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"The Pulse" --#68 (More SA 2026 Openings!) / Interview with Rich Toad

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The Pulse
September 15, 2024

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Early Bird Sales!

SA 2026 interview szn is fast approaching! Don’t fall behind your competition by wasting time tracking applications.

  1. For the next month, we will be running a 30% sale for the purchase of our Premium Database. Details of our Premium Database can be found below. Venmo @ThePulsePrep $35 or pay with credit card Premium Database 30% Sale ---Stripe.com and shoot us an e-mail @[email protected]

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Recruiting Timeline:

Banking:

Where We’re At:

-You need to have your resume in shape. Follow the BIWS template to a T: M&I Resume Template.

  • SA 2025: Alantra, G.P. Bullhound, Olsen Palmer, and D.A. Davidson opened their applications this week. The total bank number is at 126 for the SA 2025 season.

  • FT 2025: No updates here. Offers are being distributed across larger banks such as JPM, WF, and Jefferies. There are currently 46 firms actively recruiting for FT 2025. Please reach out if you are looking for coaching!

New SA 2026 Applications:

  • None

New SA 2025 Applications:

  • Alantra: Boutique (SA 2025)

  • G.P. Bullhound: Tech-focused boutique (SA 2025)

  • Olsen Palmer: Boutique (SA 2025)

  • D.A. Davidson: Consumer group (SA 2025)

New FT 2025 Applications:

  • None

See below to gain access to our premium database, updated weekly, which houses the application processes for over 200+ banks/consulting/buyside firms! Gain an edge over everyone else by not having to spend countless hours tracking applications and deadlines.

Consulting:

Where We’re At:

  • 45 SA 2025 applications have been released along with 46 FT 2025 apps. Remember that almost all applications are rolling so the earlier you apply, the more likely you are to receive an interview.

SA 2025 released apps:

  • Brighthouse - Strategy Intern (SA 2025)

  • Cicero - Business Analyst Intern (SA 2025)

  • Accenture - Consulting Summer Analyst (SA 2025)

  • Charles River Associates - Economics Consulting Analyst (SA 2025)

FT 2025 released apps:

  • Springhill Consulting Group - Analyst (FT 2025)

  • Cicero Group - Business Analyst (FT 2025)

  • Newry Corp - Growth Strategy Consultant (FT 2025)

  • Tower Strategy Group - Analyst (FT 2025)

Apply ASAP if you’re interested!

Buyside:

Where We’re At:

  • SA 2026: Insight Partners and Lead Edge Capital announced their SA 2026 applications! These are the first buyside apps of the season. There are now 2 firms actively recruiting for SA 2026.

  • SA 2025: Carlyle and JLL opened their SA 2025 apps this week. This brings the total buyside count to ~146 opened applications.

New SA 2026 released apps:

  • Insight Partners: Tech-focused VC firm (SA 2026)

  • Lead Edge Capital: MM growth equity (SA 2026)

New SA 2025 released apps:

  • Carlyle: Megafund, IR position (SA 2025)

  • JLL: Large RE brokerage, RE acquisitions (SA 2025)

Premium Database:

The database is updated weekly and contains 200+ Investment Banking and Consulting internships/full-time positions along with:

  • Interview tips for specific companies

  • Interview prep material

  • Applications and deadlines linked so that you can apply with one click

  • Insider information about the application process

  • Professionals to network with

  • Buyside deadlines, interview prep, and people to network with for the sweatiest of students

We send the updated dataset every week with the latest banking and consulting job postings. We released our 68th update today.

Students we have been helping have already landed roles at Blackstone, Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Jefferies, Citi, and Solomon.

To get access to the database and the weekly updates, you pay a one-time fee of $35 (Venmo: ThePulsePrep / Credit Card: (Premium Database 30% Sale ---Stripe.com) that grants you annual access to the updated database (You can enable purchase protection if concerned). If you don’t find our services helpful, we simply ask for feedback on an area we can improve upon and will refund your $35.

This is a small investment for a huge payout when you secure your dream offer!

Video of Premium Database——>The Pulse Database Video

Market Update:

Interview with @richtoad (Rich Toad)

Before jumping in, be sure to give @richtoad a follow on Instagram!

He gives great insight into his career/background as well as equity research in general. Almost everyone wants to do IB and PE so it is refreshing to discuss a career path that is adjacent but has its own intricacies.

  1. What brought you to the world of finance and what was your background getting into finance (target or non-target, internships, etc.)?

I wanted to get into finance long ago because I like how finance is both analytical and people skill-heavy. Not to be a hypocrite - the compensation attracts me as well because I did not come from money.

I went to UC Berkeley for undergrad and NYU Stern for MBA. UC Berkeley is def a target school, but I had bad grades in college, so I derailed my own career at the start. Doesn’t help when the West Coast is mostly tech and biotech.

It’s corny because Bill Ackman has told the same story: I discovered the concept of value investing by literally reading The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. I was hooked. That was around five years into my career so I decided to pursue an MBA to break into research (all MBA students pursue both sell-side and buy-side research because there are so few jobs).

That’s how I ended up getting a sell-side research job covering software for an analyst who is really obsessed with understanding the underlying tech, which I knew would help me as a long-term investor because at least for tech investing, “the devil is in the details.”

  1. It seems like most finance students are primarily focused on landing investment banking jobs (and eventually working for a PE fund). Why did you choose ER over that path/what interested you about public markets and why might someone be a better fit for ER rather than IB?

Looking back, I am thankful that I knew the lifestyle of IB very early on in my life because a college classmate and an ex-colleague (the same person who introduced me to stock investing and got me to read the Intelligent Investor) worked in IB, so I knew private equity was not something I wanted to pursue. I never thought about doing IB. Also, Ben Graham, Warren Buffett, and many other respected investors trash IB and Wall Street in general convinced me not to pursue IB.

I love understanding how businesses work and compete, and ER offers the continuity that IB does not. IB by nature is transaction-driven, once the deal is gone, IB people are not obligated to follow how the businesses perform. In ER, I get to see how companies evolve, what decisions create value, and what decisions destroy value. I find these things very interesting.

Even if I didn’t want to pursue institutional investing (I did), I knew learning how to analyze companies, and financial statements and valuing them is an invaluable skill to help grow my money as a retail investor.

People are better fit for ER if they like the continuity of following companies and their financial performances, are very inquisitive, and love to learn. If they want to be able to interface with high-power people early on in their careers, ER is also a great option because your analyst will take you to meetings with Fortune 500 CEOs and CFOs.

  1. How would you finish this sentence “You will succeed in equity research if _________”?

You are resourceful (find information, solve problems without asking for help) and inquisitive (not settling for a conclusion based on one set of data or a consensus, think $META at $90, think $GOOGL after ChatGPT came out)

  1. What are some ER interview red flags that all students trying to land a SA or FT role should avoid?

The first one is unavoidable, which is just candidates have no idea what equity research is (that’s what my blog posts are). They dropped their resume for an on-campus interview and they got an interview, so they post dumb questions online about how to prepare. And then once they find out they need to pitch a stock, they are so NGMI.

Typically, an ER interview evaluates you in three areas: 1. Behavioral 2. Technical 3. Stock pitch

Behavioral: amateur mistakes here include saying “buy-side is my long-term goal” (no sell-sider likes a flight risk), and then it’s the arrogant or socially awkward types (I have seen more socially awkward types get in, no one likes to work with arrogant types)

Technical: Most of the candidates are accounting and finance wizards, but they struggle to translate numbers into business implications. (“ok, you know how to calculate working capital, but why does working capital matter for a business?” “What would be one difference between balance sheet of Intel versus Disney?”)

Stock pitch: Instead of pointing out red flags (because of too many permutations), I think anyone who can convince me they know what drives the revenue and cost of a business can really stand out because many candidates are forecasting revenue and cost based on past revenue growth and cost as % of revenue (which is what most IB-oriented modeling courses taught them).

  1. What was your toughest interview? Toughest interview question?

It wasn’t a sell-side research interview. For a buy-side interview, I once interviewed with 4 PMs in the same room grilling me about my background and asking me to pitch two stocks.

The hardest questions are always about a case study or your stock pitch. A well-known mutual fund likes to give candidates a case study about the economics of a hypothetical school bus business, but for those who practiced casing for management consulting is probably a piece of cake, I wasn’t prepared for that question and completely bombed it.

  1. What industry do you see growing the most over the next 10 years? In other words, if a prospective research associate asked what industry they should cover, what would you tell them?

Tech, and pockets within healthcare (such as biotech). That said, there are secular trends in every industry (eg. energy transition, look at how many energy/utilities stocks have soared because of AI data center power needs).

Think about how what industries are changing and cover industries where many young public companies are trying to solve a new problem or solving an existing problem in a better way

For example:

Wayfair - new way to buy furniture

Teladoc - new way to see doctors tho that stock hasn’t done well

Carvana - new way to buy cars

SPOT - new way to consume music

NFLX - new way to consume movies / TV shows, etc.

Generally, tech and biotech ER seats are the most sought-after. But the labor market, like the stock market, is efficient most of the time. Tech and biotech ER seats are the hardest ones to get as well, so you have to pick your battle. Not to mention ER jobs don’t come up that frequently.

  1. Is it possible to break into PE after having worked in ER?

Most of the time, no. 

In IB, you learn how to structure deals, negotiate terms, and manage the entire transaction process from start to finish, work that you will encounter again in PE. I have never structured and negotiated a deal or dealt with a lawyer to prepare for a memorandum, I can buy the stock by clicking a button, that’s not how it works when bidding for an asset in PE.

By definition, companies you deal with in ER are 95% of the time public already.

It’s a 0% chance from ER to PE? Probably not, but those who get in might be doing nontraditional PE work or they have something very unique that a PE firm values (eg. a certain industry vertical expertise), but most of the time, that PE firm would not be a Mega PE firm.

  1. What are the most common ER exit opportunities and how early should you begin recruiting for them?

Buy-side (hedge fund, mutual fund), investor relation, and corporate (strategy, FP&A, etc.).

1.5 to 2 years into ER, one should start thinking about 1) whether they want to do ER for life and 2) if not, what they want to do next.

However, for those who want to go buy-side, they need to know now there is no “recruiting”. Investment firms hire whenever they want. And they can fill the role without posting a job. Anyone in ER should start networking with funds they respect (and want to work at) the moment they start in ER, not when they want to make the move.

  1. What is the coolest career path you have seen someone take after being a research analyst? One that comes to mind for me is David Ebersman who started off as a Research Associate at Oppenheimer, then went to Genentech, and eventually became the CFO of Facebook.

Haha, I’d think my career path has been pretty interesting and definitely unique, but I was never a senior analyst I guess. I know too many of those stories to pick one.

Sallie Krawcheck was a speaker at NYU Stern TWICE when I was there. She is an ex-Bernstein insurance analyst, who went on to be Citi CFO and CEO of Merill Lynch and Smith Barney. And she founded Ellevest, it’s an investment firm for women, she has done very well. I think it’s super cool what her vision is for Ellevest and her being a female CEO adds lots of credibility as well.

Bill Gurley was an ex-CSFB analyst and then became one of the most influential venture capitalists, super cool too. I am a big fan of him.

Ken Sena was briefly the internet analyst when I worked at Wells Fargo. He clearly is early on AI - he co-founded Aiera with a guy who was at Amazon doing AI stuff. Aiera is a product in the realm of AlphaSense but I am sure the product has evolved over time.

  1. What author can you not wait to read both investing-related and other (I, and many others, love reading Howard Marks’s memos)

I read Howard Marks. I try to read everything Mike Maubaussin puts out. There are a few investor letters and 13-Fs I follow religiously - such as Terry Smith and Chuck Akre. I read a lot less nowadays because I am trying to work on my business, but I listen to tons of podcasts on my “wisdom walks”. So lots of Patrick O’Shaunnessey of Invest Like the Best and Ben and David from Acquired.

  1. Investors like David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital see passive investing as a mechanism for breaking markets, do you agree? Or does greater passive investing actually create a stronger opportunity for active managers to find alpha?

The latter.

I think there is always a way to find alpha. The market today is dominated by passive or non-fundamental participants, creating more inefficiencies because there is less price discovery for what businesses are really worth in the long term, which has also been exacerbated by multi-managers who focus on quarterly results.

I heard this great quote from an investor (whom I met on my Instagram): public investing is a profession where as you get more senior, you don’t actually get better. He and I both know that’s not entirely true, but it has validity to it. Successful investors who have endured over multiple decades of market cycles had to adapt to permanently changed market regimes (eg. we can’t find Ben Graham net-nets anymore). The market will change, so you will need to change, and your refusal to change either kills you or leaves you behind. That’s why most hedge funds fail, even the very best ones like Tiger Management.

I will never be in a place to criticize David Einhorn. I will just point out he continues to invest in cyclical, deep-value companies and pitch a Belgian chemical name at the 2024 Sohn Conference when even Seth Klarman and folks at Harris Oakmark own Meta, Google, and Booking. Either adapt or die, complaining doesn’t solve any problem.

  1. What is your goal with ‘Richard Toad’ and how did you get started with it? Where do you see it heading? Do you work more now than you did when you were a Research Associate?

I started during COVID just like many influencers who experienced exponential growth when the audience was locked down and had nothing to do. Though I never experienced exponential growth - it was always slow and steady for me.

I started Richard Toad as a humor account because it’s really easy to make jokes about sell-side equity research (you can see one of my reels went viral and is currently at 4.1 million views). Things were always hard at the start and critical mass is the name of the game, especially for anything internet-related. A big “finmeme” account started frequently reposting my stuff for nothing in return (at 50 followers, I couldn’t reciprocate anyways), and that started the snowballing. Like many things in life, you need that one push to get the ball rolling (one job, one mentor, one reposter, etc.)

My goal is to help as many people get into equity research, sell-side or buy-side, as I can. I have many ideas on problems I can solve for my audience. Over time, I see myself as a connector in this extremely fragmented ecosystem.

I self-impose a 6 day work week, so hour-wise it’s probably the same as when I was in sell-side ER, but return on time is so much better and it’s a lot of fun because there is 100% creative freedom to make content that either educate or entertain (sometimes both).

  1. You seem to be one of the fastest-growing accounts in the industry. What was your ‘aha!’ moment?

Oh, I did not know that. Maybe I am “fast-growing” because I hit a growth wall in 2023 (I basically got 0 net new followers on Instagram).

Finding content-audience fit is EXACTLY the same as finding product-market fit in entrepreneurship. I have now experienced both.

It’s hard to describe the “aha!” moment. You will not like the answer - as the person steering the ship, I just kinda know when things are working and when they are not. Like I said, I never had virality-driven growth spurts. So once I got the few reposts by that big “finmeme” account, I started to get a few new posts that consistently can get good reposts, that’s when I knew people in ER love my humor and can relate because they can tell these jokes are made by someone who clearly was once “one of us”, ie. worked in ER.

Then I had other problems to deal with (won’t dive into), such as owning basically everyone who works in ER globally as an audience, where to grow from there? Given I am at 33k followers, it’s safe to say that I have “crossed the chasm” into a much larger addressable audience opportunity.

Thank you, @richtoad! This was a super interesting look into a career in equity research. Please make sure to give @richtoad a follow!

Disclosure: Nothing written here is financial advice or should be used for investment decisions.

Learning Point of the Week:

How to Pitch a Stock

For an interview, you should be able to cover this in about 1-2 minutes. Related to: "The Pulse"--#56 / Components of a Good Investment (beehiiv.com)

  1. Don’t say anything generic (META, GOOGL, AAPL, NVDA, etc)

-Your interviewer probs knows more about it than you

  1. Pick a name that is easy to understand (1-2 lines of business, ability to last for 10+ more years). Description of the business model is the first 10-20 seconds—how do they make money? What do they spend money on? Why is the industry ripe for investment?.

-Consumer and tech companies are usually pretty easy to digest from a 10-K

  1. State where it trades relative to the peers and the market (S&P 500 or NASDAQ). 5 seconds

-If your company has a P/E ratio (The Pulse --#22) greater than peers or the market, it’ll be really easy for the interviewer to call you out

  1. Understand and mention some financials. How much revenue? What are the margins (gross, EBITDA, EBIT)? How much FCF? How much leverage? Asset-heavy or asset-lite? 10-20 seconds

-Yes, you can totally be asked nitpicky, numbers questions. It sucks, but you have to know some round numbers here

  1. Describe why these factors make it a good long or short. Is it a capital appreciation play (more of a growth stock)? Or is this a cash compounder (more of a value / dividend play)? 10-20 seconds

Don’t be afraid to lie here. “Revenue is about $2bn growing at 10% YoY vs. actual revenue of $1.8bn growing at 7% YoY.” This is the devil’s advice—make your life easy here.

Odds are the interviewer doesn’t know / care to find out about every finite detail of the shit you’re pitching.

Going Forward:

If you run a club, we want to connect with you to partner. Please shoot us an email @[email protected], would love to make your club the most prepared on campus.

Coaching Details:

Students we coached for SA 2025 have received offers at Goldman, JP Morgan, Evercore, and many other firms. Roughly 95% of those coached received offers last year!

Please reach out to us with any questions about recruiting or if you’re interested in meeting the team! ([email protected])

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“The Pulse” #68