate has to do something right or I remember for me, it was almost like. The associate I realized a few weeks in at the associate had no clue what he was doing either. He couldn't do it. And so then it was like it was a total train wreck and I realized the only way I was going to figure this out is like eventually the VP just ignored. The associate started coming straight to me and I'll be like, Look here. And I just started working directly with the VP. And then it became so much more efficient he sat down and trained me like with like certain basics and that boom and eventually within a few months became actually somewhat serviceable. And then six months I was a machine.
Joshua: [00:24:44] Yeah, no, exactly. I think you've got to find you've got to find the right people who are willing because they're working crazy hours to to set aside the time to help you. But you have to find who those people are. And it is no offense to any of the listeners. It's probably not the first year associate who started the same time you did. Yeah. And it's oftentimes, you know, some of the more senior
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:07] By second year analyst is usually good. He's already checked out who like
Joshua: [00:25:11] You already got there by side job? Yeah, here.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:15] Exactly. That's a good that's a good piece of advice. Look for the second or third year analysts who are headed out the window they're checked out, so they're not like, super stressed about their stuff, and they may have a few hours here and there. That's right. Time to take your your clueless, clueless self up the up, the learning curve a little bit. So OK. So. It's a brutal first few months, it sounds like, because you're just like floundering. Like I was. What kind of who was that person for you? Did you eventually find somebody that that kind of helped you?
Joshua: [00:25:48] Yeah, there were. There is a. My sources of comfort were my own analyst class. I think we were pretty tight knit. It was since the yield was pretty good from our intern summer. Yeah, we knew each other pretty well going into it, and I think it was it was collaborative instead of being competitive. So that was really helpful. And then we subdivided into verticals within industrials. And once we did that, I started focusing in paper and packaging and there was a really strong group of experienced analysts on that team who really started showing me the ropes. And that's when I started knowing what I was doing, which was reassuring.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:33] That's awesome. It feels good, doesn't it, when you actually start producing work product that you're like, OK, I'm adding some value.
Joshua: [00:26:39] Exactly. And having trust is really or gaining that trust. And, you know, speaking in meetings instead of just being on mute and being told not to announce yourself.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:50] That is really that's hilarious. So, OK, so you're there. It sounds like you kind of got up the learning curve within six months or so, you think?
Joshua: [00:26:59] Yeah, I think that's right.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:01] And you're kind of you kind of started getting your reps in. Yeah. And it's pretty common, especially for people with laborious background. So then you kind of get through your first year. Your first bonus, I assume, is pretty good. Not been a great year, but well,
Joshua: [00:27:16] It was fine. I would say one thing they did when that they announced to us at the end of training was that they were changing the schedule of the bonus. So stub. Yeah. So they gave us a stub in December, which they hadn't really warned us about. And instead of tearing people into buckets, everybody got the same, which I, of course, I felt I was the best performer in the group, so I thought I got short shrift on that. It was still, you know, the largest single check I'd ever received up until that point, which was exciting, but I guess
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:51] Is around a thirty thousand twenty. Yeah, I
Joshua: [00:27:53] Think it was a little less than that, but approximately 10 earlier times. And yeah. Yeah. So that was a little bit misleading, so they changed our schedule
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:07] To make it, they change it. So you got you got a December stub meeting six months in. You get kind of a half year bonus. Yeah. And then do they do another kind of half year bonus? You have to wait the whole next year to get out of a
Joshua: [00:28:20] Hole next year and then not to spoil, but I left before then. So it started. I started being kind of disenchanted with it, probably about a year in the following summer. And it was really when I started doing the by side recruiting and. You know, going back to the questions you ask about those other interviews, I started doing the recruiting really without having any idea if I was interested in it at all.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:52] And it seems to be a pattern. So we've got to stop this.
Joshua: [00:28:55] Yeah, yeah. Well, let's talk about my current job. But you know, when we got to which I like a lot, but you know, the recruiting and I did it because it was the next step. And as some of your listeners know, you know, I was getting emails from headhunters while I was still in training and I hadn't even figured out if I liked my current job. And I was they were already starting to think about the next one. And then, you know, when you're sitting there late at night in the bullpen, everyone is dreaming about moving over to the buy side because you get told, you know, it's less work and more money, but then you send out a meeting, invite it to in the morning that has lawyers on it and you know, Pe- guys on it, and they're accepting that invite at 2:00 in the morning. So you know, they're up to. Yeah. You start learning that, you know, maybe that's not the case. So it's not just about lifestyle, but you know, I also found I wasn't particularly interested in it. So I started doing some of the recruiting. And when they were asking me the question of why do you want to do this? I remember in one of my first interviews and I won't name the firm, and I got a few interviews and this was on like a Sunday morning or something.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:02] And oh, is this on cycle like the craziness? Yeah. Oh my gosh. So yeah, like that is a gauntlet, man.
Joshua: [00:30:09] Yeah, you know, you're going to some of these cocktail events and then all of a sudden, like, everybody freaks out. You get that first email, whoever moved first that year and then your life kind of turns upside down and you've got to be doing your real job still, which was already a kind of unsustainable number of hours and then also practicing your LBO modeling and figuring out what answers you're going to give. And I remember the first interview I had, it was a principal at a private equity firm or in this beautiful, wood paneled building room, and he goes, So why do you want to work in private equity? I give my answer. And he goes, That is just a terrible that's just a terrible response. That's quite. This is I don't know if you're testing me or if you're if you mean it, but either way, this is not good.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:55] He said that or you were thinking
Joshua: [00:30:56] That I was thinking that your answer was his response. His response was
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:00] Just, that's terrible. And then that was it. And then what?
Joshua: [00:31:04] And then we we had to talk for another twenty five minutes, but it was obvious that it wasn't really going anywhere, but that I was undeterred at that point. I still interviewed for probably a few more, probably a month or two after that flew to some places and it was just nothing I was. There were no good fits of things I wanted to do that coupled with places I got offers for. And then
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:28] So you did get some offers, but it was,
Joshua: [00:31:30] Yeah, like one or two, but I just wasn't. They were in locations I wasn't interested in, which means I probably shouldn't have interviewed. Or there are a few credit opportunities that at the time, I didn't really understand what they were. And therefore,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:46] I think it's so hard for kids that if you're interviewing like a year out of school, like you're barely or you have the reps for banking, but you really don't even know, like I remember being pulled aside by a fellow analyst at Rothschild. This had to be during the second year. Like my literally my second year, forget about the first year or during training or anything, and he was like, This is what private equity is. Yeah, like this is like, I don't even know this whole industry existed. I was just in restructuring doing those deals, you know, working with clients there. And I didn't even realize like the whole world existed. And so it's just a different world now. But yeah, I can. I can see where if you don't have that conviction, if you don't have that early training and you don't know exactly the way to kind of show any sort of passion, if you're kind of just more of a intellectual floater, let's sell it. You can struggle because there's a lot of gunners.
Joshua: [00:32:38] Yeah, and that's who should be getting the jobs, probably. To be honest, I don't I don't think that I got screwed by not getting those jobs. They probably went to people who were more deserving of it, had prepared more and or probably better fits for their roles. Yeah, but when I was unsuccessful at it, that's when I started being introspective. Ok, Josh, do you actually want to do this? And maybe this is revisionist history, but as an answer for the fact that I wasn't getting offers, but I really wasn't particularly interested in doing it. And what I've learned in banking is that it really does become your life. And I know people that are definitely people, and I have friends who have done the banking baths and the baths and have carved out a way to manage their lives. I was not good at it. It drove me crazy. I was not good at maintaining my social life. I was not exercising. I wasn't eating well. So like all those things together made it pretty clear to me I need to make a change. So I actually left Cass without a job and you left it before your
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:44] Full year bonus before your first, is it?
Joshua: [00:33:46] That was the first thing my MD said to me when I quit. He's like, You want to stay for three more months and get your bonus. In retrospect, probably. I probably should have stuck around, but I didn't.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:01] Yeah, you probably gave up a good sixty to seventy thousand dollars or something like that. And now now I would like to after tax, it's like 30.
Joshua: [00:34:08] Thanks.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:09] It's really I feel better.
Joshua: [00:34:10] Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I just I knew myself wasn't handling it that well and that this wasn't really the path for me.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:19] Oh, that's fair. By the end of my two years, I had to get out my my, the VP. That really kind of I was closest with, who actually now runs the entire restructuring practice at Rothchild. He. He was like, you know, basically what number to stay night? I was like nothing. I was like, basically like if I had to give him an answer, I would have been so ridiculous. It would have been like $2 million or something like that because it no amount of money at that point like could could have really made me be able to to handle it longer. Like, I feel like after those two years, I was like, Really? I was just completely burnt. Yeah.
Joshua: [00:34:58] And what it took me a little while to figure out was that I felt the same way. It sounds like you did, and that was OK. That didn't mean that there's something wrong with me or that investment banking is inherently bad. It was just that, you know, it wasn't the right fit for me.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:14] Yes, it's reality. Yeah.
Joshua: [00:35:15] And I had confidence. There is that feeling when you know you've done through all that work to get the job. Having confidence that like this might be the best paying job I could do right now is a twenty three year old, but I am confident that I can make it work for myself and find additional future and good paying jobs that are good for my career.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:36] That was not the what gave me that confidence because I feel like for me, I just felt like I didn't know what I didn't know. And so there's a little bit more of like I have to have something lined up. What gave you the confidence just to quit outright like that? Or was it just like you had to reach the end?
Joshua: [00:35:49] It kind of. It was a little bit of both. Like, I'd kind of reached the end and now I feel stupid. But I'll keep saying this was I didn't even I didn't know what I wanted to do and I didn't as I would sit there and, you know, talk to my friends or my siblings or my parents, and they'd be like, Well, what do you want to do? And I didn't even know what jobs were out there like. I had a few friends in advertising and a bunch of friends and finance and consulting, and then I was like, There have to be other jobs. But I was at the point where I was like, I don't even have the time to be figuring this out. So my answer to it was to quit and lay low and figure out what jobs were out there and make it a full time job or a part time job to try to figure that out.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:31] So let's talk about that, that transition. So you quit. What's the first day like when you go to the office?
Joshua: [00:36:37] It's such a relief. It was amazing.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:39] It was. I just I slept
Joshua: [00:36:42] And I had at that point lived with two guys and they both had, you know, normal our job. So it was kind of crazy to me to be sitting on the couch at five 30 and they would come home and I was like, Wait, there's a whole life that you leave in the evenings after after work. And then, you know, that was fun for a little while. And then I started getting antsy about not having a job or any income. So I started just forcing myself to be on the job hunt.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:11] Where did you look? What did you start doing for your research like in terms of? Yeah, obviously, talking to my friends, that type of stuff in terms of, well,
Joshua: [00:37:19] A lot of that, it was a lot of looking at cool companies that were I was interested in in whatever industry they were and seeing if there was something where I could use my finance knowledge to give me a leg up. So cool tech companies or startups in New York, for the most part, and just going through their career pages and also just talking to people.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:40] And so that's how you ended up at F Sharp who's called.
Joshua: [00:37:43] Well, that one's actually kind of interesting, which is that my former associate at Credit Suisse. His roommate or buddy was the CEO of that company. They're fine finance guy left like four weeks into my job search, and he hit me up and said, Hey, my buddy's looking for a guy. I went in and interviewed and started a few days later. So it was funny. I had this whole methodical search and then found it through an ex colleague.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:09] It's usually how it works, right?
Joshua: [00:38:11] I really liked it. I liked music a lot, and they were in the music tech ad space, so it was a way for me to use some of my skill set, but also find something that was at least adjacent to my interest personally.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:25] And so you were there for a pretty short stint. Tell me why so short.
Joshua: [00:38:31] The company was I really like the people there, and it was a good idea. I would say
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:37] Of startup, it was just like,
Joshua: [00:38:39] Yeah, it was. It's interesting because it was it was a startup. But it also had like fifty five employees offices in New York and San Diego and London and Australia, so it was revenue generating. And there were just, you know, the financial performance wasn't exactly what it needed to be. There is a little bit of customer concentration that was a little bit dangerous and it was just not quite exactly what I thought I'd signed up for. In terms of, I was doing interesting finance work,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:05] But more like like,
Joshua: [00:39:07] Yeah, like CFO type work. But I was in way over my head. So Google was my best friend, which was good until it gets really scary because you have all these people who you need to make sure you can make payroll for. And so doing that interesting hard stuff, but also like office administration and office management, things that I was not interested in doing at all. And that that mix I didn't love, but I didn't. I left that because the opportunity came at. It was called Cab Partners. Now, now, now call it conservative. And that one. I also found a guy who was my associate at Credit Suisse. Another one of his friends was one of the founders of this company. So I found two jobs in a row based on references from from my Credit Suisse associates. So that's been a happier path for me. I've been there since twenty fifteen.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:59] That's really cool. So tell me how before you made that jump from f sharp to conservative, did you were you like looking like several months for several months before kind of that connection was made or is kind of like it kind of just. It came to you.
Joshua: [00:40:14] This one was organic. I probably should have been looking in retrospect, but I'd only been there for at for nine months, right? So I really I didn't want to. If you look at my resume and it's couldn't finish his two year analyst gig and then leaves after a few months, so I was ready to stick it out. And then this guy was I'm still in touch with is my associate, reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, Hey, my buddy runs this company. They're looking for someone who used to be an investment banker but doesn't want to work in investment banking anymore. You should talk to him. I went on the website, there are all these buzzwords. I didn't know anything about procurement or strategic sourcing. And I said, no thanks. And he said, No, you really should talk to them. So I did. I had the phone call with two of the co-founders, the CEO and the CEO. They were really smart. They explain the business model and I loved it, and I thought the trajectory that they were charting was a really interesting one. So I'm glad I ended up being. Pushed into taking that phone call, and I'm glad I did it, which I think is good advice to, which is take the damn phone call.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:16] Take the phone call, at least. Listen. Definitely. And you'd be shocked at some of these tiny companies that are experiencing explosive growth. And if you can get on the train early, man.
Joshua: [00:41:28] Yeah, exactly. And that's part of the lesson I learned of. You know, I had the feeling that there were all these great jobs out there, there had to be that I just didn't know existed, and this is an example of one which is just in an industry I didn't even know existed. And so, yeah, take the call.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:45] So was the was the finance background kind of interesting? Do you think they were looking for a former banker because of the work ethic like that? Or was it the actual finance stuff that was
Joshua: [00:41:55] A little bit of both? Definitely the work ethic. And, you know, even as we recruit right now and we try to recruit lapsed investment bankers is, you know, you can't teach attention to detail in the way that an investment bank teaches attention to detail. And one of our big businesses is we help investment banks and private equity firms and hedge funds source and procure and negotiate contracts for data providers and research providers. So like Cap IQ, FactSet, Bloomberg, hundreds of others. And these are massive contracts and our clients would a CFO would say, Why the hell am I paying, you know, a million bucks to cap IQ? What does anyone ever even use it for? So they wanted someone who had been an investment banker who could say, Hey, this is actually how people use this. This is why you're paying so much money for it, and this is how critical it is. In addition to just negotiating the contract, so they wanted that background
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:49] Less so you could show the value of it. This not only negotiate good prices for the service provider, for four for your clients, but also explain to your clients why they even have it exactly.
Joshua: [00:43:01] Instead of a CFO saying These kids, why do I need to spend all this money for these analysts to have something really saying to them, here's what this product is. Here's what the competitive landscape is, and here's why it matters was valuable and we still do a ton of that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:16] Very cool. So what's the what's the path? So you've been there for now, almost five years?
Joshua: [00:43:21] Yeah, it'll be five years in July.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:23] Yeah. So what's the what's the path for you guys? Are you guys fund it or use it all bootstrapped.
Joshua: [00:43:28] We're bootstrapped for the first. The company has been around six years. For the first five years, we bootstrapped our first customers who really had faith in us prepaid for the first year, they said. Prove out the model and then go from there. So that's what we did. And then almost exactly a year ago, we took on some funding from a group of individual investors, people who have spending Rolodexes that have helped us grow the business and really trying to pivot from being a small business consulting firm that's really service oriented to more of a tech platform. So we've spent a lot of time and investment over the last year building out our engineering team. So we've hired a new VP of engineering, and we're adding clients and adding spend categories that we're helping people in.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:21] Are you at liberty to say kind of what you're building on the tech side in terms of how? Why? The technology platform is so important for the
Joshua: [00:44:30] Future, definitely, so a lot of our business is aggregating volume together of our clients, for example, their air spend, so that we can. Goldman Sachs has a whole procurement team that will go to Delta and say, Hey, Delta, we spend one hundred million dollars a year with you guys. Give us the best corporate contract you possibly can. Our clients, I can't name them, but they're a tier below. Some of the boutique investment banks, M&A, advisory shops and smaller don't have the people internally to do that or the time or the leverage. So we're building platforms to aggregate their data together so that when we go to the suppliers, we have information that we can slice and dice on.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:12] It's a way to take the data that you're getting from your clients. I mean, that must be really hard because you've got to build the feeds from like their expense reports,
Joshua: [00:45:21] Yes, or from their travel agency
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:22] Or from the travel agencies into your into your platform and then have it tagged all properly and all the systems slice and dice.
Joshua: [00:45:30] That's the hard part. And then you need the human who is the expert in these contracts to then negotiate it. So where we started was with the humans, and now we want to give leverage to those people and make them really
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:42] Because right now they've been doing it mostly manually like brutal brute strength or
Joshua: [00:45:46] Yeah, we have some know we have. Like I said, we've recruited a lot of former investment bankers, so we have some of the best Excel models you can make. But it's not quite the same as having real software engineers there. So that's what we're trying to do and we're doing this. A lot of our work is manual, but can be tech enabled. So even, you know, negotiating a cap IQ contract or something like that, you know, our team, which is small but mighty, did seven hundred and fifty research contract negotiations last year, which you need smart people to do. But there is some mundane housekeeping that can be automated that we're building.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:46:22] Very cool. I love it. Yeah, I think I think it's a really cool idea. I think you guys are. It's probably going to be huge in 10 years or so. Yeah, but it sounds like you're the future for you. You're probably sticking around, huh? Yeah, that's the plan.
Joshua: [00:46:40] We're just we're really focused on building. Our whole team is really convinced that the potential value and we're really we're proud of what we've built, but we do very honestly think that we're just scratching the surface and our addressable market of midsized private equity firms. You know, right now we have 50 customers and we think that there's room to have hundreds of them. So we do really think that we're just at the beginning here.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:09] Very cool. Well, anything else before we call it Josh, it's been real fun. Anything you'd share in terms of words of wisdom to your younger self or to the young listeners before we call it.
Joshua: [00:47:21] Yeah, this will be a repetition of what I said before, but and without knowing any of the individuals who are listening is just a half confidence in yourself. That which either means that you should have conviction in the decisions you've made about your path and being in investment banking or moving forward or not, and that it's OK if the answer is or not to because there are a lot of really good opportunities out there, but the skills that I personally developed and it in banking from work ethic, attention to detail, but also just the nitty gritty on financial modeling are continuing to be useful for me.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:58] Great. Well, Josh, thanks so much for taking the time.
Joshua: [00:48:01] Of course. Thank you, Patrick,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:03] 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 dot com. And till next time.
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