YouSaid · the spoken record

Ken Griffin

lines on the record: 49
first: 2025-04-01
most recent: 2025-04-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And then put it where everybody has to see it, right? And so he says, we went from being, from getting a B to being an industry leader. He says, packaging matters. Where did the idea for the risk wall come from? It came because he went to Saudi AMCO's headquarters in Saudi Arabia. Okay. He says this is where they oversee their production from their oil fields. They have this giant wall on all the important data of their business is what he's telling us here. They oversee their production from their oil fields. the output from their power plants, the ships on the open sea, and looking at that visualization and seeing how powerful that was. And I said, you know what? What if I render all of our risk numbers that same way? You always need to think like an entrepreneur. You always need to think, how do you create advantages and how do you learn, not just from your competitors, but from businesses far afield from where you are.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When it comes to competition being one of the best is not good enough, that is how I would describe. It's almost like a one sentence summary of hardball. Being one of the best is not good enough. You want to be the best. So it says when it comes to competition being one of the best is not good enough. Do you really want to plan for a future in which you might have to fight with somebody who is just as good as you are? I wouldn't. That's Bezos. Think about how Bezos built Amazon, right? He played hardball, just like Ken Griffin. Ken gives another example of somebody playing hardball. He talks about Michael Dell. Says, Michael Dell of Dell Computer. He manufactured computers in America and won. Think about how well he ran the business to do that the next episode is actually going to be on Michael Dell. Michael Dell sent me the greatest DM I've ever gotten in my life. He DM'd me and he says, your podcasts are A++ and a bunch of like trophy emojis. It's just incredible. I couldn't believe it. But I've read two books on Uncle Dell, and I'm going to do an episode. The next episode is going to be.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He goes, I thought you were John Griffin. I need to go. Well, great. I just flew all the way to Switzerland to have my lunch walk out on me. Then I get to another meeting later that day. And we were doing convertible bond arbitrage. And in 1994, that was a tough space to be in. And I'm in this beautiful office in Switzerland, and the sky is just smoking his cigar. Puff, puff, puff. So Ken does his pitch. At the end, the guy goes, so sad, such a bright young man picked the wrong career. My point is you've got to be able to play through these moments.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“20 years old, he's trying to raise money for his fund, right? He says, I was in a conference room in 1994 in Switzerland trying to raise money. Let me tell you about this bad trip. I show up for lunch and the guy I meet with goes, you're not John Griffin. And I said, no, I'm Ken Griffin. And he goes, I thought you were John Griffin. John Griffin was.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“During this entire talk, or really most important pieces of advice that anybody can give is that entrepreneurship is sales. And you better damn well get comfortable selling. It says you're always selling when the guy that backed me out of college retired from Chicago, he said I could have whatever I wanted from his office. I took a plaque that probably cost $9.99. And that plaque said, if we're going to eat someone's got to sell, that's a great line. If we're going to eat, somebody's got to sell. That is the story of being an entrepreneur and that is the story of being a CEO. If we're all going to eat somebody's got to sell, every CEO is a salesperson. They've got to sell venture capital firm. They've got to sell a customer. They have to sell an employee. You are always selling. And if you don't like to sell, here's my advice. Get over it. I had no interest in selling when I was 20 years old. This is hilarious. So he's...”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Says total addressable market matters. Why does it matter? Because the odds that you get everything right to launch a successful product, those odds are not high. So when it all comes together, you want there to be something at the end of the rainbow. Think about the total addressable market of the product or business that you're going to pursue. The markets that we're in are deep, liquid markets. That means that when we do our research right, we can monetize it because we can get the liquidity to express that view. We want to be in deep liquid markets. And then in the middle of this, answer this question, I think he gives one of the most important pieces of advice.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Run by Steve's widow. It's excellent. He says this was Steve says things get more refined as you make mistakes. I've just had a chance to make a lot of mistakes. Your aesthetics get better as you make mistakes. So Ken says it's the quantity of decisions made. And to be clear, the more decisions of a similar nature you can make, the better at those decisions you become. So when we think about business activities far away from our core, I get much more anxious. Decisions within our core, I think we make pretty easily and pretty fluidly. It is repetition of the type of decision. Reps matter. If you go through my notes, you'll see I'm constantly in the notes and the highlights that I accumulate through the research for the podcast. I see that over and over again. The shorthand I have is reps, reps, reps. You see this over and over again. Quantity reps matter. It's the repetition of the type of decision. So then he's asked how he decides which new business is to pursue.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“23 and 35 years into his business, we have a hundred thousand applicants for positions this year. We've never had so many people looking to work at our firm. So at this point in the talk, he starts taking questions from audience members. One of these questions was, okay, there's these unknown, unknowable, and highly uncertain future that we all have to navigate. Many of the decisions we're making, decisions based on judgment rather than facts, like at what point in your career did you feel you were able to develop the ability to comfortably make those judgments? And Ken has a great line here. He goes, it was the quantity of decisions made. Steve Jobs said something very similar when we talked about how great his taste was. And he said taste was a byproduct of the number of decisions he made. Again, he gave this interview with Michael Morris. It's on the Steve Jobs archive website, which if you haven't checked out, it's”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had to go into. He was in credit card debt. He was borrowing money from friends. And even when he was doing this, he was talking about the contrast between the path that he's pursuing in life and how most people would just, they wouldn't even take the risk. They'll just sit there in jobs they fucking hate. And this is what George Lucas said in 1971. People would give anything to quit their jobs. All they have to do is do it. Their people in cages with open doors. Let's go back to what Ken is saying here. If your work is actually engaging and exciting, you're going to look back on the first 10 years of that journey and say, you know what, I worked really hard, but we did some really amazing things and I'm really proud of. I think doing work that you're proud of is really, really important to the satisfaction that we're going to draw out of life. Now we're going back into this idea that great takes time, things grow in mysterious ways. Citadel founded 35 years ago. Citadel Securities found it 23 years ago. And yet, you know.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And one of my texts back to him is something that I've noticed. It's very obvious if you read all these biographies like things grow in mysterious ways. Your job is to get into a great business and stay there. That's exactly what Ken did. So I'm all over the map. Let me go back to this on hitting the ground, running, and running hard. Okay. So great companies, great anything, take time. It's not clear to me how this is going to play out because what I see is that people that had really intense careers early on just tend to go so much farther over the ensuing 20 or 30 years. This idea of late bloomers and careers, yeah, it happens, but I think it's pretty infrequent. I think it's important to hit the ground running and to run pretty hard. So there's a bunch of founders that I've profiled that got their break or their big break later in life. So Este Lauder, Sam Walton, Ray Croc. But I think Ken is dead right about this. If you look at what they were doing when they're in their 20s, they weren't just like sitting around.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Three to four. So 25 years into his fund is the most successful years. Same thing with, we see this over and over again. This is something that Peter Thiel realized that a lot of technology company entrepreneurs is they optimize for growth at the expense of durability. But if you actually look at when these companies make the most money, it's like 10, 20, 30 years into the future. So that takeaway was like, you don't want to optimize for growth at the expense of durability because you want to be around two, three, four decades from now to reap all those rewards that are so much greater than the ones you'll get early in your career. And so it's like you can't just like, oh, I have to be really, really rich in like a year or two because it's highly likely what you think is really, really rich, right? Will seem like a drop in the bucket if your company is successful and you're still running it three or four decades from now. In fact, a friend of mine was showing me revenue numbers. He was texting me this last night in 2017. I think his company did 8 million in revenue. And this year it'll do close to 200 million.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Partners. And his whole point is just like all the stuff that you're doing, yeah, life might be long, but it compounds. The skill set and the knowledge you have, like don't like, oh, I have time. Like, no, just work as fast as possible. There's no doubt that in your 20s and 30s, your rate of learning is astronomically high. There's a much stronger focus, and he's talking about the issue of something he brings up over and over again that I'm kind of skipping over, but I'll just kind of fill it in for you. He's very concerned about American competitiveness and that we're not working as hard as the young people are not working as hard. He says there's a much stronger focus on gratification in the here and now and great anything, great companies, great anything. It takes time. Now, a perfect example, Citadel was founded 35 years ago. Citadel Securities was founded 23 years ago. His best and most profitable years have come in the last like.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right, so let's go back to this. So Ken says this is very fascinating too. Success is elusive. However you climb, success is probably twice as far. That was told to me one of our friends who's one of the most successful people in the history of finance. When he's asked, what is success, his answer is it's twice what I've accomplished. That is a pretty daunting concept, and he noticed another thing about the most successful people that he knows, and it's definitely true for him. It's really important that you hit the ground running and you run really hard early in life. You know, there's great stories where Ken had convinced Harvard to install a satellite dish. And I think it was the first person ever on his dorm so he can get real-time information so he could trade all these options and all these financial instruments that he was trading. You know, he starts Citadel at 19. He's going to Dorb's house and pulling out boxes and boxes. of data for Prince and Newport.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was the fact that he's asked, like, you know, he's in his case, he's competing with his industry, he's competing with a lot of such a corporate-owned companies. There's no founder-led companies that he's competing with. And so that's why he's just trouncing them all. One of the reasons he's trouncing them. And he says, I don't fear the big corporate guys. I'm not worried that McDonald's is going to come in and destroy me. What I'm worried about is the young guy that has the same hunger that I had that wants to compete head to head with me. But then he makes this warning where he's like, that's fine. But understand that I love compete. And he goes, and I'm on this day and night. Are you? That's an interesting question to ask yourself. And again, I have tried to maneuver myself into a position where I don't think there's anybody in the planet that is more passionate, more interested in working harder on what I am on this exact thing. I don't care about anything else, but I will collect more information and I will keep doing this on History's greatest entrepreneurs than anybody else in the world. And I'm glad if somebody wants to jump in, but like I'm on.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Field that you chose to pursue ultimately inspires no passion you need to move on also because if you're not passionate about the field you're engaged in you won't have the grit or perseverance to compete with those who are and does that not repeat over and over again in these biographies that you and I go over you could say passion I definitely think that's that's a word another way to think about that too which I think is very similar is Munger has this Charlie Munger has this quote that He says another thing that I found is that intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you're going to excel in it. So think about that. It's like, you know, if you don't have this in the field that you're engaged in, you're not going to have the grit or perseverance to compete with those who are. Think about Todd Graves. Go back to built a $10 billion company. And one of the greatest things about that episode that I did a week or two ago.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Plan, Henry replied that he knew a lot of people running companies that had very definitive plans that they followed assiduously, but worse out in this So, my plan is to stay flexible. My only plan is to keep coming to work every day. I like to steer the boat each day rather than plan way ahead into the future. So back to Ken. You have a much higher chance of being a survivor if you're financially and psychologically flexible. And then he gives us an example that should terrify you. You do not want to wind up like these people. I keep going back to this main point that in my 50s and even my 40s, I would have friends or contemporaries who you saw got off the learning treadmill and life just passed them by. And it doesn't pass them by in 20 years. It passes them by in five or ten. They stop learning, they lost their edge. It's really important if you're not finding yourself learning and growing as a leader and as a domain expert in your field that you pursue, you've got to move on. The other thing I would say is that if the”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“in this book called In the Company of Giants. I think it's episode 208 where the Stanford NBA students interview like 16 or 17, I think 16 technology company leaders of the time. So like Michael Dell's in there, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, all these other people as well. And Steve's point was like, I don't, they're like, I don't, he's like, I don't know. Remember he's saying this in 97. He goes, I don't know what the next big thing is. I just know there will be a next big thing. And so he is he was psychologically and financially flexible to deal with that. But the greatest example of this that came to mind when I read what Ken was saying here comes from Henry Singleton. You know, Henry Singleton, Charlie Mugger said Henry Singleton was the smartest person he ever met. Buffett says that it's a crime that more business schools don't study him, that he put up one of the greatest records in American business history, one of Singleton's main ideas was like, hey, I'm just going to maintain flexibility. I'm going to steer the boat a little bit every single day. And so once criticized for not having a business.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Little in business is actually that straightforward. And so he gives an example about the fact that you're working in this constantly evolving and changing environment. You can't survive over Citadel was founded 40 years ago. Citadel Securities, I think five years ago. So, you know, he's seen a lot in that time. And his example is like, okay, well, how many retailers had a mobile strategy in 2004 before the iPhone? He said no one. The world around you is going to be constantly changing and you need to leave yourself in a position to be more psychologically flexible and to be clear, financially flexible to deal with evolving change. And if you do that, you have a much higher chance of being a survivor. So you have to leave yourself to be psychologically flexible. and financially flexible to deal with evolving change. There's a great line. And as far as like the changing technology, there's this interview that Steve Jobs does.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reason that entrepreneurship is full of stress. I love this idea that Mark Andreessen said one time that you only ever feel two emotions. Euphoria and terror and nothing in between. And part of the reason that there's a lot of terror and uncertainty and, you know, stress and discomfort and I loved Herb Kelleher's perspective that you should just think of that as a good thing. I was like, I don't manage it. I like it. I don't handle it. I like it is you're constantly making decisions under certainty. Like that is the job. And so he's going to talk a lot about that. You have to get used to and you have to understand that part of the job is making decisions under uncertainty. He says good leadership is about acknowledging that I'm going to make decisions under uncertainty. And people who are very good at business are very good at understanding the processes of what matters. Do I make decisions with a well-framed and thought out process? People get in trouble when they start to become reductionist. Like if I do X, Y is going to happen.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of stress are not external. It's the pressure and expectations they put on themselves. It comes from within. He says, my biggest stressor, that's me. I'm always trying to figure out how I can be better, how I can do better. I might be demanding of the people that work for me, but I am no less demanding of myself. And so one of my favorite stories to ever tell as I'm watching this interview with Kobe Bryant and a Madrasad asked him, like, how do you deal with fans' expectations? And before a mod could even finish his sentence, Kobe makes the stanky face. He's just like, oh, just like complete disgust comes a look of disgust, takes over his entire face. He immediately interrupts Ahmad Rashad and he says, their expectations will never be higher than my own. Never, never, never. And things exactly what Ken says. I think, again, I think a lot of his greatest is like if other people's expectations of you are higher than your own, you're probably, again, not in the right job. And so one.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Team, you will buttress each other on your darkest days. And it talks about some people just are going to struggle with stress and adversity. Other people are going to prosper. In fact, one of my favorite lines I've ever heard of any founder ever. And I think it's the right mentality, is Herb Kelleher was the founder of Southwest Airlines, didn't start Southwest. So he's like in his mid-30s, I think he was like 35. And he winds up for the next 40 years completely kicking all his competitors' asses. And he was asked by an interviewer one time, you undergo a lot of stress all the time. How do you handle it? And herbs answer was perfect. I don't handle it. I like it. Entrepreneurs are seeking stress. You're seeking challenge. You're seeking problems that you can solve that no one else can solve. And if you can't do a stress, then you just can't do this job. What Ken's about to say here, I think he has a common with a lot of history as entrepreneurs, is their main source.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This fire analogy I called Lloyd Blankvine, who ran Goldman Sachs at the time, and I said, Lloyd, when is this going to end? And he goes a forest fire ends when there's nothing left to burn. He said that did not make me feel very a lot better, but we never gave up during that period of time. And so when you're going through hell, he has a piece of ice firm. Make sure you push your decision making to those who are mentally in the game in the right way. Because some people just, if it's their first adversity, they're like the proverbial deer in the headlights. So I was thinking about this where adversity is an asset. He's going to talk about the importance of reps later on. He's seen so much in his 40-year career in finance. So when he's talking about this, like, you know, people are going through hell. There's some people are just like completely freaked out and some people are cool and calm and collected. You have to push the decision making to those who are mentally in the game in the right way. This is where who you surround yourself really matters because when you surround yourself with the right”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What their competitive advantage was. Now, the great part of this story is I hired the entire leadership team of the quantitative research effort at Enron, all the people who actually knew how the place worked, and we've made $30 billion in commodities since then. So he calls this being on the ground. That's about being on the ground. That's about understanding where the business actually created value. That's about extracting the right people from that moment in time and surrounding them with the right leadership team, the right investment professionals, the right software engineers in building what is today one of the most important commodity businesses in the world. So going back to our 2008 experience, the first point is when this is hilarious, is when you are walking through hell, just put one foot in front of the other. Just keep going. I was praying that we would find our way out of the fire. And he goes, why do I use?”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I spent over my lifetime a lot of time at the proverbial scene of accidents where other firms have gone awry. And so now he's going to talk about what we talked about at the very beginning. When Unron filed for bankruptcy, Enron was the largest energy trading firm in the United States and they blew apart spectacularly in 2001. So that means around this time that Ken would have been around 33 years old when he's doing this. So that story we told at the beginning. The day they filed for bankruptcy, I charted a Gulfstream jet and put 16 people on it straight to Houston. And all we did was interview people at Enron for several days, the day, not the day after, not a week. Let's wait a month. He says, the day I chartered a jet and went down there again, hardball. He's playing very obvious that Ken plays, he's not playing to play. He's playing to win and he wants a landslide. All we did was interview people at Enron for several days. What worked, what didn't work, how they made money, how they ran the business.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is not only do you want to learn from your mistakes, you really want to learn from the other guys in the other people's mistakes too, because they're much cheaper tuition bills. So a few episodes ago, I think it's episode 380 on Buffett and Munger. It's 400 pages of Buffett and Munger in their own words. They said this exact same thing. In fact, they quoted Patton. I think Buffett's someone that said this. He says, the best thing to do is learn from the other guy's mistakes. George Patton used to say, it's an honor to die for your country. Make sure the other guy gets the honor. And so this is another great idea.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Principal reason that we survived is that when long term capital management failed in 1998, so 1998 Ken would be 30 when he's doing what he's about to describe here. In 2008, when he almost goes out of business, he's 40. So he's like, this is the reason that we will survive 10 years later. Because back in 1998, I went and met with a number of the senior people that worked at long-term capital management. And why did I do this? What was my agenda? I wanted to understand how does a firm that loses 90% of its equity in a levered financial service industry still stay in business. They lost 90% of their equity before they lost control of their business. And much of what we learned from how they survived was actually fundamentally and existentially important to our ability to withstand the turmoil of two thousand eight. So there's a very important lesson here.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very long and hard about what went wrong, but you have to keep it in perspective. In 2008, that tuition bill almost became getting expelled from school because we lost half our equity in 16 weeks in a firm that had never had a double digit drawdown in twenty years. Now, this is another example. He says he's always going to like the scene of the crime, I think is how is how he puts this. I actually love the fact that he did this.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Advantage. And so then we get to the part where Ken talks about almost going out of business. He says there's a little saying, a little quip that I like to make. History is written by the winners. So the wonderful history of Citadel is how we are the most profitable hedge fund of all time. The chapter of how we were on the verge of going out of business in 08 is now a footnote in that book, but it is a very important note. It has not been an easy march to success. I think I have the most interesting position in life. I've probably lost and my team has probably lost more money than any other firm in existence. We just happen to have made more money than almost any other firm in existence. And it's the net that everyone talks about. There are years where our losses are hundreds of billions of dollars. I don't know if it's hundreds, but it's over a hundred. The number is in.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That and he says, I say it's Citadel, we forge talent. That implies a concept of pressure. The world also forges talent. And those difficult moments give people almost extraordinary opportunities to make decisions in the most difficult of times and to have a very fast rate of development and growth. And then he talks about the opposite. When times are good, what happens? It makes you soft. And so he's talking about it on a country level. And again, I think the benefit of watching the interview, then obviously transcribing and reading it at the same time I read hardball, you see how the way he thinks is connected. There's ideas. You could see why he recommends that book. I guess is what I'm saying. So he's talking about, hey, you know, in the United States, we have a really big problem. We've been after post-World War II, the United States really had no competitors. That has shifted in the last 15 years. And he talks about this report that really bothered him when he was reading it. He says this report.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's something that also Ken has in common with a lot of history's greatest entrepreneurs. So he's like, okay, well, if you started your career then, right, you're going through hell at the very beginning. And he says, later on, you know, now we're 13 years later, 15 years later, whatever time is, the people that had to go and had to survive that adversity, you know, decade, decade and a half later, they are remarkably wise and well grounded and able to navigate moments of adversity as if it's a walk in the park because they've been through a difficult time. First thing that popped to my mind when I got to that part, it's like, oh, this is like Rockefeller. Rockefeller praised the benefits of diversity all of his life. In fact, he said, what a school. The school of adversity and stress to train a boy in. He's talking about himself. Another great line, D. Hawk, the founder of Visa, has this great maxim. He says, the wise make great use of adversity. The foolish whine about it. And so Ken's going to keep talking about it.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most valuable equity that you'll create in your lifetime is your career equity that you own. It doesn't go up and down with the market. You own that equity and you want to think about how to maximize your career equity because that toolkit that you develop over your career, that's your ultimate job security. That's your ultimate ticket to success. Another piece of advice that Ken has here, really i'm going to read this warren buffet quote that came to mind first because this is exactly what he's talking about. So Warren Buffett says a rising tide floats all boats only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked Ken will reference multiple times the fact that Citadel almost went out of business completely during the great financial crisis from you know 08 to 07 to 08 he says when you're when you're in a firm in difficult moments you actually see in well managed firms you see what real leadership looks like what real leadership teams are actually made of it's much like when that the rising tide lifts all boats poorly run”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was inside of Enron's trading department, like to the point where he's like, hey, I will come wherever you are and I will get on the plane right now. And he's going to talk about chartering a jet and all this crazy shit that he did to get this information. Then he winds up making like $30 billion off that information over from them till now. So like, how bad do you want it? So again, I do think, yeah, you can have people around you that push you. And I definitely now have a network that does that and friends that do that. Even before that, these biographies just like, dude, I could be doing so much more what you thought was possible. There's a great line. It's mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it. Mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it the way that Ken goes around running his life, his business. It's full of passion. He's showing you how far you can go. So more advice. If you're in an environment where you've been somewhere for six months and you haven't learned much, do not make it six months.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything. He goes, How much time do you spend on recruitment? I am talking to candidates all the time. Nothing is more important than the talent that we're bringing into our four walls. And so he goes back and continues some more advice. You need to find yourself in relationships where somebody takes an interest in you. Now, an interest in you won't always be, he says, let's be clear, that doesn't necessarily mean it's like this big smiling festival, right? Some of the best people that you will work for, you will find to be just incredibly painful to work for. An interest in you does not necessarily mean like, wow, everything you do is great. Sometimes the best advice you get is here are four things that you need to do better. You want to find somebody who's going to push you. Some people push you in a more kind way than others, but you want to find people who are going to push you. So I would say way before I had ever had people.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When he's talking about the fact like, yeah, I used to be good at math, and then I can hire people that are great at math. And he has a funny way to talk about the story. He says, it's funny. You speak of me as being mathematically literate. There's a conversation that I had inside Citadel that always makes me smile with one of my absolute top guys. We were going through a particular problem and he looks at me and he goes and he says this in front of a room full of people. He looks at Kenny. He goes, hey, if you were good at math, this would be much easier to explain. And so he thought that was obviously humorous. He says, my mentors now are my colleagues that I work with, that I choose to surround myself with. What I see inside of our four walls is my sharpest young colleagues gravitate towards people who invest their time with them. In fact, this is another thing that he says I'm going to read to you. He's asked in another interview that I found. He says, how much this is going to sound a lot like Steve Jobs, really all the great entrepreneurs understand that it's just talent.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Entire jobs for us, you know, people are scared of this. He's like, it's ridiculous to be scared of it because it's my life now. And so what he's talking about, he's like, I have 60 direct reports every single one of them is smarter in their respective part of the business than I am. And yet I am able to manage and direct them and essentially direct their activities. He's like, you're going to be doing exactly that. But instead of doing it for people, you'll be doing it through AI agents.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was commoditized. For all that you've learned so far at Yale, the vast majority of what will matter in your career you have yet to learn. If you look at the people who have been extraordinarily successful in finance, they are lifetime learners. They are always learning. And so he even talks about the fact that, you know, he was gifted in math at an early age, but eventually he builds a company where he's able to recruit. And there's some crazy numbers. I think there's like 100,000 people that applied to work for Ken last year. And so he knows his own skills as he goes from as he continues to build his company. Like he's going to be able to hire people that are better at each individual skill than he is. Remember the episode I did a few weeks ago with Jensen Wong. I can't stop thinking about what the way that Jensen looks at his business. So Jensen's point was like, hey, we're going to have all these like super brilliant, smarter than us AI agents. They're going to go out and be able to actually complete.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going back through and doing the transcript to get ready for this episode, I had already read hardball and I just wrote, that's exactly what the book Hardball is about. Are you playing to play? Are you playing to win? It's how do you build your competitive moat? We trade financial assets that involve a research process. We need to understand what moves the prices of assets more thoughtfully and more quickly than our competitors. And then trading is simply how we monetize our research. That is how he thinks about what he does. We are just researchers. The glory is in the research exactly he says. He says the glory is in the research. Trading is the monetization of that research. Now he just got done mentioning the fact that his first edge was competed away. And so the advice he's giving is like, you have to. This is just the importance of lifelong continuous learning. It's related to the fact that his first competitive edge.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is again when I ask people about Ken, another thing that comes up is exactly what he's going to talk about here. He is just a learning machine and he's constantly seeking out opportunities. And you can see that he's learning and he's expanding the ways he makes money. He understands that these edge edges he has, they may not last forever. He just talked about this. It's ridiculous that everything that he thought he was solving or he did solve and all the difficulty he went through in the late 80s and the 90s, now you could just literally get for free online. So he says, now the fortuitous part of the story is that over the last 30 years, we've radically improved our business and transformed what we do and how we do things. We continue to build our competitive advantage in the various business in which we choose to compete. That is the essence of running a business. What's the essence of running a business? How do you build your competitive moat? And so by this time, when I...”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Excellent. It's thinking about what tools that you have that at this moment unlock problems that just simply didn't exist before. What is your natural skill set that you can apply that maximum? Remember, take high risk, right? And you can apply that to opportunities that you are uniquely suited to solve right now. And you need to act on it right now because what if you had that idea? It's like, hey, I think I can get a competitive advantage in the financial markets. I can use quantitative analytics. And then you waits a decade and a half or a decade or five, maybe five years, maybe even two years, that edge that he saw that novel thought he had, that edge that he thought he could pursue is competed away. So again, he says, everything, and he talks about this, everything we did in the early 90s is completely commoditized. That's just a profound fact, a huge competitive edge in 1990 is just trivial today.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we at Citadel today are one of the largest market makers in the world. So I had the right toolkit in the right moment in time. And I think my friend is really right. So the friend he's talking about is the one that's saying, hey, great entrepreneurs have the right toolkit to solve a problem at that particular moment in time. And thinking about this is such great advice. Such great advice. And I want to go back actually before I go to the great advice. There is something where this idea, I'm going to tell you what came to mind. This idea where he is trying to, he's applying essentially if you really think about what he's doing, he's investing in technology. He's applying technology in a way to an existing industry that no one was doing before that. There's a line, that part, surprisingly enough, when I got to that part of this talk and of the transcript. I thought of Andrew Carnegie. If you go back and read Andrew Carnegie's autobiography, he was doing the same thing he was doing in the 1800s and he was doing it to the steel industry. He would constantly invest.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In economics and a passion for finance. Remember going back to hey, I was obsessed with this starting in third grade. I don't even know why. And a belief that you could use quantitative analytics to have a competitive advantage in the financial markets. This is always fascinating to me. Now, an insight that no one else has acted on or no one else has mastered yet, which is exactly what he's talking about, right? Eventually will become completely commoditized. It will be obvious to other people. And so that's what he's going to talk about here. And believe it or not, in the 1980s, that was still a reasonably novel thought. One of my earliest hires was a Russian rocket scientist. And one of my friends in Wall Street called me up and said, you're not trying to put a man on the moon. You're trying to make money. And I'm like, no, no, I believe that this is the future, that those firms that can price derivatives analytically are going to have a real advantage. The guy that called me was a partner at one of the most successful investment banks that no longer exists.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're up to what 400, 450 hours, almost 400 books. What are you and I doing every week, right? We're taking advantage and we're learning from those who simply have money, more years of experience. We're making the most of that. So then he continues telling us about his early career. Oh, this was very fascinating. And this is something I see all the time as well. So he says, an acquaintance of mine who has started one of the most successful internet companies of all time said to Ken one day that great entrepreneurs have the right toolkit to solve a problem of that particular moment in time. And so Ken is going to talk about the early days of his career. And this is, so he doesn't name who this person is, the successful internet company founder. Great entrepreneurs have the right toolkit to solve a problem of that particular time. You've heard me reference this over and over again on the podcast that this is the right person with the right set of skills at the right time. So he says for me, that toolkit was an understanding of software engineering, an understanding of mathematics, a background.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he was mentored by some traders and salespeople on Wall Street. He goes, You have no idea how many hours a day I spent on the phone, like a sponge learning about finance from those who had 15, 20, 25, 30 years of experience. He even mentions this guy. He goes, Terry O'Connor, Merrill Lynch, Boston. And in the talk, he doesn't have notes in front of him. I watched this many times. He spits out the guy's phone number. He still remembers the guy's phone number. He goes, I could go to Mary Lynch's office after school. And I'd go there at the end of my school day and stay till midnight. They would let me use their Bloomberg, read the value lines, and read all of their research. And so then after Ken is describing his own experience, he gives advice. Take advantage of all the people in whatever firm you join and in whatever community you're part of to learn from those who simply have more years of experience. Make the most of that. So think about what this founders podcast is exactly this.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right? And that you're just naturally interested in. He says, I started Citadel right out of college. I joined a firm in Chicago that gave me capital to manage. We had a very simple understanding. If I did well, I'd raise money from outside investors. I would start a formal firm. If things didn't go so well, I'd go back to graduate school. And I think I'm pretty sure I read somewhere or I heard somewhere. Hopefully I'm right about this, that they seated them with something like a million dollars. So, you know, a very small commitment. And I think he had like 70% returns on that money. And so he says, that was the deal. And then he talks about why he went to Chicago. I went to Chicago because the two partners that ran the firm that backed me, he talked about one thing he's going to talk about a lot is Ken is a believer in the power of mentorship. So he went to Chicago because he thought that two people are backing him actually cared about what happened to him. And they took an”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A year, so you know his net worth is skyrocketing. And his whole point was like he believes that one entrepreneurs need to have way higher risk tolerance, that his risk tolerance, and you heard it on the podcast, was sky high. And this is the advice that Ken is giving to the students that, yo, I tell this to everybody. You should be risk seeking at this point in your life. So keep in mind, Ken started Citadel right out of college. This is a great moment to think about pursuing opportunities that have the maximal personal interest. You should go for it right here and right now because there will come a time where it's going to be harder to take risks. Right now, you should absolutely be thinking about what the high risk opportunities that you could pursue are that you'll have the greatest experience with. And so he talks about this a bunch. You know, you're going to take risks. You have no idea. There's no way you could possibly predict if you're going to be successful or not. The important thing is that you're maximizing the speed at which you're”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I started with a niche gas trading, built a niche fund, and burnt out after 17 years. Ken started with a niche, convert ARB, and built one of the most successful financial firms ever, and has never tired. That was a tweet written by John Arnold. I came across it a few weeks ago, and it further piqued my interest on doing an episode, making an episode about Ken Griffin. There's no biographies, there's no books written about him. But I keep coming across these little clues that he's a very special person, that tweet being one of them. I want to pick up this book that I read many years ago for the first time, probably five or six years ago. It's by this guy named Ed Thorpe. I've done a few episodes on him, but the one I would recommend listening to is episode 222. Ed Thorpe is a legit genius. He was the person that he founded the very first quantitative hedge fund. He built the world's first wearable computer with Claude Shannon. He was the one that came up with...”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fund, so I declined. I ended up building my own firm starting with traders and hiring deep fundamentals expertise. Citadel started with research, as is their DNA, and built up a trading operation around it. Both models worked fabulously well. I came away from the experience with an even deeper respect for both Ken and Citadel, and remain friends with him to this day.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Citadel probably interviewed several hundred Enron employees. Much more importantly, they built the framework for how to enter the energy business, which, as Ken has said, has been an enormous success. I did eventually talk with Citadel. On their third call to me, they asked if I would talk to Ken directly. I was at that point heading to Aspen for a quick industry event. I didn't know Ken personally, but I had great respect for what he had built, so I told his rep that he could call me when I got back to Houston the following week. She said, great, but then she called back a few minutes later with a question to meet me in person the next day, would I? Out of respect, I said, Of course. The next day I had a great meeting with him, and later that week he offered me a job as head gas trader. I wanted to fully run an operation and thought there was more upside if I could have my own.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As head trader at Enron, when it filed for bankruptcy, I received many calls from firms I were recruiting. I was busy trying to close out the trading book and wanted to take some time to decide my future, so I didn't take any meetings. But Citadel was by far the most aggressive. Other companies set up a few interviews with Enron's senior people. Citadel interviewed everyone in the trading operation, at all functions and all levels. Citadel's team called me twice, but I declined to meet. It was apparent to me that their intent was to reverse engineer their business and I wasn't going to help them. They knew that people looking for a job, particularly if they didn't have a fiduciary responsibility to a current employer, would be very free with info. Interview everyone and you get a 360 degree perspective of the industry, how the business makes money, its competitive edge, who the best employees are, etc.”
2025-04-01 · Founders · #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source