WSO Podcast | E88: Quant at a Bulge Bracket Bank with The Right Skills

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In this episode, Arjun shares his path from a top undergraduate university to a quant role that also gave him exposure to some fundamental investing. We learn about his short stint in venture investing and why he jumped back into a quant role at a bulge bracket investment bank as well as the programs and skills needed to land these competitive roles.

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WSO Podcast (Episode 88) 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, Arjun shares his path from a top undergraduate university to a quant role that also gave him exposure to some fundamental investing. We learn about his short stint in venture investing and why he jumped back into a quant role at a bulge bracket investment bank, as well as the programs and skills needed to land these competitive roles. Enjoy. All right. Thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Voices podcast.

Arjun: [00:00:55] Yeah, my pleasure.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:57] This would be awesome if you could just give the listeners a short summary of your bio.

Arjun: [00:01:00] Definitely. So I graduated from undergrad with a major in math and minor in computer science and originally wanted to do something in the public markets. So I started with a big asset manager here in New York, where I spent a couple of years out of school doing a mix, a mix of stuff, including both fundamental TMT credit investing and also some more quant related stuff a little bit on the discretionary macro side effects income side. And then after that, I wanted to try something kind of at the earlier stages and so spent a short stint with like a VC here in New York, just kind of trying out the early stage investing space and then went back into quant stuff with a bank on their investment management side, doing kind of more traditional stuff like equity, derivatives and fixed income. And then after that, I wanted to push back a little bit more into the early stage space. And especially with the advent of a lot of interesting alternative data being applied, there have been working with a couple of different firms involved in the venture and growth stages, just trying to figure out ways to bring that data into their investment processes and have also kind of gotten back into a master's program in data science to kind of deepen that skill set here in New York as well.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:21] Yeah. So you're basically in the one space that has no demand at all. Just kidding. It's like it's exploding, right?

Arjun: [00:02:26] Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of stuff happening, both in the private markets, which I mentioned, but then also data science stuff in the public markets is getting really big, both at banks, hedge funds, asset managers and then and then obviously like in tech as well, just increasingly like engineers are having a really deep data skill set to bear in addition to whatever traditional engineering work they would have been doing.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:50] So let's  go all the way back to undergrad just to the start of your story. You went to a top school, majored in math. Why would you torture yourself? I mean, I it's funny because I had a physics teacher who was like, You should major in physics. I'm like, I'm not smart enough. I'm a major in physics just because I did well and like the entry level course. What convinced you to put yourself through such a rigorous, you know, it sounds like you do a lot of computer science as well. Is that something that your family has always been into or you just

Arjun: [00:03:16] Gravitated towards it? It's a good question. I mean, I think so. My parents themselves, like, weren't super mathy, but kind of going farther back. Actually, my my great grandpa was a math professor back in India and in Burma, interestingly, like back in the British colonial era. But so I have a little bit of math in the family tree. But for me, the interest in math of came from came from a few different places. I think what really appealed to me about it was just that it's the most kind of fundamental form of reasoning in a lot of ways. It's like really digging to the foundations of any field, like what you see is like math at the root of it, whether it's like sciences, social sciences or whatever else. And so for me, I always just enjoyed that process, and I think I had my first exposure with like a proof based kind of college level math class in high school that I took. And and for me, that was just like, super fun. It was also super challenging. I think like that was probably the most I've ever been challenged in. My academic career was like getting over that initial hump of like, how do I do this proof base like college level math? But I think after that I was just like, so, so enamored of it that I was like, I kind of I really want to pursue this in my undergrad. And so. So that's like what drew me to it. And I was kind of, I think, very idealistic for undergrad. Also, like I wasn't super interested in finance and tech kind of. At the start of my undergrad career, I was just thinking mostly about like what I want to do academically and what do I really enjoy in that in that sense?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:46] So was it a specific field in mathematics that you specialize in? I assume you had like a senior thesis of some sort or no, is that?

Arjun: [00:04:53] Yeah, I did have a senior thesis. I was kind

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:55] Of without getting too geeky and going over my head. What was it? What was it?

Arjun: [00:04:59] It was my senior thesis was in fluid dynamics. So we were trying to solve some like famous fluid dynamics problems with like friction and stuff like that. But but I mean, I didn't make very much progress. See, which is OK for undergrads, for the most part, moral reasons. But I was kind of a generalist regardless. Like I did a lot, a lot of stuff like I mentioned, like some probability stuff which gets away from more traditional like pure math. And yeah, but you know, at the other day, like, I tried to take a lot of the core analysis algebra stuff. Cool. Well, yeah, very cool.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:36] Yeah, I love math, but so you're it wasn't as good as you were, I'm sure. But so you kind of wonder, do you think,hey, finance is interesting to me? Was this junior year? Where did you feel late?

Arjun: [00:05:49] Yeah, I it's a good question, I kind of did feel late, to be honest, because for the most part, I thought I wanted to go to grad school for most undergrad career or potentially even like med school was something I was seriously considering, just given that my family's is actually a medicine for the most part. So. So that was like where my head was for a while. But I think given that so many kids at my school, which was like a target school for a lot of for a lot of financial institutions were doing finance and like, it seems like it was kind of interesting. You know, I could tell that interesting people that I knew were really passionate about it and kind of about business more generally. So I wanted to get some exposure to it. I think and like I think my first experience was a junior year internship that summer after junior year, and I went into the recruiting process really haphazardly, like I wasn't paying much attention to recruiting and networking and all the stuff people were doing. I was kind of like, Let me just throw some stuff at the wall. Like, if something sticks, I'll do an internship, and if nothing does, then I won't. But I think I was really fortunate with my first experience because it was with a with the sovereign wealth funds kind of hedge fund investing team and and that was actually a really cool starting point for me. I think what drew me to it was that I think the team was like, really just intellectual, like you were looking at stuff at a really high level. I think the guys were, like, really, really sharp.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:18] Was it like long, short or macro based or

Arjun: [00:07:20] Actually it was. It was very little long short. Their whole thing was that they wanted to find like idiosyncratic sources of alpha in public markets, right? Which will sound familiar to a lot of listeners, probably like honestly, they kind of like summarily dismissed, like pretty much any long short like that was coming in the doors and it was like that was the summer of twenty. It was like the Argentina debt crisis was happening. So there was a lot of like interesting calls with activists around that whole situation and, you know, other stuff that was just more off the run, you know, like interesting volatility, arbitrage strategies or stuff like that where you have like a couple of guys that spun up a fund where they wanted to like raise some capital to put just a couple hundred million dollars to work. But they could they could show us really good ideas at play.So that was really the core of what we were doing there. And I think that was exciting for me because I just got to see such a variety of like really smart and interesting hedge fund managers talking about their ideas. And I think that's what really motivated me to, like, try doing something in the public markets coming out of school. I finally really understood the connection between finance as this like operating layer on top of the rest of business in a way where you understand like what putting money into a different situation actually means on the ground, whether that's like an interesting debt situation or even like interesting kind of like growth situation.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:45] So the landing that internship, you know, coming from a target school, obviously it's easier to land an internship in general. But was this an on campus thing where you just started? Did you just start basically blasting it to anywhere? And this is the place that happened to interview you? And then were you ready for the interview? Did you go in or were

Arjun: [00:09:03] You honestly, pretty much. That's what happened. Like, I in retrospect, like, I was pretty fortunate that that worked out for me because like, like as I was, I was very haphazard with my recruiting. I was kind of like, like I said, if it works, it works. If it doesn't like whatever

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:16] Was your GPA super high.

Arjun: [00:09:18] I think my GPA was pretty good like it was, it was above average, not like exceptionally high road scholar or anything like that. But but that was it was above average.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:28] You're getting you're getting looks, being a target school tough major.

Arjun: [00:09:32] I was getting looks. I mean, I was definitely getting a lot of looks from like the prop trading shops and stuff like that, just because I was kind of their ideal profile, just like a math major with some CSS exposure. Right. And so I got a lot of those interviews, but I didn't find it like I didn't find that stuff as exciting at the time, even though it was more mathy. You know, I think I was more interested in trying to push a little bit more towards the fundamental stuff, which is why, like, this particular opportunity really stood out to me. And in terms of in terms of the actual process with that firm, then I think one of the reasons why it worked out well for me was that there were just very open minded with respect to what kind of person they want, like they wanted the kind of person who was like very much like a first principle thinker to use, like the catch phrase, someone who would really pause and like try to figure out where you want to be in the market at a given time and not just kind of follow trends. And I think that's what stood out to me about ISIS. I started to think about my candidacy was that I kind of came in with like a very open mind and was like very intellectually forward and honest and like all my exchanges with them, so pretty much any conversation they would have with me. But like my motivations or interests or whatever, I was like very candid.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:49] Say you're a genuine person. They knew you had the brights, but you weren't trying to be asked them, basically, you're.

Arjun: [00:10:55] Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, I kind of went in and it was pretty obvious that I didn't know a lot about finance at the time, and I think they were willing to work with that. So, you know, a lot of my interviews were just like fundamental ideas in finance. They were just that I had never really been introduced to. They were just kind of have a reason them out, like try to figure out what why central banks should implement certain policies in different scenarios like, you know, I had taken like an AP class that's enough to kind of like, really parse that out and then like play around with different ideas about how different instruments should be affected in markets, in different scenarios and stuff like that. That's what a lot of the interview process look like for me.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:32] So and there's  very little preparation on your end. There's more just like being like, Hey, here I am kind of thing

Arjun: [00:11:37] For the most part. Honestly, I would just show up and I

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:41] Would be that gave you that confidence. Then like, was it because you just felt like, Well, I don't even know if I really want to do this. And so whatever. Or was it like, Hey, I'm doing well, I'm at a target school. Like, even if I flame out, I do nothing over the summer during your summer. It doesn't matter.

Arjun: [00:11:56] Yeah, honestly, that was probably it was probably more of that. Which is not to say like, I don't mean like that sounds a little bit disrespectful, maybe to like the the firm like, I definitely don't mean for that to happen.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:06] Like, no, not disrespectful. I mean, I think as a young, as a young guy, as a young kid, I think oftentimes we are overconfident. I know, I know I was like, I'm like, Oh, I'll have a job, you know, I got good grades. And yeah, yeah, you're going to always be fine.

Arjun: [00:12:23] There's definitely a lot of that. And like, I think, I think that was always my approach, like, especially in undergrad was like I was focused on the learning and focused on the fundamentals. Like, I was like, Let me make sure I'm covering my bases and then kind of the stuff that comes on top of that, like I wasn't I wasn't like super concerned about making sure that I was optimizing for my job search and stuff like that. So I mean, did people take different approaches to that? For me, like that approach worked out and a lot of ways. And I was fortunate that it did. But you know, I think there's a lot of different ways to approach that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:57] Did your opinion change of that or like as you started going through these interviews, did you start talking to more kids about like what you wanted to do or you were kind of like, OK, I know I want to be near public markets. And once you got an offer that was it like you just took it? Or were you like shopping? Like, were you getting multiple internship offers? Were you? Tell me a little bit more about that perspective, how it shifted a little bit from that.

Arjun: [00:13:20] Yeah, I think from that process,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:23] That's super important, right? That's a super critical inflection point for a lot of like students is like that junior year internship. It's like a lot of them are like, if I don't get that investment banking job, life is over.

Arjun: [00:13:33] Yeah. And like, yeah, it's and you know, it's definitely it definitely helps. The more you can optimize for your interest, the sooner the better suited you're going to be to pursue those interests. There's always like a trade off, right? So if you're someone who knows you want to do investment banking, the sooner you can angle towards that, the better off you're going to be. I think in my case with that, just I guess with that recruiting process, you know, I was enjoying those conversations with the firms and and, you know, with that firm in particular, I was really impressed by the people I was meeting and excited about the learning opportunity. And I think that's why I decided to pursue it. And then, you know, I think in terms of internships and full time opportunities like senior year thinking about how that that balance works, like my experience was, you know, and so I came out of that, like I said, why wanted to do more direct public markets stuff and. And so I didn't return to the firm after the internship and like kind of threw my hat in the ring for full time, recruiting that fall of senior year. And it's it's definitely a little bit intimidating because you're going in like a lot of kids are going in with the guardrails on. In a sense, it's like they've got their internship figured out, they got their job lined up. They're just going to hang out senior year and do their thesis, enjoy life or whatever. For me, it was like I was really like pounding the pavement that fall of my senior year to get in front of firms and to like, have conversations with different alumni, like really doing a lot of networking.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:59] So it sounds, it sounds like after that summer or something switched, something flipped off like, wait a second, I'm graduating in the year and it was.

Arjun:  [00:15:07] It wasn't. I think it was more that I had realized that this is more interesting to me than I thought it was going to be. And so at that point, I was like, OK, let me pivot really aggressively. You know, instead of just like jumping in my grad school applications, I'm off on that and really go hard on this, this finance thing for a little while. So and so

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:28] Did you know before that that internship in the summer that there wasn't an offer, a full time offer at the end of the summer? Or was it something where they only offered it to a small percentage or no?

Arjun: [00:15:38] So there was the potential for a full time role, and I think they usually they would take interns like once every other year with the idea like that could potentially convert into a full time role just. They don't have a ton of hiring, right? And there was like a pretty strong alumni base from my school at that place as well, so. So it was one of the few firms we were one of the few universities that they would recruit at. But I think for me, it was just kind of like a process of evolution. I realized, like, I didn't necessarily want to start out in that kind of more endowment or sovereign like institutional role. So and I think just the conversations with the people at the firm who had given so we were able to like kind of figure that out. And I think for me, it wasn't super exciting to return to that particular opportunity. But you know, there's a lot of people that that's like a great fit.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:29] So what were you looking more for, like the more on the con side?

Arjun: [00:16:33] So I actually was kind of split between quant stuff and fundamental stuff because I had seen, like, really exciting stuff that I thought worked really well in all of those spaces that firm and but what I wanted to do was more direct investing, if that makes sense, which is to say, like less investing in other funds and more investing in actual strategies and securities like coming up and generating those myself like, that's what I wanted to do.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:00] Got it. Because it sounds like in the sovereign fund that you were at, it was a lot of investing in funds that were doing interesting things. Exactly. And so you were doing a lot of research into the actual technology and or whatever strategy they were implementing versus actually. Now deploying the capital yourself.

Arjun: [00:17:18] Exactly, yeah, and that's a great position to be in. You know, I think especially like on the Wall Street, Oasis Farms and stuff like people don't necessarily get as excited about that kind of fund of funds roll or that kind of like endowment or institutional role. But I think having then seen peers go on to other places like university endowments and sovereign wealth funds and stuff like it in the subsequent years, it's definitely it's definitely a great place to be just in terms of getting to do a lot of that, like really high level thinking. And it's a very intellectual space ultimately, right? You don't have immediate market pressures on your day to day, but you're getting to think really critically about how those markets are shaping up and how you want to play in them. So. So it can be a cool place to be in. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:10] Yeah, it can be a great career. I agree. Yeah, I think it does get a little bit of a bad rep because people are like, you want to be direct because it tends to have more exit, you know, stuff like that.

Arjun: [00:18:19] But it's yeah. And I think and you know, there's something to be said for that, like if you're someone who wants to maybe go into like a corp dev role at a at a Fortune 500 company, you know, it's it makes sense to like, try to get some kind of skill set that that might be more applicable in those settings. But yeah, I think I think there's a lot of great  paths in that space.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:42] All right. So you end up hitting the pavement hard senior year, you start getting a bunch of interviews for mostly quantitative hedge funds. What were you targeting like? It sounds like that's mainly what you're targeting, but maybe a blend between the two fundamental yeah.

Arjun: [00:18:55] Yeah. So I was looking at a lot of quantitative hedge funds just because I think it's easier to demonstrate a skill set that's more attractive to people in those settings. Which is to say, like if you want to do more fundamental hedge funds that the investment banking route or whatever makes it a lot easier to do that just because then you have a really tangible skill set for that. But I think the quant funds were more open minded, right? If you can demonstrate that you can do x y z, they're going to be more interested in potentially hiring you so well, what was

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:27] What was x y z like? Give me an example for the list.

Arjun: [00:19:30] So x y z means for one, it means being good at like probability like they. I think that's it's kind of like one tangible area of knowledge where everybody's got some exposure and you can create a lot of interesting problems. And so there's a lot of questions people will ask that just test your ability to reason about things probabilistically, like some basic stats tied in there as well. So that's a big area. And then I think the other thing was just like coding skills. So for a lot of places, it's like if you can demonstrate that you're just like pretty fast with Python or pretty fast with whatever particular scientific programming or other object or any program they're using, then they would be pretty interested in potentially just hiring you,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:15] Python or R

Arjun: [00:20:16] Typically. Yeah. So, yeah, Python more than anything else, if they were looking for like specific domain knowledge or

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:23] Releasing Python course soon on PBS.

Arjun: [00:20:26] So there you go. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think, yeah, pretty soon it's going to be like the new standard. I think like if you can't do basic data analysis in Python, you're probably going to be going to be scrapped for most jobs. But we're getting there, I guess. Yeah. And so our are also, I think, was there, but just less so I think just because our has always been popular with statisticians. But just because it doesn't translate as well into actually writing code and like systems, you know, when

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:59] When you said that totally makes sense. So when you said in terms of the probability stuff, when you're saying, like, have a work your way around that? Are there specific programs with that as well that you need to be familiar with? So the coding python, maybe a little bit are, but mostly python. What about the probability stuff? Is there stuff? Is there like a program that you need to be good with? Or is it more like are they testing your quick math probability?

Arjun: [00:21:21] I would say some of it is like quick math, but more of it is can you can you do a lot of the stuff that would be in like a basic like undergraduate level probability course like factorial stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it's going to be a lot of like combinatorial kind of arguments about like how much apples are going to come out and how many hats or whatever and like and a lot of like conditional probability tricks and like expected values and just a lot of those things that you would see in like an undergraduate level of probability course, you'll want to really have like mastered that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:55] If yeah, if you want to get a top 90th percentile on the G Matt, that's the top end you need to be against getting those right. Yeah, I remember

Arjun: [00:22:02] Studying that the I don't want to say

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:05] That you do. I know, I know, I remember those. If you're getting a lot of combinatorial and probability questions on the G match, it's a machine based exam. You know you're.

Arjun: [00:22:15] Really well. Ok. Ok. It gets harder. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, that's a new thing. It's like the whole dynamic test. I think that's like that now.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:25] Yeah. So, OK. Sorry, sorry to interrupt it. So it makes sense. Ok, so you basically they want to see, can you do that? But that basic level of probability, do you have the coding skills? And then what was the interrupt to do? What was the last thing or.

Arjun: [00:22:38] Honestly, no. I mean, that's like mostly what it is. I mean, different firms will throw in different stuff or like have different ideas about what they want. And I mean, the whole space of like just quant recruiting can be so, so much more varied than a lot of other, more traditional finance rules that that it can be tough. But I mean, there's actually there's a lot of great content on the site, people answering questions about how

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:04] Can you educate me a little bit on the  kind of the trend of high frequency trading versus like, OK, so you know, the race to the bottom type of firms or they're just going for, you know, speed over something that a fund that uses quants still uses quants. Can you tell me a little bit like what does it look like? Like percentage wise in terms of capital being put to work versus, you know?

Arjun: [00:23:29] Yeah, yeah. So I guess, you know, I'm not an expert on the high frequency space, let me say, because I haven't actually worked in like high frequency trading. But I mean, I can try to give like a little bit of a sense on that because I mean, high frequency trading is definitely like, very popular for a lot of undergrads, and it's definitely very lucrative in terms of like what firms are doing. But I mean, I think it tends to be the case that high frequency firms are going to be putting less money to work, that a lot of these big institutional quant funds, especially like these quant asset managers that have like billions and over 100 hundred billion or whatever under management and a lot of cases so. So there's definitely a difference there. I think high frequency has changed a lot in the last, like five to 10 years. You know, in the advent of high frequency, which you can read about and like some of these famous books like the name of the

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:21] Michael Lewis book, yeah, I can't remember it. Yeah, Flash Boys.

Arjun: [00:24:25] Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I think that gives a great picture of like kind of what it looked like in the origin to some extent of high frequency trading. But I think things have changed a lot. And just because markets have become so much more efficient and a lot of these things have kind of been competed in arbitrage, the way you know, my understanding is that like profits of like actually really shrunk in high frequency by a factor of several times over. But with that being said, like, I'm sure the firms that are doing well are still doing exceptionally well. And maybe, you know, maybe that like maybe that shrinkage doesn't even apply to them, you know, it's like they tend to be pretty secretive.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:02] It's such a block. Yeah, it's such a black box like you don't nobody knows. Yeah.

Arjun: [00:25:06] Like, who

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:06] Are or who are who are these firms, you know, I guess renaissance and probably just some of it. And like,

Arjun: [00:25:11] Yeah, renaissance. I guess like the other big names in high frequency, you're like, you know, HRT and like tower research, Jane Street, a lot of these guys. Yeah, yeah. And then there's like a lot of Chicago based ones that are doing pretty well. I think like Citadel Securities still was pretty well, like there's a bunch of new ones out there that I'm not super familiar with yet. But yeah, and I think that contrasts with a lot of the more kind of like medium to long term hedge fund strategies that even when you look at like the two segments of the world, like they're, you know, they tried to get into some more high frequency like prop trading stuff by like spinning up two sigma securities. Or it has some unique name that's like independent of their traditional like hedge fund operation. But you know, it's tough to actually break into that right to like to bootstrap that and get it off the ground is a bit of a challenge, so not anyone can just do it. And so, so yeah. So like huge,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:06] Huge capital investment, right? For the shirts

Arjun: [00:26:09] And stuff, for sure. Yeah, I mean, it's very intensive, like engineering wise to like hire that expertise and then bring people on and then actually build the systems that are going to compete while actually then trying to like layer in some actual alpha. On top of that. It's it's pretty challenging. It's not a trivial undertaking, even for a firm that's as good as two sigma is in terms of its like technical depth and expertise.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:33] And there aren't even that many seats, right? They're really looking for those like top, top experts.

Arjun: [00:26:37] Yeah, yeah. I think that's largely true. But I mean, again, like I don't want to pitch myself as an expert on,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:45] Oh, it's fine. That's fine.

Arjun: [00:26:47] Yeah, yeah. But I think it is true that I mean, these firms tend to be pretty small, and it's one thing even when you talk about the firm as a whole, right? But then you look at the firm and within the firm, there's going to be like one desk that's like really killing it on like orange juice futures or whatever it is, right? And that's the team that's bringing in all the money. But it's like these other teams are just kind of like there to try and fill the gaps and figure. How do we make money in this other market of that market? And so but I mean, there's exciting opportunities for sure in this space, and a lot of people are doing very well.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:23] Cool. So let's go back to your story. So you're at this at this large asset manager basically right out of school, you ended up getting a job. Was it something where it was similar to kind of the internship recruiting process where you knew like this is these are these people are interesting? Or was it more like? Oh, man, it's winter, I'm graduating in a few months like I'm just going to take this offer.

Arjun: [00:27:45] No, I mean, I was definitely excited about the opportunity. I think it was pretty unique in that, like it gave me the chance to work both on the fundamental side and on the side. And I think that's like what really excited me about the opportunity. And so like I said, like it was, I was able to go in and start with some discretionary macro stuff and then and then also able to like switch over to do like the fundamental high yield stuff that I thought was pretty interesting and like, let's try my hands it a lot of different areas. And meanwhile, also like try to be involved with early like block chain efforts that the firm was trying to get their hands into, like early data science stuff that they're trying to put into practice.So I think for me, that was a great opportunity just because like they had a little bit of everything that I really wanted to get my hands wet with starting out.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:37] How much bitcoin do you own? Just kidding. Hopefully a lot.

Arjun: [00:28:42] Yeah, apparently. Apparently, I have to tell the government that now apparently that's like the new tax thing this year

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:47] You have too much.

Arjun: [00:28:50] You know, I have enough. I have enough, you know, I'll keep what I got. So yeah, same here.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:55] Probably a lot less than you. I'm sure you were buying it up earlier.

Arjun: [00:28:59] I mean, the cool thing actually was that I was getting into it just around like the time that ethereum was being launched, like kind of late 2015, early 2016 range right there.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:10] Early enough? Yeah. Or it exploded. Yeah. That's cool. You think it's going to? You think we're heading back up into a bull market now for crypto?

Arjun: [00:29:19] You mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I so I follow the space less closely than I used to also. But I do think I mean, I do think that there's going to be persistent value in like bitcoin and ether for quite a while, probably. But I mean, whether we're going to see, like a quote, bull market for crypto as a whole, I think that's  less clear. I don't think we're going to see all these tokens popping up and getting a lot of value the way we did in that big run in early twenty eighteen or whatever. But yeah, late 2017, 2017. Yeah, I think that that's probably, I think, not happening anytime soon, for sure.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:58] Yeah, it's funny. So so you got to kind of taste a little bit of fundamental, a little bit of quant. You're there for a few years and then you kind of moved on. Tell me why you moved out. What was the thought process of like as you were coming up thinking of, like, Hey, I think I want to try something new a little bit about that whole process?

Arjun: [00:30:16] Yeah. So I think for me, it was it was that I'd had an interest in just the early stage space for a little while at that time. Also, so like I said, I think the finance exposure I got in that first internship really opened my eyes to just like what that world kind of looks like and just how finance and business more broadly are shaped up together. But then but then I kind of like paid a little bit more attention to, right? So this new technology that I'm seeing, like, how does that exist? What type of firms does it exist in? Where do those firms get their money? And like, how do they fit into this larger financial picture that I'm kind of learning more and more about bit by bit? And I think I was excited about it because thinking about those problems at the early stages is, like, very fun, I think. Thinking about like just new technologies, how they're going to impact business and society more broadly and how firms are kind of deploying those in unique ways. I think that was all very fun for me. And so. So it's kind of like a drawn to venture stuff, early stage investing and was trying to learn everything about that that I could at the time and was starting to get involved in a little bit in New York's like venture scene, just like talking to alumni who were involved with it and understanding how companies get forward. And I think, you know, I also saw potentially working with or starting a company at early stages as like a very exciting potential thing that I wanted to explore a little bit more seriously, just because you can kind of really, I think, like really get a chance to to contribute some unique value in those kinds of contexts, I think. The other thing to think about is like what I've always enjoyed about investing has been that you can develop some unique thesis or idea about a market or a space and then go place a bet on it. You can find the best company or find the best trade idea then and then go. Try to execute on that in a way that you think is going to work. But if I mean, if you really have conviction in that idea or in the evolution of some market in some way, I mean, the ultimate like bet to place on it is to try to start a company that's going to.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:22] Did you did you ever start?

Arjun: [00:32:23] One did not start a company, but I mean, that's something that I still like think about. But but I'm not there at this point, so we'll see what happens with that. But I do think I think that's essentially what excited me about the early stage space. And so, so yeah, so I left the firm. After a couple of years and then initially, just like took a little bit of time to work with an early stage like seed fund here in New York on a short term basis while exploring other options. And it was it was a positive experience. I think I learned a lot about it, but did ultimately, I think, go back into the quantum phase. Like I said afterwards.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:04] So you were you were kind of almost like an intern for this early seed stage where what were you doing for them, just like looking at tons of deals coming across their potential deals and help? Yeah, exactly.

Arjun: [00:33:14] Exactly. Like it was kind of it was super open ended. And I think the partners, the partners there were great just about bringing in like young people to get different kinds of exposure. And yeah, and I think they also like just gave me a ton of responsibility despite kind of the lack of the experience in and venture at that time. So I got to just like dump and deal on me. It would be like, Hey, we need to decide whether we want to invest in or like our pro-rata and this company. Can you just like go talk to like this list of people and then come back to us like what you think we should do? And you know, I mean, I think they were doing their own thinking, certainly at the same time. But but it was cool to have like so much influence and input in the investment process there.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:56] So why not? Why not stay there? You just felt like it was more. Where you where you feel like, hey, this is just going to be repeating itself, like, I'm going to be doing the same thing over and over again, like why?

Arjun: [00:34:07] Yeah. So I think, you know, I think I was definitely, I think, coming out of that like so that was designed to be a short term stint and like it was all firms that they weren't trying to hire people full time in your levels. But yeah, I mean, I think I think I would have been I was definitely interested in potentially working in venture longer, and I think I was taking a pretty wide lens with my with my search at that time, like talking to other venture funds, but then also kind of like just looking opportunistically at other gigs with like startups and looking opportunistically at like other inbound from from quant opportunities as well, which I wish I was getting a lot of. And so. So I mean, I think for me, the process came down to like, where do I think I'm getting the opportunity to work with like just the most interesting team and I think it happened to be with another opportunity. And I think that's like, what? What else? What a be decision for me.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:05] So, yeah, you ended up at an investment division of a large firm. Yeah. And you you could almost call yourself like, you know, a quant there, right?

Arjun: [00:35:15] Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you could do that, you know, kind of like a developer almost at that point. So was your

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:21] Day to day similar as the first place or were you? Did you let go of the fundamental? Was it now just pure quant?

Arjun: [00:35:27] Yeah. So I let go the quantum fundamental. And I think the other thing that was very different about the day to day was just that, given that this gives it the scale is different at a bank versus like an asset manager, it's going to be like everything that we did was just much more systematized. So, you know, it wasn't just a matter of doing some analysis and letting it live in an Excel spreadsheet. It was like, OK, we have to then take that and understand how we build some like really robust like code that we can like, plug into our whole code base and understand, like make sure all the kinks are worked out in terms of how that's going to work and then also like go back and really like refactor that code and make sure everything is like, done really well and test that out. And so like all of that added time, and just like a different dimension to the process, which I think I think was really great, actually. I mean, personally, I think that's like how I think that's how firms need to approach a lot of the work that they're doing is like, how do we systematize this so that we can kind of have compounding knowledge and like returns on that compounding knowledge? And I think when you look at like kind of a lot of the famous funds like the renaissance of the world or something like that, like you hear about how that's  integral to their process. It's like they have massive internal wikis where they've like documented every single like tiny tweak they've ever done on a strategy. And so and so. And this isn't quite that what I'm describing, which is like any level of just like systematized like good code practice and engineering practice, I think is going to be the foundation for good business practice going forward.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:01] And a large bank, you know, a quantum large bank, what are you? Are you working like? Wasn't like all the prop stuff has gone right? So it's not proprietary money? Yeah. What do you what money are you managing? Is it mostly just like market making type?

Arjun: [00:37:16] So we so like I said, since I was on, I was on kind of the investment management side. We were managing clients money like they have like funds and like

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:26] If there were, there were specific quant funds that the clients wanted.

Arjun: [00:37:30] Exactly. Yeah. So and it would be like, you know, we'd have specific strategies that we'd run and we'd pitch that to a client or something. Got it. So so there's a lot of that kind of thing. And yeah, I guess the other thing to think about just with quants at banks, and this gets a little bit away from the question you just asked. But the other thing about quantum banks is that every part of banks is becoming more and more quant, so to speak, right? And when you look at a lot of the dialogue coming out of some of these leading banks in New York now, like a lot of it is just about how do we how do we build businesses that are like banking as a service is like that keyword that is being thrown on increasingly now, right? It's like I think banks are becoming hip to the idea that a lot of the traditional alphas and like idiosyncrasies and illiquidity in the market that we used to be able to capture just by virtue of our position in these markets are kind of evaporating. And so what we need to do is figure out like how do we provide systematic value for clients and how do we how do we make like all of the work that we've done and all the knowledge that we've accrued something that's accessible to people they can like pay for and then kind of layer in on top of whatever other work that they're doing and whatever other services we're providing them as clients.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:44] I mean, it's a super interesting time. I think it's like, what? What's it going to look like in 10 years, 15 years, 20 years? It's going to be very different.

Arjun: [00:38:53] Yeah, for sure. For sure. Even five years, honestly. Like if you just like what these places are doing now and just like what new businesses are being spun up. And whatnot, it's pretty it's pretty incredible, just like the pace of change as things try to keep up with fintech and stuff like that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:09] Know it's nuts. Probably pretty acquisitive, too. I mean, a lot of a lot of them are just buying up. Yeah, they're like, Oh, that looks like it's going to explode. Let's get that, you know?

Arjun: [00:39:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Buying up businesses. And then, yeah, I mean, a lot of like proprietor down street investments that are that are coming into early stage companies, stuff like that. It's  a very fast moving space. And I think some banks are doing a better job than others, like staying on top of it. But what you're seeing, you're seeing, you're seeing everybody like, stay with it just looks that cool.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:41] So you kind of after a stint there a little over a year, you kind of spun out on your own, it sounds like.

Arjun: [00:39:47] Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, coming out of that, I had just a couple interesting opportunities at that point. I had kind of built like this small like little niche to some extent of like early stage investing experience, even just to a small extent, combined with like some earlier like public markets, TMT stuff. In addition to my quant experience and kind of developer experience, at that point that gave me an interesting entry point to like work with some of these, some of these earlier stage funds to help them figure out again ways to bring data into the investment process and thinking about how you can apply that a little bit better to both the sourcing of companies and also the evaluation of companies for those for those firms. So, so there was a little bit of that combined with like a couple other like miscellaneous like related projects that I was doing for them.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:40] Do you feel like a lot of the skills you're bringing is not even necessarily the data manipulation, but the actual access and where to find it? Yeah, I think it's  as good as your data source, right? So if you could actually get access to data from, I guess it's looking at problems in different ways, but let's say there's a company, the SAS business, you're looking at investing, if you could get some access to just their churn in there, whenever you have your answer, you know,

Arjun: [00:41:10] Yeah, it's tricky. I mean, I think you have to be you have to be a very creative with how you're trying to get some of this data. And I think different approaches have taken very different. Firms have taken very different approaches like like the I think you look at social capital, which is one of the bigger names in the belly that's like kind of since had a little blowup late last year, but with chamath Palihapitiya, so they I mean, they had their the people who

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:36] Don't who aren't familiar, can you? Can you give us an explanation of that?

Arjun: [00:41:39] Yeah. So basically, Chamath was an early employee at Facebook, and so he made a ton of money and started doing a lot of angel investments, was able to launch social capital. And for a while, it was like a very hot fund in the valley. Probably like most of the early 2010s to mid 2010s, I think they were just considered one of the hottest up and coming venture funds in terms of their access and a lot of the early rounds that they rounds that they had led. And part of their idea, you know, was let's try to make ourselves really accessible for entrepreneurs. Let's try to like, have a spreadsheet where they can go and plug in all these numbers and say, if you're clearing these marks, like we'll have competition with you and like, we'll be ready to write a check really quickly. And you know, it's debatable to what extent that was like really something that's served as an investment process versus just kind of like window dressing to kind of like get inbound deal flow from entrepreneurs and kind of like make a name for themselves. But but my point being that that's a creative way to try and get numbers on these companies in the door so you can actually start to figure out who you want to invest in.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:48] You said they ended up blowing up and making a couple of guys.

Arjun: [00:42:51] Yeah. And so I think what happened is Chamath, who is the founder of the firm, he he's like a very colorful guy like you can go watch some of his YouTube videos. They're really fun to listen to, actually. Like, he's a very interesting guy, but he he's very opinionated, and I guess he felt like the direction of venture capital was like not very healthy for the most part. And his argument was basically like, it's kind of like, you know, almost like a pump and dump, if you will like venture capital, when you're putting money into the firm and you're like, you're raising the next fund based on follow ons that you're getting from other investors in the ecosystem. And like, you have all these like huge companies going bigger and bigger and bigger. And then and then, you know, to the point where, like we work was kind of bursting into the scene with their huge late stage fund. And so I think that was kind of a big part of his narrative at the time as well. And when he ended up doing was just like winding down the fund, he was like, We're not going to do this anymore. We like this is just kind of B.S., and I don't want to be a part of this.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:55] So it was just a frustration out of just crazy valuations and stuff how everything is

Arjun: [00:44:00] Compelling in this case. Yeah, I think he was making the case that, yeah, that this whole ecosystem was kind of built on a house of cards is what he was saying that. I mean, you have all these boxes that are putting money into S.F. real estate and Google ads and Facebook ads like it's just this huge closed loop where money is just like flowing into the pockets of Google and Facebook. And there's not really like real value that's being created by these companies. Again, I'm not endorsing these beliefs, necessarily. Yeah, no. Yeah, I hear you reporting to you to the best of my ability. What I think a lot of is.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:35] I've heard that argument, and it's not necessarily that potentially that far from the truth. I mean,

Arjun: [00:44:40] Yeah, and people will point to like we work or whatever now. But on the other hand, I think you have to look at a lot of the successes of the Silicon Valley ecosystem. All right. There's a ton of like Cloudflare and Datadog, like all these other companies, that IPO last year also that are like great companies Zoom that are like doing really well where we're on a Zoom call right now.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:00] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, great. So. And now I guess what's next for you? What's the what's the plan?

Arjun: [00:45:07] Yeah. So for me, you know, I'm like, I said, I'm finishing this master's right now, data science, where I'm getting to just like, get a lot deeper into some of these skills that I've been wanting to get deeper into, like taking an advanced deep learning projects class right now, like taking an NLP class and just like kind of learning a lot of those fundamentals. And so I think for me, the next step is like trying to try to figure out how to bring those skills to bear, you know, either in the public markets again or potentially like add an interesting start up, early stage company like, I think those are those are probably the two corners that I find most interesting. I think private markets are definitely interesting as well. But there's just I think there's just a lot more uncertainty around what you're able to really achieve there and like how much value you can add as a quant. I think again, there's exciting stuff, and I wouldn't rule that out. But we'll see, we'll see where that leads. I think for me, the driving principle is really where are there like risk premia that there's new data that I can figure out a way to apply to capture that risk. premia, right? Where is that frontier moving as data becomes more and more available and as these problems become more and more readily solvable? So. that's like continuously moving out, right? Like equities is gone. Fixed income is still potentially there. And you know, private markets are kind of an interesting place. But then also you look at just what tech companies are doing. Like, think open door is a great example of the type of idea that I'm talking about where there was never traditionally a market for for homes, right? You couldn't just like go and buy single family homes like flip them really easily, but like open doors essentially trying to be like a market maker for that in some sense, right? There's huge operational component, but at its core, that's kind of the idea. And so and now there's a ton of firms that have piggybacked on that, and you can argue about whether they're really going to be able to be a viable business and capture enough margin to make that work. But I think if you can have some sort of unique data moat to kind of like fuel, a really strong position there and like you see other interesting companies like I could go on, but other interesting companies that are finding new ways to do that, and I think that's a very exciting opportunity right now

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:32] To potentially going to work for one of them.

Arjun: [00:47:33] Maybe, yeah, potentially going to work for one of them or finding a way to try and like spin up something to try and take advantage of some of that stuff.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:41] Very cool. Yeah, it's fun. Any advice you'd give to your younger self, kind of looking back now where you're at now?

Arjun: [00:47:48] It's a good question. I mean, it's tough. It's tough because hindsight is twenty You know, you always think, why did you do that? I mean, I just done that differently or something else differently, but maybe you never know how things are going to play out, necessarily. But with that said, like probably the I would say, try to try to have stronger mentors sooner. I think that's probably one thing that that I that I try to work on. Like, I always feel like I can figure stuff out and I'm really excited to get going and dive into something on my own. There's a lot of great resources today that help you do that. But I think talking to people that just been there and seeing more things than you just opens your eyes way faster. And I think a lot of the things that I learned, I probably could have learned faster and probably benefited from just like having people that I that I was talking about those at earlier stages.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:41] Yeah, you could skip a lot of the pain of like, yeah, yeah, or at least accelerate the learning curve or flatten the learning curve.

Arjun: [00:48:49] Yeah, yeah. And so I guess, yeah, by the time, by the time you're old enough to realize you should listen to older people, it's like

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:57] I got the beard man. You got to listen to me now, right?

Arjun: [00:48:59] Yeah, yeah, exactly. Here for your wisdom.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:02] Well, Arjun, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.

Arjun: [00:49:05] Yeah, definitely.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:07] Thanks for having me on. 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. And till next time.