Switched gears
Age: 30
Previous position: Analyst in Mergers and Acquisitions at Lehman Brothers
Current status: CEO of startup Psychoauction.com
I was laid off from Lehman because the firm went bankrupt. I briefly worked for a hedge fund but that one got hit really hard by the crisis as well so I was only there for about six months. Rather than looking for another job in finance, I decided to start something on my own. I thought I would set up a company that would be completely different.
I somehow came across this idea for Psychoauction and started working day and night. I launched in April 2009. The way it works is you have to bid on the items and each bid increases the price by 1 cent and resets the timer to 5 minutes. You have to buy bids before you can place bids and bids cost $1. The person who wins is the person who bid last. I would call it entertainment shopping. I intend to open a whole platform with entertainment shopping sites based on the Psycho brand.
Internet startups are very fragile, but it's been a lot of fun. Finance, in the end, is not the most dynamic -- let's just say a lot of people find it boring. I'm very happy now. I don't know what I'm going to do in the future, but I'm not going back to a bank -- that's not really something that I want to do.
NEXT: Still looking for a job
