from wall street to online currency exchange: the big idea

10 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In a brief first‑person recount, the speaker describes moving from New York to San Francisco to work at DLJ as an internet investment banker. While filing an S‑1 late at night, a client shares a mysterious “big idea.” The speaker responds with an even larger concept: creating an online foreign‑currency exchange platform capable of handling the trillions of dollars traded daily in the FX market. The anecdote serves to illustrate the speaker’s transition from traditional Wall Street work to envisioning a disruptive fintech venture.

Chapters

I moved from New York to San Francisco with DLJ. I was an internet investment banker and I was having a conversation with one of my clients and it was very late at night and we were at the printers filing the S-1 for this company to go public. And he said, I have this really big idea. And I said, all right, what's the idea? And he told me, and I can't for the life of me tell you what that idea was. I said, that's interesting. I have a bigger idea. And he said, what's your idea? And I said, online foreign currency exchange, like trillions of dollars trade every day.