WSO Podcast | E110: Venture Capital in Tokyo Straight from Undergrad
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In this episode, Brian shares his path from undergrad in the US to working straight for a new venture capital fund in Tokyo. Learn why he turned down his return offer in investment banking after his junior year summer at Jefferies and what the biggest challenges were as a junior employee in a sink-or-swim role.
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WSO Podcast (Episode 110) 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, Brian shares his path from undergrad in the U.S. to working straight for a new venture capital fund in Tokyo. Learn why he turned down his return offer and invest in banking after his junior year summer at Jefferies and what the biggest challenges were as a junior employee in a sink or swim role. Enjoy. Brian, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Voices podcast. Of course, thanks for having
Brian: [00:00:54] Me, Patrick
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:55] Said. To be awesome, if you could just give the listeners a short summary of your bio, for sure.
Brian: [00:01:00] So I started my career, I guess you could say as as a summer analyst and an investment bank, I guess that's where a lot of people kind of start their careers in finance. So I worked at Jefferies for a summer. I spent most of my time there, you know, cycling around with a couple of different teams, but probably most of my time with the tech banking team. I kind of had a pre-existing sort of interest in technology, and they were pretty busy that summer. So so got looped in with the team there ended up actually taking a different path ultimately. And maybe we can kind of touch on that later, but ended up getting an opportunity to join kind of
Brian: [00:01:40] An early venture team that was forming in Japan of all places. So I actually graduated. I moved to Tokyo. I worked for a VC there for a couple of years, transferred to another team in the same B.S. covering kind of Europe and Israel, and then ended up finding a startup. I totally fell in love with and joined just two months ago. So that's kind of my long mark from kind of finance to VC to tech.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:12] Great. So let's start all the way back in undergrad,
Where you always kind of focused on finance or kind of how did you fall into this internship? I assume it was a junior year internship. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I mean, I had it because, I mean, because you went where you went to school wasn't like, it's not super finance focused.
Brian: [00:02:32] Yeah, that's right. So I went to Johns Hopkins, where that's right, we didn't have like an undergraduate business program, but we did have was an interesting professor who kind of sat kind of within the economics department who kind of, you know, found students with interest in finance in the markets and took them on as research analysts. So we kind of had our own community of sort of finance interested people on campus. And I was part of that, but I had other interests. I was actually an East Asian studies major, so I studied Japanese, which obviously comes into play later in my story. But I would say, you know,
Brian: [00:03:12] Nothing really special. I kind of, you know
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:15] What interested you about East Asian studies?
Brian: [00:03:18] Yeah, so I I actually spent a summer living in Japan when I was in high school. I did an exchange there and that kind of sparked interest. I also was born in Hong Kong and my family are expats in that part of the world for a while. So I kind of had had it in the background in my life for a while and decided to study it a bit more seriously in college. But I was sort of just generally interested in finance. I think the way most people become interested and sort of, you know, hey,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:49] This might be this might be a good career move, at least not be dependent on the parents. Yeah. Once you graduate, kind of thing. Ok, so you're you do this internship. You're it sounds like they are pretty busy that somewhere. Was it just something where they gave you a full time offer and you didn't take it or like it was just brutal and you knew it wasn't for you? No.
Brian: [00:04:11] Yeah, they gave me a full time offer, which I was super excited to receive was to join their tech banking team and love the people there. I still think it's an awesome place. A couple of things happen, so kind of right after receiving the full time offer, you know, I head back to school. I'm like on top of the world set basically until I graduate and I got the news that I was able to graduate a semester early so that that was one piece. And then I also sort of kind of rekindled a relationship I had with somebody in Japan who I actually kind of informally interned with the previous summer. So the summer before I worked at Geoffrey's got it, and he kind of floated this idea of having me join a venture team that he was forming. So he was sort of investing off the balance sheet of fidelity and kind of in the process of starting a fund. And anyway, so he floated this idea. I thought, I'm going to graduate early. We kind of said, maybe there's something there and kind of based on that, I turned down the job offer at Jefferies, which kind of seemed crazy in the moment. But in retrospect, I think it was the right decision for me, and I moved to Tokyo and worked for for a couple of months as a waiter in a restaurant.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): 00:05:36] Had you ever I mean, you said you had spent a year there, right, as a high school student?
Brian: [00:05:40] I spent a couple of months there in high school and then I spent about a semester there in college.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:46] Ok, so tell me about it was it was something it wasn't super new to you. But was it still some after a few months? Would it feel like culture shock a little bit? Or was it something where you felt at home? Yeah, I
Brian: [00:05:59] Would say there's definitely still lots of culture shock, and part of the agreement was I was going to spend my semester that I had graduated early in in Japan, improving my Japanese language ability. So that kind of when the fund was in place and when this guy was ready to hire me that I was good to go. So I kind of moved there with nothing. I didn't know anybody and took language classes during the day, worked as a waiter, as I said at night. And then eventually I got the call saying, you're hired, and that's where I started my career.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:37] And so tell me a little bit about that. Just that relationship there, the ability to kind of take that leap of faith that this was the right move for you because I think a lot of people maybe have something exciting, but they have the sure thing. And maybe, maybe it's not. Maybe finance isn't right for them. They know that deep down, but they think, well, this is the path I have to follow because everyone's going to call me crazy if I don't.
Brian: [00:06:59] Yeah, I mean, there are there are definitely all those feelings. And they were they were much stronger in the moment. I mean, I think I'm sort of when I look back, I think I tend to kind of minimize them a little bit, but I was definitely feeling all those anxieties.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:16] And then when you're waiting tables in Tokyo, you're probably that doubles. Exactly.
Brian: [00:07:22] Yeah, definitely. Definitely was kind of, you know, not where I imagined I would. I would be in that moment in time. Mm hmm. And, you know, it was a decision that I kind of relied on my closest mentors for guidance and kind of just took a step back and kind of looked at things more holistically. I kind of, you know, thought about like some of my peers when I was working in the investment bank. And I think it was pretty easy for me to recognize that some of my interests were a bit different. I really like the tech banking group, and I think that was more because I was super interested in technology and how technology solves problems more than the details of specific transactions we were trying to underwrite. And I think that might be true of kind of most people, but. Yeah, I think I think that combined with getting to also experience living in a foreign country right out of school and kind of using my language ability and what I studied in university right away, put it to the test. Yeah, exactly.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:29] See, I moved down when I moved down to Buenos Aires after I got my MBA from Wharton, it was I thought I. I thought I spoke Spanish really well and I got down there and I had, you know, my mother's Colombian, my I had a girlfriend that was Mexican. I had like, so like my Spanish was the most in my grandmother's from Catalonia, Spain. So like Barcelona, like Spain, Spanish, and that's kind of what they teach. I had the most messed up and sound kind of like a gringo, too. So it's like the most messed up split of Spanish that everyone was like, Wait, are you from buenos Aires? It's going to be like, Oh, this was because I'd kind of integrate some of that.
Brian: [00:09:05] And yeah, it was a mess.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:07] But yeah, it can be tough. It can be tough when you're moving and you don't know anybody and it's it can be lonely. It can be. I mean, there's a good expat community there, too. Then I had some good friends, so that was lucky. But did you feel that like you were able to quickly make friends outside of work at all? Or like, what was that like? Or do you just stay in a really small kind of.
Brian: [00:09:27] Well, yeah, it was interesting. I had kind of one really close friend who was local and he kind of, you know, is a great kind of bridge for me to meet japanese people. And I definitely found a community there, which was awesome. And as my kind of language abilities got better, that opened up more and more. And then there is a kind of small expat community in Tokyo. It's not like a Hong Kong or a London, but there's sort of an interesting expat sort of scene in Tokyo and had friends from all over the world.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:00] So why do you call it interesting just because people there or just interesting?
Brian: [00:10:04] Well, I think I think if you look at a city like Hong Kong or London, for example, you know, people can kind of end up there just because they got transferred there. And I think people who end up in Tokyo are there for a reason. Either, you know,
They're someone of Japanese heritage, kind of like discovering their roots. Either they were super into manga comic books or whatever. But there's kind of something a deeper interest, I think, usually tied to people living in Tokyo. Which kind of brings the community together. Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:37] Very cool. So, OK, so going back, I don't want to jump right away into your time there. So just going back to the internship real quick, so you got the full time off or you're on the top of the top of the world. Can you talk a little bit about that internship? Before we kind of move on and a little bit about specifically? Why you thought you got the offer, was it because they were hiring everybody, because they were desperate for bodies or do you feel like honestly, you did something better than some of the other interns? Because I know there's a lot of people heading into their internships, even though a lot of its work from home or this year.
Brian: [00:11:10] But yeah, it was. It was quite a few years ago. But yeah, I do remember, you know, having some experiences where I felt like I definitely, you know, was sort of excelling and kind of showing my worth and having my moments and then others where I was, you know, totally, you know, I felt like totally at a disadvantage compared to other interns in terms of some of their technical knowledge. And, you know, it was sort of a rollercoaster. I remember of doubt and they did they
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:46] Give you, did they give you positive feedback like halfway through what was it like? Like, did you feel like you knew you had it in the bag at some point?
Brian: [00:11:54] Yeah, I think I think once I kind of really started spending more time with one team, the TAC team in particular, you know, there was kind of a lot of long nights where I was like, you know, building, building, I think important good relationships with people on that team, which I think in the long run is like, what really matters? You need someone who's going to speak up for you. And you know, it's I guess it was, you know, 10 weeks or something like that, which is a good amount of time. But when you're kind of jumping around between different teams and all over the place, it's, you know, it's easy to kind of go the whole summer, I think have people kind of, you know, not have much to say about the time together. So I think spending spending a lot of time with one team was one thing. And Jeffries might have been unique in that regard, that it was explicitly a generalist. Was it hard?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:44] Was it hard to land that internship in the first place? Yeah, I remember, you know, five hundred emails out and getting like, how did you actually even land it?
Brian: [00:12:55] So there was an alumni alumnus from my university who was currently working there, and he came to campus to recruit. He was in my fraternity. So that was kind of an easy connection. But I actually interviewed while in Japan because I was studying abroad there. So that kind of put me at a disadvantage. I couldn't show up to all the super days and do the whole thing, so I kind of focused my efforts on one or two places because that's kind of all I could do while I was remote and I was fortunate enough that that Jeffrey's. We're open to doing the Super Day virtually, so I remember I woke up at like 3:00 in the morning and ran through these super days like in a like totally like hallucinogenic state.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:45] Is it like a Skype conference call like our Zoom like back in the day?
Brian: [00:13:49] Yeah, it was a Skype. Yeah. And you know, they just came in back to back and did their thing, you
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:55] Know, on a computer like this, like you're just,
Brian: [00:13:59] You know, just on the computer. And in a way, I think, you know, it might have even just set me apart because I was, you know, the one dude in Tokyo at 3:00 in the morning joining, joining me via Skype. But yeah, you know, I think I don't think the repertoire has changed much. The DCF and the coordination. Yeah, yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:22] And you knew that stuff. You were ready.
Brian: [00:14:25] Yeah. So I owe a lot to kind of the sort of champion I had there, this alumni who would call me up in Tokyo and ask me to run through a DCF and all this stuff. And I would kind of go and I'd fumble my words and he would just hang up the phone. And, you know, my heart would like saying kind of be like, Oh my God, he thinks I'm an idiot. I'm wasting his time. And that he'd called me back up and be like, You know, I'm calling you again tomorrow. You know, don't should say it here. But yeah. So, so I had someone pushing me. And yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. Good man pushing
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:07] You. That's what I try to do with my mentees. I have four three mentees now and I'm always trying to get I bust them a little bit. I'm like, we can tighten up that answer. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard because you're doing this actually on like a similar Zoom conference. It's it's like it's actually broadcast. So it's kind of stressful for them too.
Brian: [00:15:24] So, yeah, yeah. And you're nervous.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:27] Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so OK. So you it worked out, you ended up getting the offer and you ended up doing obviously really well. You get you're going through this, you're flying high senior year and then like that that moment, that decision where you're like, Wait a second, I'm not going to take this. What was that like and how did you even break it to that?
Brian: [00:15:45] I remember I was with my dad and I was kind of freaking out about the wrong things. I was sort of like they already they already send me a signing bonus and I already signed a contract. Like, you know what, if what happens if I blow this thing up and like, what are the implications? And people who were more experienced than I was at the time? In this case, you know, my father was just like, look, you know, Jeffries will live. They will continue to function as a very successful investment bank. And I don't think I don't think they're going to sweat it too much. You need to just make the decision that's right for you. And so, yeah, I remember it was, you know, a lot of thinking a lot of, you know, kind of crowd sourcing of ideas. And I just consistently kept hearing, you know, from people, I'd say, you know, I have an offer to work with this amazing investment bank. Blah blah. Great people or kind of moving to Tokyo, joining a newly forming venture team and sort of, you know, who knows. But I think people could just tell that I was really excited about the latter, just the way I spoke about it. And luckily, I had kind of the right mentors and the right people to tell me that it was.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:13] It's OK to take that more risky path. Yeah, yeah. So tell me, tell me about like that. What? What gave you that? I mean, you were obviously excited. You're really into tech. You really probably. It was a more natural fit for you, but it wasn't like you were going to some sort of established VC fund where you had some of that safety of that process and whatnot. So we'll give you that confidence, which is like, I don't care. Like, I believe in the person who is going to launch this.
Brian: [00:17:39] It was exactly that, so in this case, it was the individual who kind of took a massive leap of faith by offering me the job and hiring me. He's still a very close mentor today.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:54] I think he had that confidence for hire an undergrad. Because I know there are a lot of kids, a lot of kids listening be like, I want to go straight to B.C.. Yeah.
Brian: [00:18:04] To be honest, I have no idea, but I'm really I'm really kind of happy that that he did. I think I think we.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:11] How did you develop that relationship? I guess just was it was it all? Was it through mutual friends? How did it?
Brian: [00:18:18] So the kind of full back story. When I was studying Japanese in college, I knew that I was, you know, wanting to study at a Japanese university for a semester, and their semesters are a bit different. So it was kind of going to eat up a little bit of my summer. Plus, like they basically bring me right up to spring semester, so I figured I might as well kind of move there in the summer. Find something interesting to do before the semester. And so I kind of started reaching out to contacts and ended up getting in touch with someone who worked at Disney in Japan, and I was, you know, super excited. I wanted to basically intern there and their kind of business development group. And I kind of built a relationship there, kind of got along in their process somewhat. It was going to kind of be an informal thing and then at the last minute they just couldn't sponsor a visa for whatever reason, it was too complicated. So they kind of pulled it out from under me at the last minute. I was really, really bummed about that. But the contact I had there, who was also an expat who I think kind of sympathized with kind of a young foreign dude looking to looking to work in Japan, which is not an easy thing to do. He kind of opened his contact book to me, and the first contact he he put was the guy who would end up being my future, my future boss. And I just kind of reached out with a cold email. You know, I think it was a mix of good timing and and, you know, we just hopped on a Skype call. I remember I took it from the library of at Johns Hopkins, totally kind of unprepared. It was very kind of informal and probably lasted like 15 minutes. And he was just like, Yeah, OK, you know, come over. You know, we barely have an office. It was it was like two people, two or three people. And he said,you know, we'll find work for you to do. So I think,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:25] Did you feel like this is going to be unpaid or did he say anything about that? Or like, were you nervous about like what it included?
Brian: [00:20:31] I think only because it was legally required. I was paid hourly, not very much, but I was paid. And it was an amazing experience that was supposed to last. The summer ended up actually, I was sort of like moonlighting my whole semester study abroad. I was there in that office for like seven months. Wow. Helping out with stuff and building a relationship there. So I think that's why. Yeah. So I guess I left that kind of piece out. But yeah, it was a huge part of it was the relationship. You know, I've learned this, you know, as I've continued in my career, but especially, I think important early on is having a mentor who's really invested in you is like, you know, the most, the most valuable thing. You can have that probably enabling your career, but especially early on. And I really felt that connection with this guy and. It felt like the right thing to do.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:32] So, yeah, that's kind of giving you the confidence to say no to Jeffries to go take this new startup fund, you get there, you're waiting tables because you're there a little early and you're thinking to yourself, OK, what's going on here? What am I going to do? He's like, Okay, you're hired. You start, what's that first kind of week like?
Brian: [00:21:51] The first oh, man. So, so basically the firm it it was a new sort of branch of a very well established global VC firm used to be called something else. Now it's basically all branded as eight roads and have been investing in China for decades, India for decades, Europe and the U.S. for decades. Japan was sort of a new geography. So there were probably three or four. Three or four or five, sort of. When I joined the team and all very new joiners and all external and internal communication was done in Japanese, which was kind of a shock. And, you know, all my colleagues were, you know, experienced investment professionals or, you know, people coming from tech companies or consulting firms, you know, real estate professionals. And I was you a new grad, so the school was sorry.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:05] Were they native from Japan or are they? Yeah, all
Brian: [00:23:09] Native from Japan. Everyone, everyone in the office were native speakers, except for me. But that was that was OK. You know, there's nothing you can do about that. That's kind of learn as you go and Japanese is a particularly difficult language, so you just got to keep absorbing it. And that's kind of a long game. So no one expected me to be fluent overnight. But in terms of just kind of professional skills and then, you know, actual investment skills. That's something I had to develop totally from scratch. And you know, it's like in one sense, you know, you mentioned some of your listeners might be saying, Oh, how do I jump straight into? And sometimes it's amazing and it's awesome when it does work out. But it's definitely in a firm like, like the one I joined. It wasn't an easy thing to do. It was pretty painful.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:09] You had to swim on your own. Day three.
Brian: [00:24:11] Yeah, yeah. So, so my manager, definitely.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:14] No training, no training. No nothing.
Brian: [00:24:17] Yeah, I had, you know, I probably could have benefited from some of the investment banking training and all that stuff. But yeah, it was a totally sink or swim kind of experience. You know, eventually just really required me to say like, you know, like, no one is going to save you here. You know, you've got to sit here on the weekend, learn how to build a financial model, you know,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:45] Was that the hardest part? The technical, just the technical like excel skills and the hard skills of being an investor and be able to just look at something and evaluate it from the VC perspective? Or was it more just the language barrier? Or both? It was just all coming at you from all different. Yeah, I think the language
Brian: [00:25:03] Barrier, just like added a sort of a little, you know, hot sauce to everything. It was kind of an omnipresent sort of challenge, but sort of the, you know, the more like fundamental skills I think we're all, you know, pretty, pretty difficult to just kind of pick up on the go and require a lot of, you know, just hard work to do. I mean, at least for me.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:27] Did you get the perspective that you were welcome there being the only kind of expat being kind of the most junior person? That kind of was clueless sometimes.
Brian: [00:25:37] Sometimes, yes,
trick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:39] People frustrated with you. Like, Why is this?
Brian: [00:25:41] Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I think there was definitely some small enough team that people wanted to see me succeed, I think my success was ultimately in everyone's interest. And I had, you know, not only my, you know, the managing partner who was, you know, kind of believing in me from the beginning. But everyone at the firm, I think, really kind of went out of their way to mentor me in ways I'm like, still incredibly grateful for and are still paying dividends, for sure. But it definitely took time. There was definitely awkwardness of just where my skills were and where some other peoples were.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:26] But people actually like sitting you down and being like, Here's how you build it. Did somebody actually sit down with you and walk through that with you? Or are they like here? Read this and they just threw stuff at you.
Brian: [00:26:36] A little bit of both
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:40] Trying to get a sense like what your how stressed out you are or how freaked out you were.
Brian: [00:26:43] I was at times very, very stressed and very freaked out. But I was I was definitely supportive. And so
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:52] Most of your day to day was it like, here are these, you know, potential companies. Do they want you to do any business development? Do they want you to do any sort of what was the pipeline look? What did it look like and like? Was that your main responsibility as the junior?
Brian: [00:27:06] So maybe, yeah, maybe interesting. Just add a little context on that. So we were we were sort of, I guess you could say, like a series a B investor in Japan. But this was, you know, at a time when the whole Japan venture market was very, very nascent. It still is fairly nascent compared to some other markets. It's matured vastly since those early years. We're talking 2015 16. Yeah, but we were sort of, you know, in exploratory mode in a lot of ways, and the diversity of our team kind of reflected that. I mean, we were investing in kind of opportunities where we saw them. It wasn't like you had sort of this vast ocean of Series B companies to find exactly what metrics you like, and we need it to be a bit more thesis led than that. And so so we kind of had a really interesting mix of people on the team from different backgrounds and sort of investment and things we found interesting. We did everything from an electric wheelchair company to a gaming company to an aerospace company, SAS companies, health care services companies. We really kind of get everything which was super cool and great experience to learn. A lot about, you know, a lot of different businesses, I think some VCs are very specialized by stage or by sector. We really kind of were kind of looking at a bit of everything which kind of helps you kind of see the full, see the full landscape and get a lot of exposure. So yeah, in that context,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:55] Were you guys giving a specific sorry to interrupt, but were you giving a specific amount to invest
Brian: [00:28:59] Out of us? Yeah, yeah. So at that point, we had a fund, I think was like a two hundred and fifty million dollar account, which at the time was one of the biggest funds,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:09] Which is a lot. Yeah, back then. And you have to invest it in Japan, I see. Right.
Brian: [00:29:16] We were we were really successful with that fund and ended up raising a second in my time there. A larger fund. But my responsibility is, you know, just the way how we were set up and as a junior, I was sort of spending most of my time on the execution side of things. So we would have sort of most of the sourcing done on the senior side of the team bringing in interesting opportunities and very flat organization. So I could say I didn't like something. I just had to be articulate as to why. And then, you know, we're all just sort of working together to evaluate the businesses, do financial modelling around them to understand different aspects, understanding the market
Patrick (CEO of WSO): 00:30:03] How long did it take you? Four to get you to get comfortable saying you don't like something to the partner? And was it mostly thesis driven in terms of when you said you didn't like something? Or was it more like after you ran the numbers you would speak up?
Brian: [00:30:18] Yeah, well, I think, you know, it's funny, I think it kind of ties back to like my experience, you know, as you said, like I was coming in without many, you know, it was hard for me to speak up in the sense that I didn't have, you know, much, much experience behind me. But you had been you had
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:36] Worked there for seven months, almost prior.
Brian: [00:30:39] Right? Yes, that's right. As an intern. So, so I mean, I guess, you know, I had to kind of rely on, you know, what are the areas I do know? What are sort of the things that do set me apart and where my voice, you know, has a bit more reason behind it? And you know, I found, you know, I'm sort of I was sort of the only millennial kind of true millennial age person on the team from the states who, you know, a lot of tech trends are kind of coming to the U.S. first and then they might show up in Japan later. So I kind of had a different perspective, which you know, is valid. So I would
say, you know, you know, I think this is interesting because I saw, you know, really successful company doing something like this in the U.S. or the opposite. I saw companies trying to do this in the U.S., and here's why the model failed. Those are kind of the ways at first I would kind of choose to speak up and then kind of later as I kind of built the skill set around financial analysis and so on, you get a little more nuanced. Yeah, exactly. Very cool.
Patrick (CEO of WSO: [00:31:49] So you're there for a little over two years in Tokyo. Tell me why or what prompted the move to. It was London, right? You moved to London. Tell me what prompted that move and what was the kind of internal process for making?
Brian: [00:32:05] Yeah, so we were sort of expanding as a firm globally and one of the new geographies we had in our crosshairs was Israel. We had made a couple of early investments, not in terms of their stage, but our first investments in Israel about a year, a year or two prior. And they both gone sort of exceptionally well, opened a lot of doors for us and we decided to kind of formalize our efforts there and kind of see what we could build out. Israel is a notoriously difficult venture market. It's extremely local, you know, it's small, it's highly networked. It's not easy to break into, and some of the best firms in the world have sort of come and gone set up shop and left they haven't been able to break in there. So we were kind of, you know,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:04] Basically getting in on the right deals. That's what it's about, right and doing.
Brian: [00:33:07] Yeah, exactly. And I kind of, you know, saw the opportunity. I was interested in just getting more experience. I had such a rewarding experience immersing myself in a new business culture and a new culture in Japan and thought it'd be interesting to just kind of do it again and just keep learning and keep getting exposure. So I sort of raise my hand as sort of being super interested in that. And was lucky to be able to make that that move, I think I was the first person in the firm to ever kind of jump geographies like that. And I think it just has to do with the local nature of B.C. It's just very much about the ecosystem you're in and the network. But being kind of junior, it kind of I think let's lets you do that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:03] And then kind of completely like grounded yourself to your roots, weren't there necessarily, you still had enough time to? Yeah.
Brian: [00:34:09] Yeah, I think that's right. And you know, I think once you want to like really kind of build your career as a B.S. kind of rise up the ranks, you want to sort of
pick, pick a spot somewhat or pick, you know, pick kind of where you're really going to build out those roots. But I felt like I was still kind of, you know, in a phase where I could I could jump around. So I ended up moving to our London office, which was sort of Europe and Israel focused fund. We were a bit bigger in fund. We were three hundred and seventy five million dollar fund there and the strategy was a bit more focused on growth. So kind of series B Plus and we were investing across Europe and Israel, and again, the team was incredibly diverse. I think we spoke like 12 languages amongst us. You know, we had people covering the Nordics and Germany and France and Spain and, you know, all the localities in Europe and all in local languages. I'm not a Hebrew speaker, but you know, people, people in Israel speak, speak English. So we ended up hiring someone on the ground in Israel. We just felt that that was essential to have a presence there. And then I joined. We have a couple of other Israeli colleagues on the team, and we really kind of built out a formal effort in Israel. We invested in a number of really exciting companies. One of them being the company I ended up joining. And again, it was it was just an amazing experience. I gained totally different skill sets there. Just even if you move just kind of slightly in terms of stage of investing, you know, it can kind of involve totally different skill sets.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:02] Can you tell me about how that shifted going from a little earlier stage? Easy to be.
Brian: [00:36:07] Yeah, for sure, so. In Europe, we were sort of a much, much more kind of typical kind of growth investor set up early growth investor, meaning that, you know, most of the junior team is kind of heavily involved in sourcing. That's kind of our primary responsibility is to reach out to kind of as many companies as possible, track as many companies as possible and basically have them sort of warmed up and ready when they're kind of in your sweet spot and kind of be there to have conversations at the right time about investment. So that's kind of a huge part of the responsibility, and that can be pretty gruelling in terms of sort of they call it smile and smiling and dialling. You're really doing a lot of that, but can also be a lot of fun because it means going to conferences and in the context of this fund, you know, traveling all over Europe and meeting entrepreneurs, which actually is not so bad. And did a lot of that, and then we were much kind of more rigorous around finding financial profiles that that kind of really fit with our sort of investment strategy. So we were looking for, you know, kind of unit economics that we like to grow certain growth profile that we liked. And then obviously, you know, management teams that we were confident in and kind of overall
stories that were compelling. But kind of that the rigor of analysis was, you know, I think a much higher as you move kind of up the investment curve. And there was there was that component.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:57] Do you feel like I know there's some of that here here in Silicon Valley? There's a little bit of the if there's one really strong anchor investor, everyone just is trying to get into the same deal because it's assumed there's almost like a there's a little bit of a groupthink going on. Did you feel that that was the case there where there's like a hot company and everyone's trying to get in? Or do you feel like there's enough inefficiencies where the diligence you're putting it in that that like rigor on the financial side actually was creating any value for you guys?
Brian: [00:38:25] Yeah. No, I mean, it's definitely it was definitely like that. You know, everyone feels the FOMO. Yeah, and you know, everyone kind of knows, knows the hot deals. And you know, that being said, I think
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:43] Corporate relationships are still really important, right? Having built those up prior?
Brian: [00:38:48] Yeah, of course. Relationships are important. And I think, you know, Europe was an interesting market in that, you know, we really were seeing, you know,
Unicorns, you know, I mean, not necessarily even unicorns, but, you know, extremely successful investments. Being made all over Europe, you know, they could kind of come from anywhere. I mean, we saw billion dollar companies coming out of Poland and, you know, multiple coming out of places like France and Germany. But, you know, kind of it was it was really an interesting, interesting landscape and a company doesn't have to be a billion dollar company to be a really successful investment. So there definitely were, I think, interesting arbitrage kind of opportunities and we were constantly on the hunt for those across Europe. I think it made it a really interesting place to be an investor. You know, it's still a very saturated, very competitive market. But I think. I think maybe in a different in a different way than the US.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:55] Uh, in what sense, why do you say that?
Brian: [00:39:58] Well, I think we still have sort of the concept of brand name funds coming in and, you know, in some cases still paying really high valuations. But sort of coming in and taking all the really hot deals, you know, that being said, I think because there's an element of, you know, local presence and European track record and kind of kind of some other components where, you know, as a firm with a discrete strategy with a focus, you can still kind of build an exciting investment strategy for yourself without sort of just falling into, OK. You know, you know, FOMO or, you know, for sure, chasing the same deals or, yeah, I think you get what I mean.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:53] So you were you're in VC for almost four years there, over four years,
Brian: [00:41:00] Exactly four years.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:02] So why leave? What kind of why not do the full lifer VC for life? Yeah. It can be really rewarding, both financially, intellectually. Or did you feel like you just wanted a new challenge? What was the? I think it helped. It's helpful for the listeners to hear. Yeah, you know. From the other side of like, what were you looking for?
Brian: [00:41:27] Yeah, that's I think the essential question. I really enjoyed being an investor. I'm like still getting used to saying that in the past tense. And it is, as you said, like it's probably one of the most intellectually stimulating kind of finance jobs. I think that you can have I mean, we're kind of trying to become experts and everything like we know a little bit about everything and a lot about nothing. And you're constantly on the phone with entrepreneurs who are trying to fundamentally just disrupt industries. So you're sort of drinking from a tap, which is just like the vanguard of industry globally. And speaking to really smart people. So that aspect of it, I absolutely
loved and still cherish that experience. Let me said, it's it is super competitive. It's grind. The smartest people are not always the best investors. And, you know, in kind of the arc of your career, I think I was I was also a bit unusual that I started from VC. And it's I think it's really something I very well may go back to at some point in my career. But I sort of looked at I looked at a lot of my colleagues and saw people who came from entrepreneurial experiences or tech backgrounds or Kind of other experiences. I mean, that's the kind of interesting thing about B.C. is sort of the problem set that we're dealing with is kind of so fundamental that that sort of anyone with a really kind of business background, no matter where that comes from, kind of has the toolkit to do what ABC does. There's sort of a separate kind of VC toolkit that you sort of build over time. But but it's really kind of a mix of different backgrounds. And so I kind of looked at some of my peers that had sort of more diverse experience. I think it makes you a better investor, more rounded kind of thinker and just figured now is a good time. Also had a lot to do with this particular company, which I can tell you about as well.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:43] But you weren't thinking, I want to go to investment banking. Yeah, that at this point, thinking or you weren't thinking private equity. But I want to move to more mature companies, less not to grow because it's often that people say that's less exciting.
Brian: [00:43:57] It's more fun. Well, it's interesting. I think I was actually kind of split. I think like part of me was pulling me much toward much closer to sort of operating company side where I ended up and kind of dealing with these kind of challenges in a more hands-on way. But actually, you know, having spent four years as an investor, you sort of learn kind of, you know, the financial kind of language and you start to kind of understand really like what makes a really interesting financial enterprise. And it's, you know, it's sort of a science. It's sort of an art and, you know, VCs love to blog about it and you know. Talk about their new method of understanding unit economics and this and that, but it just it really is just a really fascinating, multidimensional kind of problem to work in B.C. and you know, I easily I easily could see myself kind of kind of going back to that world.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:01] So tell me why, why I make the jump or why make the jump when you did and then move back to the U.S.?
Brian: [00:45:07] Yeah. So yeah, it's funny. You mentioned those things happening together. That was intentional. It was or was not. It was. I did. I did want to move back to the U.S. For me, it was just about kind of putting down roots here as it's home. I've got a girlfriend who's in medical school here now. It made sense for a lot of reasons. And in terms of this company, it was. It is an Israeli company that has a presence in New York and office in New York. And I was just, you know, totally. Totally pumped about the company, and it sort of just the stars aligned. But yeah, I met the founders like any other company did the first call. Got the presentation, you know, heard a bit about the story and what they do. Israelis are probably the most like excitable entrepreneurs you can you can speak to and the most like assertive about how they're going to build billion dollar companies. Yeah. So I mean, it was it was an incredibly energetic pitch. I was sort of, you know, totally hooked. And you know, there's I probably
saw like five hundred and 500 plus pitches, and in four years, they'd probably be more than that. There really are like, you really kind of do know a good, a good pitch when you when you see one and a good story when you hear one. Mm hmm. I loved it and we sort of started digging in more. I, you know, started flying back and forth to Israel, spending more time with the team running the process. I ended up following the team to a Conference in Las Vegas. Spending time with them there and just getting to know them a bit better. And I just really believed in the company. I thought the opportunity in front of them was enormous. I really liked the people. And I was in New York for four business, and I hit up the CEO to get drinks to celebrate after we closed the round. And we started having a more kind of candid conversation, and we sort of floated the idea of joining anyway. Fast forward three or four months. And I was joining full time right at the beginning of this coronavirus situation.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:44] I'm a little bit about that. How has that been starting? Have you been able to kind of really get going or?
Brian: [00:47:49] Yeah. So I mean, I can share a super briefly a bit about what the company does. Yeah, that'd be great. Related. The company is called gloat, and basically we're building internal talent marketplaces in some of the largest employers in the world. So what that basically means is it's a two sided marketplace. On one side, you have employees their skills and their capacity, their career aspirations. And on the other side of the marketplace, you have HR and managers who have work to be done and that work. We find, you know, in sort of the traditional organization, you have roles and hierarchies and job architectures. And that's kind of how the rules are written, at least on paper. But we know in reality, you know, that's not how the modern enterprise functions. People are working in small projects, people are acquiring skills as they go, people are finding new mentors and so on and so forth. So we sort of are building the new operating system for how a large enterprise utilizes its talent. Basically, managers in HR or posting project based work could be full time roles, job shadowing opportunities, volunteer opportunities, mentorship, opportunities to a marketplace and employees are basically able to get matched to those opportunities and work in a more agile way. We have like an A.I. that's basically matching the two together, and we're powering this type of talent marketplace globally at some of the largest employers in the world. Unilever as a customer of ours, Schneider Electric is another customer of ours. And what's so cool to me about the company is, you know, it's what we've built is a piece of software like any tech company. But when we sort of put our piece of software into an enormous company, Unilever's over 100000 employees, we sort of completely transform the way that the organization works. And, you know, we're hoping to do a lot more of that. So it's kind of really, really big vision and really, really big impact. Amazing team. So that's what I'm involved with now.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:07] That's very cool. At what level do you feel like a company has to be before they're really able to drive out of you guys? Or is it based on like a per employee count? Is that how you guys are pricing it kind of thing? Or it's under a thousand employees, it's one bucket or under five hundred one bucket kind of thing is that?
Brian: [00:50:24] Yeah, so I mean, we're really focused on large enterprise fortune five
hundred, yeah. So I mean, that's where the problems we're solving become most relevant. And the reason I wanted to mention this in light of coronavirus is, you know, a huge kind of challenge facing companies now is, you know, obviously the uncertainty. A lot of them are implementing hiring freezes and a lot of businesses are facing huge disruption where you have one part of the business in these large companies, which could employ thousands of people, you know, it could be functions supporting retail operations, for example, you know, that goes to zero and then another part of your business goes to one hundred and you need a way to sort of dynamically reallocate your talent to where to where it's needed in the business. So, you know, companies are
grappling with really hard decisions around do I lay off workers? Do I furlough workers? Do I find a way to reallocate Workers? The issue with the reallocation at scale is that they have no way of understanding what skills underlying skills employees have kind of beneath their job title. So we capture all that data and we're able to sort of do this kind of reallocation dynamically and at scale. So we're doing that and helping a lot of companies through these challenges now and, you know, helps people just gain new experience on the job, discover new directions for their careers, kind of all in real
time. So that's yeah, it's exciting times for us now.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:01] Very cool. Yeah. So anything, you know, I appreciate you telling you sharing your story with everybody. Anything you'd kind of looking back, anything you'd change or any advice you want to leave the listeners with before we call it.
Brian: [00:52:19] It's a great question, I don't think there's anything I would change, I think. Maybe I'm lucky to be able to say that. I think obviously hindsight is 20 20, but. I think just constantly staying open to opportunities is super important. Even this most recent jump for me, from B.C. to operating company felt like an enormous leap in the moment and looking back feels like such an obvious choice and an amazing choice. So I think just kind of always keeping open to opportunities, always keeping open minded is super important. I think it's particularly pertinent for the financial industry where there's just so much sort of, you know, you get on the treadmill and you sort of you don't get off and the pay is, you know, literally designed to kind of keep you on the treadmill. And you know, it's interesting because I think people who kind of have careers in finance and do find a way to kind of step away, you know, end up doing really interesting things. And, you know, sometimes they end up coming back to a financial profession kind of with a totally new perspective and. I think it's just worth keeping. Keeping really open minded and trying not to follow the pack.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:43] Yeah, we get a lot of that. So I think private equity is not the only way. Yeah, it's a great way. If you can do it, it's a great, great way to get some experience, but it's not the only way. And hopefully everyone listening to this, hopefully these guests kind of help open your eyes to different, different paths you can take, including jumping to Tokyo straight out of undergrad, barely and surviving works out. Brian, thanks so much for taking the time to share your story with everybody.
cool. Thanks, Patrick, 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.
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