Watch Carol and Tim LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF. Author Carrie Sun discusses her new book Private Equity: A Memoir.
Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec. Producer: Paul Brennan.
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This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
All Right, something that we talk about a lot is what's going on in the private markets, whether it's private credit or in particular, private equity. On private equity alone, funds last year returned the lowest amount of cash to their investors since the financial crisis some fifteen years ago, is according to Raymond James Financial, and that's been hampering buyout firms in their efforts, Tim to launch new investment vehicles.
Okay, so that's one way we talk about private equity when it comes to our program. But let's switch it up and lift up the veil on what it's like, at least for one person to work in what many people would consider a rarefied world of finance. We're talking private equity and hedge funds. Carry Sun is the author of a new book. It's called Private Equity, a Memoir. She joins us from Jersey City this afternoon. Carrie, good to have you with us. Congratulations on the new book. I want to start with your story. That's what this book is. You've got a great story, tell us how you found yourself working for a billionaire hedge fund manager.
Thank you so much, Carolyn Tient for having me today. So I am a writer now, as you say, author out with my first book. But before that, I worked in finance and in college, I majored in math and finance and I am minored in economics. After that, I worked as a quantitative equity analyst. I did that for several years. Started business school at Warton, dropped out wanting to change career paths. Spent a few years kind of taking classes in the humanities like philosophy, English literature, just giving myself the time and space to kind of discover how I might want to change my path or pivot. And then I during that those years, I was contacted by a recruiter through LinkedIn who kind of pitched me on this opportunity that he described as a once in a lifetime opportunity to work as the right hand person to a hedge fund billionaire. I think the firm would describe themselves as more as an investment firm, but but certainly uh hedge, the hedge fund side was a big part of their business. So I kind of jumped at the opportunity because I didn't I didn't come from money. I needed a day job, and so I really thought that I this was the opportunity for me. I could have a uh use my background working in finance, while at the same time maybe having some free time after work to uh start my other creative endeavors.
Carrie. Many would say that in the financial world that getting to be kind of the right hand assistant to a billionaire, you know, founder of an investment firm, hedge fund, or however you want to describe it, it's like a great way to really learn the business. Your experience doesn't sound like you liked it at all.
You know.
I have to say it was a wonderful learning experience. I you know, I came from a quantitative equity side, so what they were doing was far more fundamentally driven investing. And it was just night and day, you know, whereas when I was in quant equities, my phone often just did not ring. I could I was just sitting in front of computer coding, analyzing data sets, building stock selection models. At this other job, being the right hand to a billionaire in the private equity and also hedge fund space. I was on the phone with often two or three people at the same time, having them on hold and trying to just deliver information, trying to triage emergencies and situations, and it was just a very, very different and extremely busy time.
In the memoir, the names have been changed, not just the names of individuals, but also the name of the firm that you worked for. Talk to us about this decision here and why you ended up changing the names.
Yes, I chose to anonymize nearly every character in the book, as well as the firm, because I really wanted to focus the story on my story. And you know, I didn't want a memoir about me to end up being a memoir about someone else, you know, maybe my boss or or the firm that I was at, And I really wanted to center it on my personal story, one woman's experience working in this world. And I think there are wonderful, wonderful memoirs and many books written from the perspective of bosses and owners of these firms, but I really wanted to write a book from the perspective of an average worker.
Have you heard from the folks who who know you? Yeah, who know you, who maybe see themselves in parts of the book have you What have you heard?
I have heard nothing interesting?
Yeah, why did you? Why did you do this? I don't understand because it's it's it doesn't sound like you're looking to be like God, this was terrible. You know, I learned some things about myself. Maybe you learned that this wasn't for you. So, yeah, I'm trying to understand why why do it?
Well?
As a writer, I'm very interested, in particular in topics that I actually just don't know the answer to. And so the time that I had described in them my book, which is about two years, two and a half years, they were the most intense period years of my life. And I, to be honest, even right after and years after, I couldn't really describe what had happened to me. I knew I was burnt out, but I really just didn't actually know what had happened.
And then, you.
Know, during my MFA, I was I went to the new school for my MFA, and I was taking a look at my peers. They were all working multiple jobs just to be able to survive in New York, to fund their creative endeavors in this case an MFA, and I really thought that, you know, that's something I had tried to do. I burned out trying to do that. And I really think I have something to say about the way we work now and the way we live, and how the work life balance and how difficult it is to actually achieve that balance.
Okay, so let's let's talk about that, because that is something that we talk about a lot here on Bloomberg Business Week. You've worked in some of the most high pressure situations. And it's interesting you say you switched. You you ended up leaving business school to switch careers. A lot of people do go to business school in fact to switch careers, and then you ended up actually after business school sort of staying on the financial side of things, which is a really really interesting journey, especially until now becoming a writer. So tell us about work life balance and what you learned and how you came out on the other side.
You know, about work life balance. I really think that, you know, I had. It was pretty clear from me very early on that this was going to be an extremely intense job. However, I still told myself, you know, I'm in. I'm all in. I'm down for whatever cause this is, and I'm going to make it work. I blamed myself a lot for not being able to actually do my day job and have time outside or just even time to recover and be able to you know, be fresh Monday morning. And so I actually so I in order to get this job, I went through fourteen interviews, something like ten reference checks. And then I also you know, didn't get a job description. On my first day of work, I received my job description from my boss and it listed nearly one hundred bullet points of responsibilities, you know. And so I just in terms of work like that will work life balance? I would like hopefully anyone who is reading or listening to just think about, you know, their job description and whether their job So my job a person actually had a line item that more than one line item that was some version of going above and beyond, you.
Know, and so good luck with that.
So if that is in the job description itself, you know, And there were like ten times, Yeah, get the recipe for.
Letn' talk to LinkedIn about that, Like, no, I hear what you're saying. Interesting perspective. Carry sun, Good luck with the book. Author Private Equity and Memoir joining us from Jersey City, New Jersey,