Defining success beyond finance

Ehsan Ehsani is executive director at Crescendo Partners, adjunct assistant professor at Columbia Business School, and author of “How Not to Be Replaced by a Spreadsheet That Talks” who uniquely bridges quantitative analysis, and traditional fundamental investing while organizing Columbia’s generative AI conference.

The episode is sponsored by TenzingMEMO — the AI-powered market intelligence platform I use daily for smarter company analysis. Code BILLIONS gets you an extended trial + 10% off.

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3:00 - Born in western Iran at 14,000 feet, strict education emphasis pushed Ehsan toward chemical engineering before discovering his talents lay in management and innovation.

5:30 - Winding path to NYC: Sweden and MIT master’s degrees, European consulting, project-driven relocation to New York in late 2000s.

7:30 - The Prometheus Warning: AI companies like Alphabet disrupted by their own creations. “Analysts benefit from using Gen AI tools in automating repetitive activities, but by embracing such technologies, they’re working themselves out of a job.”

12:00 - Sell-side blueprint: Top 10 banks had 200-300 analysts each; now 300 total combined. Buy-side headcount could drop to two-thirds or half within 20 years.

18:00 - “Gen AI is transformative because it allows automation of not just repetitive tasks but core analytical functions”—fundamentally different disruption than Bloomberg or alt data.

25:00 - Size advantage: Large firms will mine 15 years of institutional memory—emails, memos, channel checks—to identify patterns smaller funds can’t access.

35:00 - Contrarian take: Beyond “do more with less” hype, rapid bifurcation looms: “This separation of better and worse performance will happen much faster than with previous technologies.”

45:00 - Next frontier: Voice/video training. CEO says “no” versus “no...”—transcripts miss hesitation that reveals truth.

55:00 - “We humans tend to forget. It’s a blessing in general, but for pieces of wisdom we read, they might not remain top of mind. AI can remind us.”

60:00 - Success definition: “Tranquility and content where your values, interests, and priorities align with what you’re doing. I didn’t define it in economic form because that doesn’t embody true success.”

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