Prediction Held up
Billy Hult predicts Donald Trump will win the presidential election
“I think he will, and I, you know, it starts with he can, but I think it ends with he will.”
Opinion
Billy Hult: Financial markets are more resilient today than in 2008
“The markets feel better and more resilient and in sort of like in an obvious way in better shape. There's a playbook in place around sort of preserving the structure and the high functioning-ness of the market in a way that should, people should feel sort of, …”
Insight
Billy Hult: Success comes from grit and street smarts, not pedigree
“It's not about pedigree. It's not about polishedness. It's not about what school you came from and who you know. It's about old fashioned grit and resiliency and street smarts.”
Insight
Hult: Advising people to follow their passion is naive and misleading
“It's a little bit of, you can be misleading when it's sort of like, you know, just follow your passion, Harry, just do what you love. You know, life can be a little more kind of exacting and sometimes, you know, decisions you make early in your Career early in…”
Insight
Hult: Leaders shouldn't just get out of the way of great hires
“I think that there are aspects of a sort of ecosystem or a complicated company where you hire great people. And it's not that you get out of their way, but maybe you support them in a way where they feel empowered to do their job really well.”
Opinion
Billy Hult: Corporate leaders must possess an ego to succeed
“You have to, I mean, I have an ego. You have to have an ego.”
Disclosure
Tradeweb CEO Billy Hult admits only 50% of his people bets succeed
“I was gonna say 50. You know, and I, and I'm like, man, like if I'm filling out like a survey or a form and I'm listing my strengths, I'd like, oh, like the way I think about things, the way I get to know people like that, the kind of antenna thing that we wer…”
Insight
Hult rejects 'fire fast' leadership advice on failed hiring bets
“As someone was telling me recently, you know, the first time a CEO feels like, you know, something hasn't worked out, they should act on it. Because, like, if they have that impulse with, like, you know, all of the sort of importance on the line there's a reas…”
Insight
Billy Hult: CEOs who disconnect from execution breed organizational passivity
“I try to get my kind of sleeves rolled up and my hands around execution, because I do think that's where companies kind of ultimately make their bones around like, how good are you at really ultimately executing on a game plan? And if you get yourself like too…”
Opinion
Hult: Jamie Dimon sets the benchmark for ego-free client engagement
“He's amazing with clients. Like you talk about a guy that can kind of flip the switch from, you know, he's the most well-regarded esteemed person in a lot of ways at that event. He makes it all about his engagement with You know, with JP Morgan's clients, his …”
Insight
Billy Hult: CEOs must take full ownership of high-stakes decisions
“If I feel like it's a decision that ultimately there's a tremendous amount at stake around and there's going to be a fall guy on the decision. If it doesn't wind up working out, I will make sure to make an obvious point that it's mine. Because I don't think yo…”
Insight
Hult: B2B infrastructure can flourish without demanding the biggest brand presence
“And so we've been pretty smart around understanding, like there's a totem pole. There's always been a totem pole. Understand where you sort of like live in that totem pole, and we don't always have to be the sort of like biggest ego in the room. We don't alway…”
Disclosure
Billy Hult insisted on co-branding Tradeweb's leadership as a two-person partnership
“This can't be Coldplay where, like, you know, everyone knows, like, Chris Martin and, like, no one else. Like, this has to be, you know, a band where it, you know, at least there's two of us.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hult: Bear Stearns succeeded by prioritizing grit and street smarts over pedigree
“When I grew up like in the bond trading world where, you know, Bear Stearns had like tremendous levels of respect, right? And really talented people. And they like lived in that ethos of what you're describing. Like, it's not about pedigree. It's not about pol…”
Opinion
Billy Hult: 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' is the best financial markets book
“The best book on financial markets is going to surprise you. Reread all of the financial part of Sherman McCoy in Bonfire of the Vanities. The way Tom Wolf is able to kind of get inside you know, a trading firm that was sort of modeled after Solomon brothers i…”
Insight
Billy Hult: New CEOs must quickly set boundaries to protect time
“Create boundaries quickly. So, so, so don't always entertain sort of every new relationship, which can be a concept of like a banking relationship. It can be an external relationship with a client, like, Preserve your time at a, in a very, very structured way.…”
Assertion Supported
Hult: Tradeweb built its business through organic growth, not M&A
“So my company TradeWeb has, you know, largely gotten to where we are today through a lot of like really good sort of, you know, organic investments and organic growth. Right. So we are not some company that's arrived here through lots of like M&A.”
Assertion Supported
Hult: Tradeweb is the electronic interface connecting Citadel and Goldman
“Like we're the, you know, we're the electronic interface that connects like Citadel and Goldman.”
Disclosure
Billy Hult ranks power above money, with fame a distant third
“Fame, distant third. It would be really easy to say like, you know, like money first, power second, but I think I think power is like pretty interesting.”
Insight
Billy Hult: Public CEOs spend excessive time on governance and regulation
“You wind up spending a lot of your time on corporate governance, regulation, things that you feel like are occupying more of your time than you wish they could.”
Assertion Supported
Billy Hult was inside the World Trade Center on 9/11
“My company was on the 51st floor of the North Tower. I was in the building on nine 11 that day.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Billy Hult worked as an off-track betting clerk in the South Bronx
“My first job, and it was like You know, for sure either end of high school or kind of early college, kind of one of those summer jobs, was working Harry at a place they called, like, OTBs. It was off-track betting a place where people would go in back in the e…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Billy Hult experiences nerves in board meetings outside his comfort zone
“If I was doing like CNBC, I wouldn't feel nervous. If I'm doing an earnings call, I won't feel nervous. You know, maybe that's like everything's going well. That helps. But sometimes when I'm doing a part of, and I'll wind up having a bunch of board members pr…”
