Andrew, Citadel Quant Finance & Olympic Athlete - with Kaushik, Founder, Elevate Career Network

If you've ever been interested or curious about quant finance - which is the the next frontier of investing and the nexus of top finance & technology, this is the discussion for you. Even if you haven't thought about it yet, you will still find it fascinating.

This week's guest is ridiculously accomplished - an Olympic (Rio 2016) & World-championship-level athlete, while concurrently, building his equally successful finance career in quant at Citadel, one of the foremost hedge funds in the world. It also has amazing lessons on developing the mindset to become the best at anything - be it in business, career, sports or life.

04:25 Pursuing his Olympic aspirations
05:00 How he got into Quantopian - applied to 8 start-ups via Angelist, knew very little about quant
07:00 Got the opportunity to be a part of Quantopian's push to become a crowd-sourced hedge fund & building a HF product from ground up
08:30 His experience at Citadel
10:00 Quant finance more of a tech job than a finance job
11:00 Feedback cycle from quant investing product is quick
12:30 Working with data fits well
13:30 Coming to Citadel was a game-changer, realized it was possible to have an edge, have alpha
14:30 What is quantitative finance? Deep-dive into what a quant does (Building & Weighting Datasets, Fitting / portfolio construction, Predictions, Mapping to Positions)
20:00 Why Citadel? To learn, you have to work with the best. World-class education in quant. Citadel is a pioneer in so many areas
23:30 Advantage of scale will be critical in next 5 years
26:00 Looking for an edge in quant & trading, comparisons to rowing
29:30 Need Mindset that things are out of your control. It's just part of the game.
35:00 How to balance demands of Olympic athlete and working at Citadel
35:30 Dealing with disappointment of missing London Olympics in 2012
38:30 What has helped me accelerate in my career: Be fearless enough to dig into the details and be self-sufficient to figure out tough problems
42:30 Common misconception: You don't have to be a STEM major to be in quant or in technical roles. Don't be intimidated by engineering. If you like it, learn more about it and inch closer to those types of roles
45:30 Interviews at Citadel: What he looks for in behavioral cues in interviews, why communication skills are critical even for technical interviews
49:00 Two main tracks in Quant: Quant Development (QD) and Quant Research (QR)
52:30 Rapid Fire: Favorite Book (Man Who Solved the Markets, Flash Boys); and more