Not many individuals other than some of the partners from Long-Term Capital Management have spoken or written anything public about their experience. I happened to be up in Greenwich, Ct a couple of days ago to meet with one of the partners from LTCM and I realized that it's almost 20 years since I started working there.This isn't a story of what happened at LTCM. This is a reflection on how I arrived at LTCM 20 years ago, some of what I did while I was there, and what I learned.
The Liar's Poker Influence
Upon graduating from NYU, there were only a few things most students from Stern did. We went to Wall Street, Madison Ave., or, at the time, the Big Six consulting firms. I chose Wall Street, primarily, because I read the book _Liar's Poker* as a Sophomore in high school and was completely convinced I wanted to be a mortgage trader when I grew up.Plans changed by the end of college. Kind of. While I was in college, I was lucky enough to get an unpaid internship at Merrill Lynch. I picked up writing Excel macros and working with Microsoft Access 1.0. That was my first real experience working with technology and I loved it. I decided to do a double major in Finance and Information Systems.At the end of my junior year, a friend of mine, Anil, shared my resume with a recruiter at JP Morgan & Co. I got the paid internship. After the internship was over, my boss, Paul, asked me if I'd consider joining after graduating. I was ecstatic and agreed.
Job Hunting
Fast forward a few years and I decided it was time to move on from JP Morgan. I had interviewed at a few places before getting called into LTCM. Once the interview was over, I immediately decided that I wasn't going to interview anywhere else. Working at LTCM would mean an opportunity to work with John Meriwether (someone I first read about in* Liar's Poker* six or seven years prior) and some of the smartest people in finance. That's where I wanted to be. If you're in tech, it was the equivalent of getting a job at Google, Uber, 500 Startups, Facebook or Twitter when there were less than 50 employees.Weeks went by and I hadn't heard a thing. Weeks turned into over a month. I was sure that I didn't get the job and it was probably time to start looking elsewhere. Before I started sending out my resume, I got a call. LTCM wanted to see me again. I was very surprised that when they told me I was being considered for an analyst position in the US fixed income risk management group. It was a Friday afternoon and I got a call giving with a verbal offer. A written offer would be faxed over to me shortly. I had to make a decision by the end of the day.Here I was, twenty-two years old, excited but also scared about going to work for this company that no one had ever heard of. This up-start in finance. This startup. I laid out the pros and cons to my dad and he said to me, "I don't know anything about your line of work. I've heard of and know what JP Morgan is but I can't tell you what you should or shouldn't do. You need to trust yourself and decide what you think is right." I made a decision to take the job. After having been at JP Morgan for two years, Monday morning I handed in my resignation to my boss, Jack (who had been a lifer at JP Morgan).
Long-Term Capital Management
The Collapse
The Aftermath
All of us were in maintenance mode at LTCM for about a year. We were kept around by the OC to keep the place running and fix problems if they occurred.My friend Ritesh and I caught the startup bug and began working on plans for world domination. I don't remember what the idea was but we made a trip to Boston to meet with Perot Systems. It didn't work out but I had my first taste of a tech startup. Looking back, it was convenient that in October 1999, I got laid off from Long-Term Capital Management. It bothered me. A lot. Fortunately, though before the end of the year, I was back to working with Hans, Tom, Ira, Jim, Ritesh, Peter, Nandini, Marek, Rob, Claudette, Kin, Graham and many others on GlobeOp Financial Services.I frequently tell people that I've been very lucky and fortunate in my life. My time and experience at Long-Term Capital Management has a lot to do with it. I was privileged to work with some of the best and brightest in the industry and lucky to learn some very important values very early on in my career at LTCM - humility, integrity and most importantly loyalty.As I continue working on 500 Kulfi, I hope to build something that embodies these values as well as our core values at 500 Startups with Dave, Christine, Bedy, Khailee, Soaib, Shalini and everyone else in the #500STRONG family.