My guest this week is Linda Zhang. Linda started her career as a Consultant at Bain before heading to Snapchat. From there, she left big tech to join a startup, becoming an early employee on the Product Management team at Faire. She had an incredible ride at Faire, shipping numerous products and earning multiple promotions along the way to helping the company achieve a $2.5 billion valuation in late 2020. And now for the last few months, Linda has set out on her own entrepreneurial path, launching Product Lessons and Product Toolkit. These sites include content derived from her own experiences and serve as fantastic resources to both aspiring and experienced product managers.

In this episode we cover:

• The highest probability way for Consultants to break into Product Management without going to business school
• The potential strengths and weaknesses of Product Managers who come from Consulting
• The art of negotiation and how she turned down a $375k job offer, plus many more lessons

My guest today is Brooks Corcoran. Brooks worked his way into investment banking in New York and then joined a mid-market private equity firm in Connecticut. From there, he left to join one of his portfolio companies, Therma Holdings which recently exited to Blackstone, where he continues to lead M&A and Strategy. Brooks offers a great view into the Corp Dev role and how it leverages the skillset developed in IB & PE while both offering and requiring a deeper understanding of business operations, broader industry knowledge, and a different investment lens in order to be effective.

My guest today is Josh Gutman. He had a decade-long career as a trader at Virtu Financial, one of the largest market makers globally. After making Partner and going through the company's IPO, he left to pursue his passion for startups, both as an investor and operator. Today, he is the founder of Donut Labs, an organization that aims to foster startups and entrepreneurship within the student and almuni community at his alma mater Caltech.

My guest today is Kevin DePopas. Kevin started his career as a consultant at Deloitte and quit to start the company now known as PainTheory, which is an internet business in the healthcare industry that he runs with his brother. Kevin is an entrepreneur through and through and shares great advice on the right time to take the leap, learning from making multiple pivots to getting real traction, and lastly, an important caution for anyone registering a domain name.

Rounding out Season 1 is the brilliant and hysterical Jordan Raybould. Jordan started his career as an investment banking analyst at UBS after graduating from Yale. From there, he became a stand-up comedian and has now been performing for nearly 9 years. Together with his brother, the Rayboulds’ work has been featured in the Huffington Post, the AV club, Funny or Die, and College Humor. I enjoyed hearing Jordan's thought process on committing to a career in comedy and also his perspective on fighting the fear of failure, which is something that every stand-up comedian is forced to conquer again and again.

The Jordan Raybould on TikTok

The Jordan Raybould on Instagram

Jordan Raybould: Freedom Boner (Full Stand-Up Comedy Special)

Benevolent Dictator with Jordan Raybould

My guest today is Emily Groden, Founder & CEO of Evergreen, a CPG company that's on a mission to clean up the frozen aisle with its nutritious and delicious frozen waffles.

From the time she was young, Emily had her sights set on a path in corporate law. She started her career in litigation consulting, attended law school, and eventually became an Associate in the Mergers & Acquisitions group at Kirkland & Ellis.

Without revealing too much, one fateful night watching Netflix, Emily found inspiration to pursue an opportunity that combined equal parts passion and law experience and that ultimately put her on a fulfilling career path.

Links

• Netflix, Chef’s Table (Volume 2), Grant Achatz
• WSJ, “From Mergers and Acquisitions to Frozen Waffles”
• Evergreen Website
• Evergreen on Instagram

My guest this week is Whit Hamilton. Whit was headed toward a career in archaeology before veering onto the path of management consulting at Deloitte upon graduation. After that, and a year of travel, he joined a large corporation but quickly realized his passion for small businesses. He left that role to join his current company where they broker the sale of FedEx shipping routes, a market that's experienced significant growth on the back of the boom in ecommerce. Please enjoy the many lessons on work and life that Whit has to offer.

Links
The Atlantic - What I Learned About Life at My 30th College Reunion
Whit & Emilie's Travel Photos

My guest this week is Andrew Ferguson. He worked in consulting and then investment banking before enrolling at the USC School of Cinematic Arts in order to pursue a career in screenwriting and directing. While few listeners may be considering a career in film, there are plenty of broadly applicable lessons on how to leverage your skill set to gain an edge in other fields. Plus, we talk about how his finance career informed his latest work, a screenplay on legendary pharma bro, Martin Shkreli, and we close out with a list of Andrew's top 10 films of the last decade that you won't want to miss. Please enjoy this sarcasm-filled conversation.

My guest this week is Christian Anthony. He started his career in investment banking before quitting to start an online CD reseller in the dot com era. After that, he founded a digital media services business, which he sold in 2008 while staying on as CEO for 2 years afterward. From there, he started a B2B software company called ListenFirst, which is where I had the privilege of meeting Christian and his business partner Jason while helping lead a growth equity investment as an associate at Frontier Growth.
As a three-time founder, Christian offers great empirical lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and speaks to the importance of having good partners.

My guest this week is Anuj Abrol. He dabbled in startups throughout college and entered the working world as a consultant at McKinsey. From there, he became chief of staff to Justin Kan, the founder of Twitch and Atrium. Today, he runs Witty Wealth, a weekly publication covering the stock market and investing. Please enjoy our conversation and be sure to check out Witty at https://witty.substack.com/