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The finance industry is often seen as fast-paced, competitive, and complex. But understanding how to build a successful career within it requires more than technical knowledge alone.
In this Coffee Chat, Finance Build Fellow Nicole Tu, a buy-side analyst at Sunstone Asset Management, where she focuses on investment opportunities in the hardware technology industry, shares her journey in finance, offering insights into how roles evolve over time, what it means to take ownership in investment decisions, and how professionals develop their own approach in a constantly changing market.
Through more than 5 years of experience in the finance field, students and early-career professionals will gain a clearer understanding of the skills needed to succeed in finance, the challenges they may encounter early in their careers, and how to build a sustainable path in the industry.
A: Being a newbie in the finance industry, or in every industry, means you must learn so many things from the ground. Especially in the competitive and fast-paced finance industry, there are challenges from work and from people’s relationships.
Work pressure could be tremendous in this industry, with long working hours. Thus, how to ensure the work-life balance to keep you physically and mentally healthy while ace in the workplace is the most important thing we need to face every day.
We all have different ways to relieve stress. This will be essential after entering the finance industry as keeping physical and mental health could be the key factor that makes you achieve final success in this industry. Why? As experience and connections make you shine brighter in this industry, it means that if you can survive longer in this industry, you can do things more efficiently and effortlessly to get close to whatever you want to achieve.
For myself, I can always lower my pressure by doing my favorite things such as hanging out with friends, watching movies, and exercising. Other than those activities, continuous communication with colleagues and own portfolio manager to find a more suitable work style also helps to make my work under my own control.
A: My past experience was not 100% fit for the finance industry. Therefore, the work style and work environment that I was familiar with were completely different when I changed industry. At that time, every person around me in the finance industry was a teacher for me. You can always learn from your colleagues, not only wait for the instructions from your boss or manager. Moreover, do as much as you can, learning from doing it. Practice makes perfect.
For example, I didn’t know how to evaluate the company appropriately after I joined the finance industry in the beginning. However, the best resource had surrounded me as my colleagues covered different industries and companies in all different ways. I learned a lot after checking how they were doing their jobs and discussing the logic behind those tools.
A: All of the investment decisions are based on analysis. That said, no matter if I was a research analyst or if I am a buy-side analyst, I need to analyze the market trend as my first step in the investment decision process.
The beginning of the process and the effort could be the same. The only difference is the way you present your outcome. As a research analyst, you only need to provide your view of your conclusion. As a buy-side analyst, you need to make a clear suggestion based on your analysis. Thus, the pressure of being a buy-side analyst is higher than a regular research analyst because you need to endure the profit volatility with your own suggestions.
In other words, as a sell-side analyst, you don’t really need to check the share price every minute but only focus on the long-term trend. However, as a buy-side analyst, you have to check the share price from time to time and make sure to make any adjustments if required.
A: Doing research is never easy. Doing research in AI era is somewhat easy, somewhat difficult. You can get any existing answer very quickly at any time, but at the same time, more and more information is booming all over the world. You can never learn it all.
Thus, how to summarize information in an organized way depends on how deeply you understand the industry. Not only do you learn the short-term trend but also think of the long-term trend of the industry you are studying. What technology or which company can deliver the most comprehensive roadmap and have better visibility in the following 5-10 years… This is probably the most important factor in this industry.
Such as, market share gain and loss in certain areas is the short-term dynamic, but the whole picture is to see if the market TAM (total addressable market) is growing. If the market TAM is growing, every company in this sector will benefit; no one is a total loser even with a slight market share lose.
A: There are so many ways to make investments. Other than the stock market, there are real estate industry, gold, and luxury goods, and many other things in the market that can be investment items. Within the stock market, there are also many ways to make final investment decisions. Thus, finding suitable investment items and a suitable way is important for everyone to make things more efficient. Don’t need to stick to any one investment item at all.
Within the stock market, you can analyze the market based on fundamentals, or you can also crush the market by doing technical analysis. Nothing is 100% correct, as long as it suits your experience and your skill. Thus, knowing yourself before making an investment is important.
Like myself, I understand that my strength is more on the fundamentals in the hardware industry. With this regard, I choose to focus on equity research instead of other investment targets. After focusing on the area, I also talk to many people to fine-tune and narrow my expertise in this industry. The continuous filter process makes my work more efficient and precise from time to time.
A: Communication skills.
The stock market is a place everyone can be involved in. Therefore, you have to find out the most “popular idea”, that being said, the key factor that drives the share price move.
It would be good if you could find the answer based on your analysis. However, we always have blind spots on everything. Once your analysis is not working, it is important to talk to people to find out what is wrong with our own analysis. Even if our analysis can work for now, we should always find a way to fine-tune our thesis and adjust our assumptions to accommodate the daily changing world.
Thus, communication skills are very important in the finance industry. How to talk to people to exchange your ideas and get the key insights from others are the ways to make your investment analysis more profound.
To improve communication skills, it would be great if you always made your statements in bullet points and made it clear. The most important thing is to mention why you are different from the market in the first place. With that lead, it will be a strong sign for people to decide why they need to listen to you.
Final Thoughts
Nicole’s experiences highlight that there is no single “right” way to build a career in finance. Success comes from understanding both the market and yourself—your strengths, your interests, and your approach to decision-making.
For students, the key takeaway is to stay curious, continuously refine your thinking, and actively engage with others to challenge and improve your ideas. By developing strong communication skills and maintaining a long-term perspective, you can build a resilient and rewarding career in finance.
Danila Blanco Travnicek is the Director of Program Strategy & Evaluation at The Build Fellowship where she leads the education programming and its initiatives. She is a social entrepreneur who has been working tirelessly for over 10 years in the nonprofit sector to ensure more people have access to quality education. Danila holds a B.A in Business Management and a master's degree in Teaching and Nonprofit Management. She is a Professor at the University of Buenos Aires, an international speaker and facilitator and has managed and led programs with social impact in Latin America, U.S., Europe and Asia. She also received scholarships to study abroad in Finland, China and the United States.
Glenn Verburg is a business intelligence Build Fellow at Open Avenues, where he works with students leading projects in business intelligence. Glenn is a Senior Vice President at Sunstate Equipment Rental, where he focuses on the operations of the company. Sunstate is a rental company specialized in construction equipment and his role is to manage the fleet (strategy, procurement, maintenance and sales) as well as other operational departments such as indirect procurement, SHEQ, pricing. Glenn has over 20 years of experience in the business intelligence field. Glenn started his career at Ernst & Young Accountants where he worked as an auditor for six years. After his period with Ernst & Young he joined the Riwal Group which is an European rental company specialized in Access Equipment. The first 3 years he was part of the finance team after which he switched to the operations department to eventually become the COO of the Riwal Group. In 2024 Riwal was acquired by Boels which is the number 2 rental company in Europe where he become the Director of Fleet for the entire Boels Group. He holds an Executive MBA degree at the Nyenrode Business University and Bachelor in Science of Accountancy. A fun fact about Glenn is that he used to be a co-founder of a Boardgame company which had a successful launch of the game via Kickstarter.
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