What it takes to be an investment banker

Many of you are probably here because you want to become investment bankers.

You want to learn the skills needed to succeed in the field. You will need to be a good schmoozer to succeed in the senior level. But in the junior level, you will need skills in financial analysis, financial modeling, and valuation.

Some of you are wondering what do investment bankers do? I can only speak for experience in APAC. It will differ from region-to-region. In investment banking in my region, you mostly advise companies who are about to do a tender offer perform fairness opinions for their bids, advise companies on strategic matters such as acquiring and divesting specific units in their business, and helping companies list stocks in IPOs and even help companies raise money through bond offerings.

I'm guessing you reached this point because you're really interested, hungry, and eager to become an investment banker. Good. That's how I started to.

I started with nothing. I graduated with a degree in political science. No accounting background whatsoever (which is so needed in investment banking). But I learned how to do modeling from my peers. It's almost impossible to learn on your own without exposure to really smart people.

My advice is invest in yourself. Get courses. Buy models such as the ones here. And most importantly, my main and most important advice is to do your own financial modeling. Once you buy one of my models that I've built in my stint before investment banking as an equity research analyst, make one of your own.

Pick a company you love. Learn it from inside and out. Make the revenue, cost, working capital, debt, equity, and fixed asset assumptions, and do the next model.

It's the only way you'll learn. And it's the only way you're going to get that TMT role at Goldman Sachs and have that dream life of yours.