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hey folks

about a year ago, almost exactly, i’d received another rejection email

they said I needed more experience and i’m there in my uni dorm sitting at my desk, feet on the bed, re-reading this line thinking isn’t that why I applied? to get more experience?

the next i decided to take part in this stock pitch competition to get more “experience”

i spoke to a lot of finance dudes asking them which stock to pick how to evaluate it. most threw some random data points at me justifying their stocks, alpha this beta that. to me they were just trying to sound smart

so i went to my finance prof. he’s a chubby, funny little guy that wears only yellow ties and only those longer than his torso. anyways i meet him after class for advice, to which he tells me to pick the company i find the most interesting, not the one i think is most likely to “win”.

i must have had 50+ follow up questions all to which he said, don’t overthink it

so after research, i end up picking constellation software because I really admired the founder (Mark Leonard). it was actually really silly - i only admired him because he looked like gandalf and had no social media presence yet everyone respected him

few mins before the submission deadline, my DCF analysis was all over the place we were saying the stock is undervalued but Morning star analysts were saying the opposite.

so yeah we flopped

but I didn’t want all this work to go to waste. so I followed up with my finance prof, fixed the DCF and my presentation

i took this presentation home and sent it to the same company that had rejected me. didn’t overthink it and wanted to be in their good books for when i apply next year

turns out they were so impressed by that mediocre presentation that they invited me for the interview. even the winner of the stock pitch competition didn’t get that lol.

did i get the job? no i’m not good at finance nor do i enjoy it. but i did learn to provide value - a free stock analysis of a company in their portfolio

so this newsletter post is an example on how to provide value without permission