There's No Crying In Baseball

"Have you ever been hated or discriminated against?  I have.  I've been protested and demonstrated against, picket signs for my wicked rhymes, look at the times, sick is the mind of the mother____g kid that's behind, all this commotion"    Eminem

A constant criticism of startup companies being built in this bubble is that too many are being built with only an exit in mind. Even though it's fun to imagine building a super successful website and selling to a large public company for lots of cash, it is delusional as a game plan. That doesn't mean your friends and loved ones aren't rooting for some splendid exit for you, but in some senses, you pass the fantasy to them and focus on other seemingly epic goals like, validating an assumption or two, or, if you are among the very few, actually achieving product/market fit.  When I began my wall street career in Knight Securities' training program in '98, I guess it's fair to say I had an exit in mind.  I figured I'd slang stocks for a decade or so, be stinking rich, and then have enough money to do what I really enjoyed.   Little did I know, months after I slunk into my work place downtown, skirting protesters during the height of OWS, another trader at a competitor who was in the biz the same length as me was having his own machinations of "returning human" - in a very public way.


Greg Smith - the guy who cued up his resignation from Goldman Sachs carefully with the good people at the New York Times had a very specific goal in mind.  He wanted notoriety.  He wanted to be The Guy who finally drew a line in the sand at the toxicity of wall street biz ethics and fell on his own sword for the greater good.  Really though, he's a business man.  He wanted his exit to be spectacular and publish a book as soon as humanly possible so he could profit.   But his dreams of being a vital part of change and also getting rich for that are delusional.  This despite being featured on 60 minutes last night- which I consider about is as good press as there is- anywhere.

It's also not because his book was widely panned in the press, or that he doesn't any exude any personal charisma, or that his actual familiarity with OTC/synthetics they sold to pensions and other muppets comes with zero credibility (he sold equity derivatives for goodness sake as in, buy me 1500 INTC straddles), and finally it's not because the evil machine on wall street killed any chance for this to end anything but poorly.  It's probably because it's just hard to feel any compassion for the guy.  And deep down, no one with a clue felt betrayed that GS itself may have failed to outgentleman the competition

I knew Goldman equally as a competitor and a client during my career.  Countless friends have worked there, and a few are still doing their thing up there.  As a client, very many of the men and women I dealt with were dynamic, intelligent, ethical, and talented.  In competition, my dealings with counter parties were generally fair and honest.  But I found it unappealing when I started hearing more and more evangelizing about the "culture" of GS from friends after the financial crisis.   Even friends who were having a hard time with their manager or experiencing bouts of losing money for the firm would prop themselves up on how much they really loved the culture despite their hardships.

But who doesn't love a culture of winning?  Simply put, GS makes the most money- at anything.  Because they are the smartest, and have the most juice.  When Lehman and Bear went out of biz, they lost competitors forever, got more business, solidifying their position at the top.  But what exactly is it about their culture that's any different than Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan that gives people this sense of pride?  It's because they're the best and most aggressive at deploying risk.  And that built the marquee financial franchise in this country.  Finance ain't startups, any notion that they built their empires around helping clients is a transparent as the bullshit multi-cultural handshake you'll find on a bank's website.

Greg Smith was once featured in a Goldman college recruiting video, do you know how drunk off of the Kool Aid a person has to be to be chosen for something like that?  That's exactly what makes it hard for me to empathize for the poor guy- he says he's genuinely let down by the firm- and wants me to believe he was worn down to the nub by the destructiveness of the firm.  I'm not sure that he looked like he was suffering with any of those issues.  We all know what we did in the principal business- we tried to make money off of our clients.  The client would be just as thrilled to have GS choke on of one of their positions.

This is what being worn down to the nub looks like

He kind of looks and sounds like he's still a suit.  That suit don't fit no more.  He should come down to silicon alley and soho and see how people who really want to change the way people do business really behave and what we talk like.  How many of us left our careers, with nothing but an idea and a deep understanding that publicity stunts are not a sustainable answer. It's a much different kind of risk.  And some of us actually have plans to produce economic value for society.

Nothing personal against the guy- maybe he really is disgusted with the way his intention for a career turned out- but his plan was to feign a moral crisis for a quick flip- and it won't happen for him.  A rhodes scholar, a world class table tennis player (actually that's pretty impressive), but he's far from a person who can affect change.  He's just a guy who started his plan with just the exit in mind.