YouSaid · the spoken record

Jack Kokko

lines on the record: 57
first: 2025-09-25
most recent: 2025-09-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Available. People were still control F searching for individual terms one at a time in PDF reports. Shocking, but that was how work was done. And we had magnified the speed and efficiency and reliability of finding that information. That was the vision that started to execute on and the product we built got pretty quick traction in the hedge fund world where there was this strong thirst for information and efficiency and speed to insight that I had experienced as an analyst and we were now able to bring to that market.”
2025-09-25 · Capital Allocators · Jack Kokko – Building the Google of Finance at AlphaSense (EP.461) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the early days, we even called it, forget if it was us calling it our clients first calling it Google for finance or Google for analyst really built a semantic search engine that would understand what an analyst really is looking for when they are reading a financial filing or an earnings call or a research report from Wall Street. We built that system that understood millions of terms and linked them to core concepts, understood that revenue is the same as top line across the whole vocabulary of finance. So as we built a system that was able to do all that and look at an earnings call happening in Japan or SEC filing in the US, all the information around the world, all companies using different vocabulary and reliably find every single data point about every single topic or theme that an analyst was researching, that was somewhat revolutionary at the time. This just wasn't.”
2025-09-25 · Capital Allocators · Jack Kokko – Building the Google of Finance at AlphaSense (EP.461) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That really was because of the lack of technology to help an analyst who needed to consume so much information and trying to catch up on a new industry that you didn't know, new companies you didn't know and the sort of cross-sectional information across different industries that you really should have known to be smarter with your analysis, with your viewpoints, and to be able to talk to some really experienced business professionals working on about Tibet billions on a deal. Certainly we had the data terminals that array financial professionals has still today. That was a big part of the frustration that you could go and manually look for data, but it was very hard to consume it at the scale and speed that was needed. And back in those days, you already started to have technology for consumers where I had Google to search the internet and so forth, and we get our hands on information very efficiently, but this wasn't available for professionals that desperately needed that every day and every minute in the job. That was a big part of the frustration.”
2025-09-25 · Capital Allocators · Jack Kokko – Building the Google of Finance at AlphaSense (EP.461) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had a pretty strong work ethic. I'd work the usual all-nighters and trying to do a really good job doing the analysis. But the pace was really fast. And you'd end up not having enough time to do a really good job. I remember some client boardrooms where I'm sweating and barely awake, but also afraid of what did I miss and what am I going to be called on by the CFO or CEO of that company where I just missed something in my analysis. And that feeling has stuck to me frankly still every day when I walk into a boardroom. I have flashes from those situations.”
2025-09-25 · Capital Allocators · Jack Kokko – Building the Google of Finance at AlphaSense (EP.461) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On tech deals during the Dakom boom. Spent the first weekend working on a billion dollar deal and things were moving so much faster than in Europe was very exciting at the time, but certainly also a stressful job for someone who wanted to do a good job and the tools just weren't up for it. And ultimately planted the seeds in my mind for what I'd one day want to go and build with Alpha Sims.”
2025-09-25 · Capital Allocators · Jack Kokko – Building the Google of Finance at AlphaSense (EP.461) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I go all the way back to where I grew up, that was in Finland. I studied electrical engineering, thought I was going to be building mobile phones. And during that time, I really got enamored by finance. Studied both in parallel. And then one summer, late in those studies, I spent a few months working at a startup in Brussels called ESTAC, where we were building, the company was going to be the European version of Nasdaq, never really took off, but I was talking to US investment banks and trying to raise money for that business. And also made some connections to firms in London where got an interview at Morgan Stanley and then ended up working as an analyst as my first job out of college in London, first joining the telecom boom, and then convinced them where I wanted to be my dream land was Silicon Valley, and I ended up in San Francisco working.”
2025-09-25 · Capital Allocators · Jack Kokko – Building the Google of Finance at AlphaSense (EP.461) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A single deep research report that our AI produces now gives them same 10 pages that they spent three weeks producing with a team of people. So it just gives you now this incredible efficiency and breadth in what you can do, allows you to do much more diligence and ultimately be more confident in your decision making and still be a lot faster. So it's going to address the quality and the speed and the confidence all at once.”
2025-09-25 · Capital Allocators · Jack Kokko – Building the Google of Finance at AlphaSense (EP.461) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source