Why I Started Buysiders Club

Buysiders Club

Over the last six months, some of you may have noticed photos from private dinners, wine tastings, and events showing up across our social channels. The question I keep getting is the same: what exactly is Buysiders Club?

I've never really explained it publicly. Mostly because I wanted to be sure it was real before I talked about it. So today I want to share the whole story. What it is, why I started it, and where it goes from here.

What is Buysiders Club?

Buysiders Club is a private social club for the brightest minds in finance. We bring them into one room, both physical and digital. We host in-person events roughly once a month, and in between we run an active online community where members share investment opportunities, market insights, and introductions.

The community today is around 40 members: managing partners at PE and VC firms, senior investment bankers, portfolio managers at some of the world's most respected funds, top finance journalists, founders, operators, and even an Olympic gold medalist.

The goal isn't to build another networking group. It's to build a room full of people you'd actually want to spend time with.

Why I Started It

I started in investment banking and moved into private equity during the era of near-zero rates. I worked a lot and learned a lot. But starting Overheard on Wall Street as a banking analyst is what eventually let me walk away and go all in on building a media business.

One of the biggest reasons I left was travel. I spent the next several years living around the world, ending in Bali, where I stayed nearly two years. When I was younger I obsessed over hard skills. My travels taught me that relationships are probably the only thing that actually matters.

In Bali I met a couple of friends who'd built a social club for entrepreneurs, complete with week-long trips to the most remote corners of the world. I went to one of their dinners and couldn't believe the caliber of people in the room.

I asked one of the founders how he'd collected all these people. He told me he hadn't gone looking for them. They found him, because he'd built something worth being part of.

That reframed everything. I'm one degree of separation from just about anyone in finance, so why couldn't I build this for our world? I did some digging and realized no real social club for finance existed.

Finance is well connected, but only within its silos. A healthcare PE investor knows other healthcare investors. A tech VC knows other tech VCs. Very few places exist where exceptional people from every corner of finance actually mix, and almost none where they also mix with exceptional people outside finance.

So I came back to NYC with a single goal: to collect the best person from each corner of finance in one room. Call it the Avengers for finance.

What Makes Buysiders Club Different?

I live within a few blocks of what feels like every members club in New York, and I'm a member at a few myself. I'll be honest: most of these aren't really clubs. They're an elevated WeWork. In years of membership, I've met maybe 1.5 people I actually wanted to stay in touch with.

Buysiders is different because it's curated. Everyone in the room is there for a reason. And you don't have to take my word for it:

The other half is the events themselves. We work just as hard on those as we do on the guest list. A few we've already done:

• A 14-course wine tasting and food pairing with a world-renowned wine group in Soho

• A rare tasting with the godfather of Highball whisky aboard a private yacht at Art Basel

• A custom whisky bottling experience at a distillery in Silicon Valley

• Dinners at some of the most exclusive clubs in NYC

And a few lined up for the rest of this year:

• A private dinner at John Lennon's former townhouse

• Live art showcase

• An event at the NYSE

• Wellness and athletic events

• A few that aren't public yet

If you'd like to partner with us or sponsor an event, you can submit your interest here.

The Event Format

The best relationships are made over dinner. Some of my closest friends in NYC are people I happened to be seated next to. Dinners move you past the surface questions and into the ones that actually matter. So every event follows the same format: a one-hour cocktail hour, a two-hour seated dinner, and a flexible hour after.

We also do something a little clever. Halfway through dinner, we run a full switch: everyone to your left, your right, and across from you changes. By the end of the night you've had real conversations with at least six different people.

The Room

One thing I always wanted to do was put finance people next to leaders from completely different worlds.

My favorite example: Anna Delvey came to one of our dinners. During introductions, I asked everyone to name the last thing they'd watched on TV. When it got to Anna, she smiled and said, "Crime." The room went silent for half a second, then everyone lost it. That was the moment I knew this had to be a permanent part of the format.

So now, at every event, around 30% of the room comes from outside finance. Founders, creators, athletes, artists, writers. Some of the best conversations of the night happen when someone from finance is seated next to someone whose world looks nothing like theirs.

Deal Flow

The final benefit is something I almost hesitate to mention because it wasn't the original goal.

Deal flow.

When you put exceptional investors in the same room, opportunities naturally start moving through the network. Over the last six months alone, members have shared more than twenty opportunities, from private company investments and secondaries to niche roll-ups that would never appear on a public platform.

What Does the Future Look Like?

My vision is to collect the best people in finance and keep it that way. Whether the right number is 100 or 1,000 doesn't matter to me. I'm not optimizing for size. I'm optimizing for quality. Everything gets commoditized eventually. The relationships you build won't.

Where it goes from here, I don't fully know yet, and that's part of the fun. Maybe a clubhouse. Maybe a VC fund. Maybe something else entirely.

Who is a Good Fit?

We look for three things in a member:

1. You're crushing it in whatever part of the industry you're in.

2. You're a good person and easy to be around.

3. You genuinely want to meet people.

If your first instinct when you meet someone is "what can this person do for me," this probably isn't the right group. Members have found business partners, done deals together, and made lifelong friends. All of that happens naturally.

How to Apply

For now, Buysiders Club is primarily focused on senior finance professionals, generally VP-level and above. That said, titles aren't everything. Some of our most interesting conversations have come from people earlier in their careers, or outside finance entirely, who were exceptional in other ways.

We've spent the last six months building quietly. Now feels like the right time to open the doors a little wider. If this resonates with you, we'd love to hear from you.

And hopefully I'll see you at a dinner soon.