Scott Kapnick
Scott Kapnick
Background:
Worked at Goldman Sachs for 20 years
Launched GS in Germany after the fall of the Berlin wall
Became the co-head of the Global Investment Bank at GS
Co-CEO of GS International
Now the CEO of HPS Investment Partners
HPS currently has $91B under assets
Notes from the video:
“Remember who you’re working with, you never know who is going to help you.”
How he positioned his firm to be profitable during the rising costs right now: The private equity market has tripled over the last couple of years and it will continue to double or triple over the future. The reason behind this is that borrowers want certainty in their returns. They are taking advantage of this by buying the biggest deals possible.
What I dislike about him and learned from the video:
In my opinion, he doesn’t have the qualities of a leader the way he should and watching him talk mostly feels like it’s your school teacher speaking. If this was the first CEO interview I had watched, I would’ve never realized this but after hearing other people speak and comparing it to Scott Kapnick, I now realize how important your way of talking is.
One reason behind this is that he only gives generic answers. For example, when he was asked what should people who invest focus on the most over the next decade, he said globalization and how natural growth is the only way markets grow and not by the government funding it. He never explained why based on his own experience globalization is important. That’s what I also just realized about the previous CEOs I’ve watched videos on. The answers that they give can’t be found anywhere else such as Google and that’s one of the main reasons why people become interested in continuing to listen to them. Scott Kapnick on the other hand only gave textbook answers. One way of explaining this would be like asking a question about the stock markets to your economy teacher compared to Jamie Dimone. Although both of the answers are going to be correct, the one given by Jamie will be much more different and can’t be obtained anywhere else.
From this, I learned that when somebody asks me a question, I should always try to give as much of my own answer and experience as I can z as compared to explaining an answer that can already be found on Google. I always thought that giving an exact textbook explanation to something would make you sound smarter but now that I see it’s the opposite. Any person can memorize a simple answer that can be found anywhere. What sets you apart from everyone else is how unique your answer is and how you can say that you have implemented it in a way that hasn’t been talked about before.
Another reason why I believe he doesn’t have a leadership personality is that when he finished answering the question, he would stop speaking and wait for the interviewer to lead the conversation. This also goes back to him giving generalized answers and nothing based on his own experience. What I saw from the other CEOs was that they had so much explaining to give based on their experiences that they could never finish talking and the interviewer had to stop them. At the same time, the more they explained, the more questions came up about their answers and experiences so they would keep talking and answering themselves and coming up with new topics on their own.
The way he talks:
Smiles a lot during his conversation
Looks and speaks very friendly
Only makes eye contact with the interviewer
I've realized that every CEO I have heard speak has a friendly personality. I don’t know if they are only like this in front of the camera or not but none of them sound arrogant and they are always nice. This is a very important trait to have as it’s the first impression you’re giving to other people and most people only decide if they like you or not within the first few seconds of meeting you.