Generating Alpha Podcast
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?
00:10:37 · Michael Anders
[00:10:37] S1: Yeah, I love these questions. So I don't remember the year, I think it was 1993 or 1994. 1994, I went down to Washington, D. C. I had been awarded an opportunity to work for free for then Congressman Jack Reed. I bunked up with a friend of a friend of mine in Foggy Bottom in Washington, DC. And it was a very cheap rent for me. I was unpaid working for the senator or congressman and ended up working for a restaurant called Planet Hollywood at night to pay the bills. And I remember every morning getting up extra early and I would jog from Foggy Bottom around the White House trying to run into Bill Clinton and Al Gore jogging. That was a big thing they used to do is their jogging cadre. And then I would head to Capitol Hill, I would work for the congressman, I was writing position papers, I was supporting the legislative affairs folks. I was so interested in it. I worked pretty hard, sat in hearings, took notes, did whatever was asked of me in the office. And then I would leave after a full day and go work so I could afford the minimal rent that I had in DC. And after the end of the summer, having had very, very little experience with the congressmen, but having been invited to a lot of the congressional staff meet and greets where I met a lot of dignitaries, a lot of other congressmen, senators, cabinet members, I did get this moment with Congressman Reed where he asked, what did I wanna do? And I remember saying to him at the time that I really believe in public service. I want to be him someday. And I remember him telling me that I should strive for it, that I have good energy, that I worked really hard, and that I clearly care about people and the issues. But his advice, if I asked for it, was don't go into politics right away. Go back to your senior year of college, take as many econ classes as you can, as many accounting classes, as many finance planning classes. Go to Wall Street, get a job on Wall Street, do the best I can to absorb and learn as much as I can about the economy, the private sector, investing. His advice, I I don't want to put words in his mouth, but something along the lines of, if I start in politics out of college, I really won't know anything and I'll never get out.
00:13:24 · Michael Anders
But if I go into the private sector and I work in the private sector and I learn about investing in the economy, I'll be a much more valuable public official because I will have worked and learned something of value. So, that was always the plan. And I had really no support in the form of perspective from my parents because they were academics and they didn't understand Wall Street, they didn't understand investment banking, they didn't understand anything about the journey I was about to embark on. And I didn't really have anybody in my orbit that could advise me. So, I kind of went to the alumni network before I graduated from college. And as luck would have it, I ended up getting a job at Fidelity Investments. And I remember after graduation, on graduation day, catching a train, an Amtrak to Penn Station, moving into an apartment that I had found, sharing it with two roommates who I didn't know right behind Lincoln Center. And I think I was starting work the next Monday. And I was what they called an equity analyst. It was sort of a two year program. It was actually much more operational and administrative than I expected or understood or knew. And I really quickly came to realize that, one, this was not a job that played to my strengths. Two, it was a job I was not learning the things I personally wanted to learn. And so I actually immediately began looking up and out. I did a program at Columbia for a year that was part of the School of Public Affairs, but I was also taking business classes that could have applied to a business school if I wanted to get my MBA. And I think the combination of spending the two years in New York City working at Fidelity, learning more from building my own network and learning more about what it meant to quote unquote be on Wall Street and taking some classes at Columbia really continued to push me towards the things I didn't want to do versus the things I wanted to do. Very long story short, I always wanted to live abroad. I always had a affinity to Paris and France because my parents were Francophiles. And I ended up deciding not to go get my MBA or my law degree, two things I had been considering, and instead move to France, see if I could land on my feet there, see if I could even figure out a way to learn the language and get a job.
00:16:17 · Michael Anders
Anyway, I ended up spending two years in France, ended up getting a job in investment banking working for Societe Generale. That was really interesting because that was when they were considering unifying the currencies throughout Europe into one, the Euro. And it was also at a time when there was a lot of turmoil in the market with the collapse of long term capital management, the Russian debt crisis, the Asian currency crisis. There was a lot of things going on, and I ended up being right at the epicenter of it. And it was an incredible chance to learn. I'll spare you lots of details in that, but a few moves later, I ended up starting a company that was building commercial donor advised funds. One of the things I left out, which is actually not insignificant, is while donor advised funds have been around for sixty, seventy years out of community foundations and Jewish federations, Fidelity Investments was actually the first commercial firm to launch a donor advised fund. And actually, to the uproar of traditional community foundation donor advised funds that didn't understand how could Fidelity, a for profit, a very for profitable company, get into the business of donor advised funds. And while I had nothing to do with the launch of Fidelity's charitable gift fund, I was at Fidelity and I was aware of it, and I thought it was very interesting. Fast forward five, six years, I just found myself at a moment when I met a fellow entrepreneur, we shared this idea and we created a company to basically build the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, the product at least, but to white label it for all the big private client firms like Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Northern Trust, Credit Suisse, back in the day Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter. And the idea was that these were much more traditional platforms with high net worth individuals, and they should each be having one of these private label donor advised fund solutions for their clients. And so, that's how I ultimately made my road into creating this company, which ultimately took off and then came crashing down. We sold it for Peanuts, And I ended up going to Fidelity and co heading their charitable services group, which was a whole another chapter in my life and led to some amazing other things. But that's the full story of politics and public service to donor advised funds.