Regrets become ever more edged with the passing of time. Recalling a time long gone, when perhaps a decision made, was not the decision you should have made, wastes little more than energy. By contrast, reflection on the past, peppered with both good and bad decisions, can be a positive exercise for making future decisions. What went right, and why? Equally, what went wrong, and why? Often it is from the latter: what went wrong where I learn most.
Also lots of the times I seem to read about entrepreneurship, it’s in those cases where a tech startup has been founded by twentysomethings, as opposed to folks my age (a bit older..!), and often seemingly only seems to focus on successes (and frankly you learn a more from the downs than the ups). Alternatively, an article on entrepreneur evolves into some tome on having to wake up at 3am in the morning, and making sure you destroy any notion of fun in your life… (no burgers ever type of thing)! I want to do things differently in this article.
It is with this spirit, that at this time of year, I rewind the tape and reflect. It makes the anniversary, when I quit my last “proper” job at Nomura, to pursue an independent career path, which eventually led me to cofounding Turnleaf Analytics with Alexander Denev at the end of 2021, before originally starting to publish our inflation forecasts in mid-2022. So what exactly have I learnt over these years of working independently?
There’s always challenges no matter where you are
If you’re working in a large corporate environment, the freedom of a startup is always going to be appealing. However, wherever you are, you’re going to face challenges. Those challenges however will be different, so you need to make a judgement call, as to which of the challenges suit you the best. In a startup, you and your team are constrained by resources, whether it’s capital, people, compute etc. What a startup environment does offer is the ability to build things quickly, with less of the constrains faced by large corporates, when it comes to pushing through new ideas and projects. It’s for that reason that I like the startup approach. You really can’t avoid challenges, whatever path you choose.
When things go wrong, learn and adjust… and keep going
Over the past 11 years lots of things have gone wrong. Equally lots of things went right. My original idea of selling independent quant research after I quit Nomura didn’t work out. There simply wasn’t a demand for the product at the time, and I hadn’t done sufficient market research and planning at the time. It proved to be a good learning experience for other reasons too, as I ended up living off the profits from my own trading of intraday FX trading strategies. It’s an invaluable learning experience, trading your own cash, even if ultimately, the lesson is that personal account trading is often going to be constrained by a lack of capital if you continually take out P&L to pay for bills (whether it’s Bloomberg, mortgage etc). There’s a reason why many successful traders go to hedge funds, funds have the capital! I eventually pivoted towards doing consulting projects from the research paper idea, which was much more successful.
Of course, the key is to keep going through difficulties. Not of course to keep doing the same thing which isn’t working, but to have the resilience to try something else and not give up. I often think that having a market background helps here. Just because you’re trading strategy isn’t working it doesn’t mean you stop trading, it means the ability to get through it and make changes. The same is true of running a business, or indeed working in any sort of role.
When it came to cofounding Turnleaf Analytics, the lessons I had learnt from my earlier years of independence were incredibly useful, whether it was drawing from my consulting, my original project of selling independent quant research, or managing my own risk, especially in tandem with Alexander’s extensive quant research in both investment and data firms. Creating a firm is always challenge, but having a strong cofounder really does make things work better in my experience, compared to founding a firm alone (even though I know many folks have been successful founders). It’s of course not purely about learning from mistakes, it’s also important to keep going. The easiest thing is to give up. The most difficult thing is keep going, but having resilliance is so important,
It’s best to be in a team
I ended up working by myself consulting for a number of years, and it definitely gives you a feeling of independence. However, you are ultimately constrained, because many large quant problems are simply too complicated to solve alone. You end up having to restrict yourself to smaller problems if you’re working alone. It’s more fun working in a team (well, provided it’s the right team!), in particular because it gives the ability to bounce off ideas and particularly when there are challenges. Not everyone in the team needs to have exactly the same skillset, in practice, it’s important to have different skillsets that each person can leverage.
At Turnleaf Analytics, we’ve built up great team, and it’s been crucial to doing the research into inflation forecasting models, finding new datasets, selling the product etc. Having a very collaborative environment has been a key strength of Turnleaf Analytics, supported by our board and investors.
Talking of teams, It’s also been great being part of Thalesians over the years, helping to organise our quant finance meetups, and building a large community of quants. I can’t believe we’ve been organising the meetups for over 15 years, and I really do thank Paul Bilokon whose idea it was to start Thalesians all those years ago, and has been the driving force behind it ever since. Looking back at the list of the speakers really is impressive, and I’m sure Thalesians will be going strong in the years to come as well!
Teaching isn’t just about lecturing
I’m a visiting lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. I very much enjoy teaching students. However, teaching isn’t just about lecturing! Also within my day to day work, a lot of it involves on the job training. I don’t just mean me teaching the rest of the team, they also teach me, and I learn from them. Teaching isn’t a one way process, it’s two way. It’s about listening to advice, and evaluating it too. This isn’t to say you do everything someone else advises, but you need to at least think about, because it could well be the right approach.
Most importantly!
I still am not convinced I’ve found the best burger, even if I’ve found really great ones (yes, Minetta Tavern in New York, is still my top pick there!). But I live in hope on that front!
Conclusion
This is only a small snapshot of what I’ve learnt working independently, and every year I find that I’ve learnt different things. Working independently isn’t necessarily for everyone, grass is always greener etc. but it’s definitely been a great ride on my side, with many ups (and a few downs too). I’m definitely looking forward to the future at Turnleaf Analytics building the firm together with my cofounder Alexander Denev and the team.