Why I Left Capital Markets for Entrepreneurship

Before I built my first company, I worked on one of the most technically complex desks in global finance. xVA Sales and Trading at Scotiabank Capital Markets. Valuation adjustments for counterparty credit risk. The kind of work where a single miscalculation can cost millions.

People ask me why I left. The answer is simpler than they expect.

What Capital Markets Teaches You

Working in derivatives at a major Canadian bank teaches you three things that every entrepreneur needs and most never learn.

First, risk is not binary. It is a spectrum with probabilities attached to every point. Most people think in terms of safe and risky. Finance teaches you to think in terms of expected value and probability distributions. That framework changes how you evaluate every decision.

Second, systems matter more than talent. The best trader in the world loses money in a bad system. The best founder in the world fails in a bad structure. Capital markets shows you what a rigorous system looks like at scale - the controls, the documentation, the process discipline that keeps billion-dollar operations running.

Third, speed of execution is a competitive advantage that compounds. In markets, the difference between a good trade and a missed opportunity is measured in seconds. In startups, the difference between a good idea and a successful company is measured in execution speed.

Why I Left

I did not leave because I disliked capital markets. I left because I realized that my engineering background - studying Mechanical Engineering at Queen's University - had trained me to build systems from nothing. And capital markets, no matter how complex, is about optimizing within systems someone else built.

SA Capital was the first thing I built from scratch. A financial education platform, co-founded with three partners during the pandemic. It was messy, uncertain, and completely different from the controlled environment of a trading desk.

It was also the most honest work I had ever done. Every decision had immediate consequences. Every success was visible. Every failure was personal.

The Bridge Between Worlds

The skills from Scotiabank show up in everything I do at Iron Key Capital. When I evaluate a startup, I am running the same risk framework I used on the trading desk. When I look at a cap table, I see it with the same precision I applied to derivative pricing models.

Leaving capital markets was not a rejection of finance. It was an application of everything finance taught me to a context where I could build the system instead of operating within one.

That is the real reason I left. Not because capital markets was bad. Because building was better.