Jon Horvath, Creating Something Big

Jon Horvath is an equity analyst with a decade of experience on Wall Street. He is also a technology junkie with an inventive spirit. Jon was born in Sweden and moved to Canada during elementary school. He attended Queens University near Toronto before getting his MBA from Kellogg at Northwestern University.

Out of business school, Jon went right into Equity Research and was quickly promoted to Senior Analyst with his own coverage. Then when his boss threatened to leave Lehman Brothers for a money management job, Lehman agreed to seed a tech focused hedge fund with $100 million investment and Jon joined him in the endeavour. After a couple of years Jon left for a New York based global hedge fund where in 2008 he capped his career 40% return on capital, a full 60% outperformance of his benchmark.

Outside of the financial world, Jon is an action sports enthusiast. Out of frustration with helmet cams he started a company, atan2 Corp, to design a camera that films you from a third person perspective.

What gave you the idea for your company and how did it start?

I have always loved action sports and had been shooting point-of-view footage with a helmet cam while skiing way before GoPro became mainstream. After several years, I became frustrated with the same endless scenery in each video. I believed that athletes really wanted to see themselves in their videos, centered and up close just like a Hollywood movie. Seeing yourself on film is also critical for self-improvement in sports.

My company, atan2, was developing an autonomous tracking camera called Motus. The rider wore a TAG which was tracked by the camera system. Motus was mounted in a fixed position motors panned and tilted the camera smoothly to keep the rider perfectly centered in the frame. Motus was locating this TAG (and the rider) 100x per second to 20 cm accuracy so the zoom and focus could also be adjusted perfectly.

What is your favorite thing about your chosen profession?

Regarding Motus and atan2 I loved that I was able to create something! My career has mostly been in the finance world performing analysis. I enjoyed having an outlet that is separate from all of that and I thoroughly love the whole process of filling a need, developing it, and watching it come to reality.

What keys to being productive can you share with us?

As a result of working in the trades market for many years, I have become an early riser. You can be very productive in the hours before most others start their day. I use the time to prioritize my day and set the goals I want to accomplish. It’s also important to have the ability to multitask, especially since both the market and the development of Motus can have so many things that need to be addressed in a timely manner. You need to have that focus, but also allow for what may come up throughout the day.

Tell us one long-term goal in your career.

I have been primarily an equities analyst throughout my career in finance. I have worked for investment banks and hedge funds as a fundamental analyst picking stocks. That field has changed significantly in recent years with much more emphasis on quantitative investing. But the same thing is happening in corporate America where essentially all companies have a data science or data analytics teams. So, I enrolled in a 6-month data analytics boot camp to learn new tools and upgrade my skills which will allow me to transition to a corporate analytical role. I will be assessing a company’s performance from within with access to much more data.

What is the most valuable lesson you’ve learned through the course of your career?

I think it would be to believe in yourself, even when you face adversity. When I first began my career at Lehman Brothers my first earnings season was an unmitigated disaster. I think it was IBM reporting, which incidentally has 8 or so unrelated lines of business. Another new analyst and I were meant to analyze the earnings and write the report for our boss who then had to go on the morning call at 430AM the following day to relay the significance of these earnings to the sales force. We didn’t finish until 1AM and needless to say my boss was not too pleased with us. It was just inexperience and learning how these earnings seasons work. You learn better processes and put them into action, and you can learn as much or more from failure as you do from success and I think that is important in any field. My second earnings season went much smoother.

What advice would you give to others aspiring to succeed in your field?

I would advise learning to code as early as possible. I think it is also important to become accustomed to learning new languages and technologies consistently. That is the world we live in today; technology is constantly changing, and you must be willing to change with it.

What are your favorite things to do outside of work?

I love to travel for skiing/snowboarding, mountain biking and surfing. I have a young daughter at home and love to just relax with her and my wife cooking meals and going to the beach or zoo.

Name a few influential books you’ve read/websites you follow that you would recommend to readers.

Twitter has been a really good resource for macroeconomics and cryptocurrency research. It has many contributors that provide information.

I have read many books that have inspired me. The most influential I have read recently is Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty. He is the first person to ever do a study with all the historic information on wealth and income and how they develop over time. This book really shines light on how extreme wealth inequality is in the world today and the only ways that it has been redistributed historically (hint: it doesn’t end well).

What advice would you give to your younger self?

I would tell myself to try to look for a position with a top tier management consultancy out of college instead of a financial firm. These firms are great platforms where you get exposure to very bright people and c-level execs. It would have been a great platform, especially when just starting out and I think would have introduced me to some excellent resources that could have helped my career.

Website: jon-horvath.com

Follow Jon on Twitter: @jonphorvath