On today’s Tank Talk! We welcome our guest Wes Tang-Wymer, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Rucker Park Capital.
On today's Talk, we ask Wes about his investor journey starting out in investment banking at Morgan Stanley and his unconventional path towards Wall St. Next, we ask Wes about his transition to the hedge fund world where he landed a role as a long/short equities analyst at Steve Cohen's family office, Point 72 Asset Mgmt, focusing on technology investments. We dig into the extremely fast- paced and high-pressure environment of working at such a notable firm like Point72. Wes explains the lessons he learned about risk management and portfolio construction.
Moving on, we dig into Wes’ transition to venture capital as a founding member of the global investment team at Softbank in 2015 where he invested in some of the biggest unicorns of the last decade including Uber, Lemonade, Kabbage, SoFi, DiDi and countless others. We ask Wes about some of the mistakes he’s seen later-stage companies make after raising massive funding rounds that existing early-stage founders should try to avoid.
Next get into Wes’ current role as co-founder of Rucker Park Capital w/ his former Softbank colleague Marrisa Campise and the firm's focus on early-stage investments. We ask Wes what he takes from his experience at SoftBank leading mega deals and the characteristics he looks for in founders he backs today.
This Tank Talk really makes you appreciate the role luck, randomness and persistence plays in people's lives and how investing in yourself is the first step into taking you to where you eventually want to be in life.
Wes’ Book Recommendations:
Churchill: Walking with Destiny (Andrew Roberts)
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Matthew Desmond)
The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Evan Ratliff)
Wes’ words of inspiration - “Embrace the role of luck and randomness while maintaining openness towards opportunities”
Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!
Tank Talk: Wes Tang-Wymer (Partner @ Rucker Park) - Late-Stage Mega Deals to Early-stage Venture