Brendan King '12 shares his journey from playing professional soccer across Europe and MLS to founding Wavvest, a tech platform transforming how wealth managers operate.
In this conversation, Brendan opens up about moving away from home at 16 to train with the U.S. U-17 National Team, his years playing at Notre Dame, and getting drafted by the Portland Timbers. He walks us through playing professionally in Ireland and Norway, then coming home to Chicago - only to suffer a career-ending hamstring injury that forced him to rethink everything.
Brendan discusses his transition into wealth management, spending nearly seven years at Bessemer Trust and JP Morgan working with some of the world's wealthiest families - clients with $20M minimums and portfolios in the hundreds of millions. He explains how watching firms doing billions in revenue still struggle with basic workflows led him to quit his job and start Wavvest.
He talks about the early days of founding - getting 150+ no's before that first yes, signing their first billion-dollar AUM client, and why he believes the future of wealth management is a hybrid of cutting-edge tech and human advice. Plus, he shares what it's like building a startup while expecting his first child.