Interview with Justin Heo: From West Coast Investment Banking to Silicon Valley
Breaking down the Investment Banking recruiting process for Los Angeles and an exit to a high-growth tech company
Recently, we were fortunate to speak with Justin Heo, a WCM, Western, and Ivey HBA alumnus who graduated in 2017. Justin was the Co-President of Western Capital Markets and a Head Analyst on the Western Investment Club. He spent two years working as an Investment Banking Analyst for Moelis & Company in their Los Angeles office. Before that, he completed an internship with Ashbridge Partners in Toronto. He is now working on the BizOps & Strategy team at Roblox in San Francisco. Justin had some great insights for navigating finance recruiting and spoke to his recent experience at Roblox — where he helped prepare the company to go public. See the transcript below.
Interviewer: To start things off, can you walk us through your background and your story? How did you go from studying at Western to now working in finance, and what drew you into this space?
Justin: When I was in high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. The logical decision for me was to pursue business, as my dad had worked in finance when he was younger. When I got to college, I joined many clubs, including Western Capital Markets and the Western Investment Club. I thought it was interesting, but I really had no idea what investment banking, sales and trading, or private equity was.
What I did understand from my mentors and folks older than me was that it seemed like an awesome platform to start my career, and because of that, I chose to continue learning more about it. In my second year, I started slowly getting more involved in the finance-related clubs and had begun reaching out to Ivey alumni who have went down that path. I ended up getting to know some cool individuals and landed an internship at a search fund for the summer. I learned a ton and had a lot of fun that summer and realized the value of working with thoughtful, hard-working individuals.
After the summer and going into HBA1, recruiting started early, around October. I went through a few processes and accepted a summer internship in Los Angeles at Moelis & Company. I thought the internship was good and gave me exposure to Investment Banking at a much larger organization with a structured learning program. There were definitely times where I went through long hours but I knew it would be a good platform for me to grow and learn, so I ended up taking the full-time job. That’s kind of my path into finance: it’s not that I knew I wanted to be in the space since I was young — I kind of grew into it during first and second year of college and I just kept learning more and more about it.
Interviewer: Speaking on the theme of banking being a lot of hard work, and being tough at times, did you find that it met your expectations in terms of how demanding it was? Or was it more than expected? What were some of the methods or practices you use to fight burnout?
Justin: Was it as demanding as people made it out to be at certain times? Yeah, definitely. I would describe the life of an analyst in investment banking as pretty volatile. You have times where there is a ton of work to do, then have lighter days where there isn’t all too much. For me, managing that lifestyle was getting in the mindset of prioritizing your health, both physically and mentally. There’s a mindset and culture in finance where some view working ultra long hours as a badge of honor. I’d say, this expectation combined with immense amounts of work can lead to stressful times and take a toll on your health. It’s really your responsibility to make sure that you’re doing okay. To me, this meant constantly communicating my availability to the staffer and deal teams you are working with. Managing up and communicating realistic timelines was very helpful for me in navigating the busier times. Additionally, it really helped to have a group of people, whether it be my analyst classmates or school friends to hang out outside of work. When I reflect back on my time in investment banking, I had a lot of fun, and a big part of that was due to the friends I made within the office and the group of former classmates that was in LA.
Interviewer: Exactly. Maintaining those relationships and hobbies is really important in keeping balance. Now, regarding your placements in LA and now San Francisco, how did the processes in those geographies differ from those on the East Coast such as Toronto or New York? For students looking to follow a similar path to yours, do you have any advice for recruiting on the West Coast?
Justin: The basics and the fundamentals that underlie investment banking interview processes are generally similar. You’ll need to have a good knowledge of technical components of accounting and valuation, as well as need to be well prepared behaviourally. There’s likely some differences based on the industries you would be focusing on so learning more about those specific sectors will be helpful in giving you an edge in the process. For Moelis in LA, the focus is on media and entertainment, but for the SF office, it is primarily tech. Networking and participating in specific-sector groups in clubs will help you build more knowledge about these areas.
My focus when I was in HBA1 was to try to get an opportunity to work in LA. The reason wasn’t work or career-focused but moreso a personal preference. I liked the warmer weather, I thought the culture of the city was more relaxed, and was very different to what I was used to in Canada. If I had to go back, I would try to be a bit more thoughtful on the industries I would be working in and try to see if that fit what I wanted to be doing after banking. The nature of my work at Moelis was naturally focused more towards media and entertainment, whereas in San Francisco, you likely work on deals in the tech sector. Given I was recruiting for tech roles, having more exposure to these type of deals in banking would have been helpful for me.
Overall, my advice to students beyond just working hard and networking, would be to consider the following: the industries you want to get exposure to, what type of role you want to be in post-banking, and the size of the office that you want to work in.
Interviewer: That’s great advice, a lot of people may be stuck on either the name or the location, but it’s really important, as you mentioned, to consider those other factors. So, now that you’ve made the jump, exiting banking and entering Business Operations and Strategy at Roblox, it would be great to know what was the motivator behind that choice and what led you to that field?
Justin: Going into investment banking, I was certain I wanted to do private equity post-banking. I enjoyed learning about investing throughout school and most of the individuals I looked up to went down that path and became successful. It really seemed like a no-brainer to me at the time and I was pretty set on it. However, during my first year of banking, I started hearing of individuals with similar backgrounds going into tech and really enjoying it. That’s when I realized I should be more flexible in what I should look to do after my analyst program. I sat down and thought about what I wanted in my next role, and for me, that was a place where I could stay for a longer period of time and continue building focused knowledge. In private equity, I realized many leave after two to three years, and that wasn’t what I was looking for.
When the Roblox role came around, I was already more flexible in what I wanted to do. I honestly had no idea what the Company did nor have I ever played Roblox. The job description was what stood out to me and ultimately the reason I took the call with the team. The role and the Company ended up being something I was looking for — a perfect mix of ownership, flexibility to be creative, and a place where I thought I could see myself growing with for a longer period of time. Additionally, the Roblox business model and unit economics really stood out to me — it was already profitable and the product had natural viral loops embedded that would help the business scale.
Interviewer: Continuing on the Roblox conversation, the company has been in the headlines as of late with news of its public listing. So, how has the experience been being on the other side of a listing, now as a client instead of an advisor? Could you provide some insight and rationale on the recent decision to switch from an IPO to a direct listing?
Justin: I think it would be helpful to first understand Roblox and what the Company is about. Roblox is a platform where millions of players come together to do many things — play, create, socialize, buy items, and sell items. We don’t create any of the experiences on Roblox and we are essentially platform operators, similar to YouTube where all content is user-generated. We focus everyday on making the platform and the tools better for our players and creators, so that they can create the amazing experiences on Roblox.
The reason I want to explain the business first is because it is truly a complex business to understand. What’s being built at Roblox aren’t the experiences or games that our users engage with, it’s the Roblox Client that allows users to explore 3D digital worlds, the Roblox Studio that allows millions of creators to build engaging experiences, and the Roblox Cloud that provides the infrastructure to host all of these experiences. Working on the listing for me and the rest of the team has been an awesome learning experience in taking this complexity and figuring out the best way to communicate a story that investors can understand and get behind. Additionally, speaking with investors has been a great experience and getting to understand how they think about various aspects of the Company has been very cool. The biggest difference being on the other side to me was the level of focus and ownership I was able to get. The Roblox listing is the only “deal” I’m working on and the amount of responsibilities I had has been a great opportunity.
Regarding the direct listing and the recent switch, we’ve seen companies take innovative approaches to creating a more market-based relationship between investors and companies. Based on everything we have learned over the last couple weeks, we felt there is an opportunity to improve our specific process for employees, shareholders and future investors both big and small.
Interviewer: It’s exciting, and I’m sure our members are keeping their eyes on the listing. Now, I’m sure it’s been very busy at Roblox over the last few months. Can you describe how your time has changed from when you first started nearly two years ago to now? How have your responsibilities changed in light of the massive growth the company has experienced?
Justin: My role in bizops and strategy, in a nutshell, is to provide data-driven strategic insights and recommendations to key stakeholders across the company to support better decision making. We report directly to the CFO and work frequently with the CEO. That was the main job function when I joined and still is to this day. When I first started, the problems that we were tackling were more geared towards strategic operational initiatives. For example, how do we compete for the best engineers in Silicon Valley? How do we continue international expansion? How should we think about new products such as subscription? These types of questions and problems are still relevant today but given COVID and the listing, our workstreams on these topics have lessened a bit.
The biggest new workstream has been working on the listing. Our team helped out with prospectus writing, communicating with investors, preparing investor day materials, and ensuring the whole process is facilitated smoothly.
The other new workstream for us has been to understand the impact of COVID on our business and getting a understanding of Roblox post-COVID. We realized very quickly that due to the lockdown, many individuals all over the world were on Roblox hanging out, socializing, and playing with their friends as a means to keep connected. The current focus for our team is to understand the long-term effects of this period and communicating our findings to key stakeholders.
Interviewer: That ties in well with the sentiment you presented at the beginning about how you got into business, because it was general, and it gave you a lot of optionality, and now you’re working on so many different segments and components of the company. To end things off, speaking to the students reading this, do you have any pieces of advice for them as they go through the stresses of recruiting and understanding different career paths in business?
Justin: My advice would be to continue being curious early on and make sure to explore the types of roles out there. Continue networking with alumni with “non-traditional” career paths to continue learning of the different opportunities out there and how they got into those roles. This should help you think through what type of experience you may want to be getting out of college as well as help you think through a plan to get you there.
My other piece of advice is to have a growth mindset. Try not to focus too hard on the outcome of recruiting processes but rather focus on your learnings going through it. Reflecting after every interview, coffee chat, or mock interview on what you thought went well and what didn’t will help you accumulate knowledge that will help you out during your next process.
Lastly, just be patient. There’s this immense pressure to get a job at a very young age at Ivey and I went through it. As long as you are putting in the preparation of networking, doing mock interviews, and reading, there will eventually be an opportunity that you will capitalize on. Be comfortable knowing that the efforts you are putting in now may not get realized right away in the form of a job offer in the next process you go through.
Interviewer: That will be reassuring for our readers, and I’m sure a lot of people resonate with that advice. Again, thank you for your insight, and that wraps up all our questions. On behalf of Western Capital Markets, we really appreciate your time and for coming out and being part of this interview.
