[Knighty]

The author, rightly, makes the point that finance, like most things, is primarily about trust. But that's about the most interesting thing in the article.

Capital introductions are hard, and everyone wants to cosy up to someone looking for a 'home' for their excess millions. It's an environment where a couple of dudes/dudettes with laptops and an idea might have a potentially successful hedge-fund idea but lack the credibility and track record to make the risk worthwhile for a potential investor. The investor could lose a lot of money very quickly if your idea is wrong. The chances are, that if your idea is 'right' they'll listen to you explain it (because you really will need to explain it in depth) and then go and find someone who they do trust to implement it for them.

My point is that, it would be very hard for me to gain sufficient trust from prospective investors to raise $200m because I don't have any contacts or access to the necessary capital.

However, the daughter of a financial advisor for high-net worth individuals is playing a very different game to me. She very well might easily be able to do, what I easily can not. So, for me at least, there's nothing of interest in this article. I'm pleased for Elle to be in such a great position and wish her well.

[dmor]

Thanks for the kind wishes. I think what I (the OP) failed to convey in my post is that going into finance, given my background, would have been the easy way out for me. Having someone tell me "oh you could totally do X" when I thought X was this crazy out of reach thing, made me re-evaluate whether other things I had put on the crazy shelf were do-able, too. Like founding a startup.

[Knighty]

Yes, that makes more sense. In which case it feels like the point of the post is more to do with following your own path before accepting the path that is 'mapped' out?

Perhaps you actually say this in the post somewhere, but it I don't recall seeing it. IMHO it would make an interesting article if you emphasised that point more.

In my experience there is something to be said for NOT always following the money but following the 'fun'. More than once the 'fun' turned out to be surprisingly lucrative after all ... :)

[dmor]

Absolutely agree, and happily that has been the case for me too! I think there is a lot more I could say about not following the path, I have been very contrarian and given the people who love me a lot of extra gray hairs. I think it was pretty nuanced in the post, I'm trying this more conversational style with dialogue.