Generating Alpha Podcast
00:01:20 · Michael Anders, Amir Fischer
[00:01:20] S1: My pleasure Amir, thank you for having me. [00:01:23] S0: So I want to start where I always do, at the beginning. Tell me a little bit about your childhood and upbringing, and you two professors as parents, if I'm correct. You grew up between Palo Alto and Providence and Rhode Island. What was your childhood like, and what were the conversations around the dinner table like growing up?
00:01:38 · Michael Anders
[00:01:38] S1: So I think we all have interesting childhoods and they shape us, obviously, but in many ways to be who we are today. I would say my childhood was not as glamorous as you might think. Was born in Buffalo, New York, but very quickly, I think at age 1.5, moved to Palo Alto. Both my parents were professors. My mom was in medical school at Stanford. My dad was the chair of psychiatry at Stanford. And so, at a very, very young age, I ended up living on the Stanford campus. And then without much of a say, when I was 13, my parents both got job offers at Brown University. And so they decided to leave Stanford and move to Providence, Rhode Island. And I think there was a fair amount of pressure, not necessarily to be a doctor per se, but to be smart, to be successful. And I think there was also a lot of personal issues going on at home that left me sort of feeling like it was going to be hard to live up to their expectations. And at the same time, I'm not sure how involved on a day to day basis they were in my early childhood. And so I kind of felt alone a lot as a kid. I was an only child for eight years, and then I had a brother come into the mix, and then another brother come into the mix three years after that. So, I'm eight and 11 younger than my brothers. And I think a lot of my childhood was sort of looking towards adulthood, but not necessarily being connected to it, meaning dinner table conversations were largely academic. They were about science. They were about psychology or psychiatry and neurology. They were a lot about politics. I don't remember specifics, but I was born in 1972. There was the Vietnam War. There was Nixon. There was Watergate. There was all these things that were hangovers. Politics was a big thing. My dad marched with Martin Luther King, my mom was at Woodstock. And so activism was a big part of the dinner table conversation, so to speak. When I was seven actually, or eight, my parents decided to take a sabbatical from Stanford and they went and taught in London at a medical school. And so I spent second grade in Dulwich Village. I had to wear a jacket and a tie to school. And so, there were so many amazing experiences and I was privy to so many amazing conversations, but I don't necessarily know where I was part of them. And so, there was a loneliness to my childhood, but also a privilege to it without a doubt.
00:04:40 · Michael Anders, Amir Fischer
And so, yeah, that's pretty much my background. Happy to dive into any of it more specifically, but at a high level. That was sort of where I fell. [00:04:51] S0: In all the topics of the conversation of politics around the dinner table, one day you were scrolling through kind of the channels on TV and you came across C SPAN. You came across what you described as this very charismatic guy by the name of Bill Clinton. And you kind of call him your first role model. Can you tell me about what Bill Clinton meant to you? What was it about him that stood out to you?
00:05:09 · Michael Anders
[00:05:09] S1: I think without sounding too sappy, Bill Clinton represented a few things. First of all, he was sort of a continuation of the activism that my parents embodied and instilled in me. Bill Clinton was a... If he wasn't at Woodstock, he was certainly sort of aware and around Woodstock. And if he wasn't marching with Martin Luther King, he would have been. So, I think Bill Clinton really embodied a lot of the values that my parents shared with me at a very, very young age. I think for me, I just felt pretty inadequate as a child. And so I felt like the way I could get attention from my parents was actually not getting good grades, so I didn't. And it was actually raising hell, so I did. And I'm not proud to say, but I was not a great student in middle school, not a great student in high school. In fact, I'm not sure I would have gotten into college if it wasn't an ability to play soccer and have been recruited to play soccer for university. And so, I kind of got to college sort of feeling quite low, academically challenged, socially strong, but knowing that it was coming at the cost of really a conflict within who I could be. I always felt like I could do better. I could be someone better. And so, as you probably have heard me say somewhere, it was quite random, but I was at a very low spot. I mean, I was literally channel surfing, right? I mean, surfing pretty much epitomizes getting to C-SPAN. And anyone who is on C-SPAN at 17 or 18 or 19, however old I was, there you are really channel surfing. But as luck would have it, it was at this moment where I knew I could be better. I knew I wasn't living up to anything close to my potential. And here on C-SPAN was this incredible, young, energetic, charismatic governor of Arkansas. And I just happened to hit the channel when he was opening his mouth to speak. And he just was everything that came out of it kind of was mesmerizing and really echoed a lot of what my parents had espoused during my childhood. And so I very quickly, and not from lots of comparing and contrasting, sort of gravitated to this very motivational, inspirational figure. And then he was, I think also not too long after announcing Al Gore as his vice president. And it was sort of these two guys that would jog and they would talk about climate change and they would talk about values. And so that was a monumental moment for me.
00:08:26 · Michael Anders
I probably didn't fully appreciate it at that time, but for other coincidental and not coincidental reasons, it wasn't long after when I sort of hit rock bottom at that moment of my life and got interested in a few things, partly through luck, that really turned me into a direction that lifted me up. And again, around this same period of time from witnessing Bill Clinton on TV to getting introduced to the debate team in college to being cajoled to run for president of the student body at the University of Rhode Island and winning, to going and doing an internship for then Congressman, now US Senator Jack Reed. All of these things happen probably within a twenty four month period of time for a guy who didn't even know where the library was his whole first year of college to then graduating, I think, with a 3.4, 3.5 GPA and a double major and having done these internships and experiences and present of the student body, it was a very transformative period of time and a lot of lucky breaks, a lot of grit, but also it pays to channel surf from time to time.
00:09:55 · Amir Fischer
[00:09:55] S0: And it's fascinating because looking back, might think, what would have happened if I didn't go on the channel, go on C SPAN when Bill Clinton was speaking at that time? Who knows? And you interned for Congressman Jack Reed between your junior and senior year of college, if I'm correct, Congressman now Senator. He gave you the advice to gain some experience outside of politics if you wanted to go into politics. That kind of got you to go to Wall Street. So my question is, how did it lead you to Wall Street? One of your first experiences in Wall Street, which was the starting point or led to your eventual interest in starting of Iconiq, was commercial donor advised funds. So how did you get to Wall Street? What led you to it? And how did you come across commercial donor advised funds?