Currently a senior full stack developer with many years of commercial experience behind him, Richard Demeny last year decided to revive a business venture that he began back in his Bayes student days. Keen to scratch the entrepreneurial itch, he relaunched Canary Wharfian, a platform which provides an online finance community dedicated to investment banking and other high-finance careers. With 2000+ members to date and expert content provided by active professionals, the site is bringing top-quality, industry-ready finance and investment content to a captive audience.
How did the first version of Canary Wharfian come about?
I started it back in 2014 with two other university students, one of whom was also at Bayes. All of us were studying in the areas of finance, banking or investment. My main responsibility was the tech side of operations, with my counterparts primarily responsible for creating content. It got pretty popular at that time, but then we decided to shut it down after a year as studies had to take precedence. Inevitably, building our respective careers then became the priority after graduation. But 10 years on, here we are all firmly established in industry and very much committed to re-launching the venture, which we did a year ago.
How would you describe the aim of Canary Wharfian since its re-launch?
For the time being, it remains a side project but one driven by the interest so many people have in finance. For my part, I’ve always worked in tech but that hasn’t prevented me from appreciating and now tapping into people’s interest in finance and the need to keep informed. The idea was partly inspired by an existing US-devised online community called Wall Street Oasis. I identified a gap in the UK market for such a platform, or at least content of professional, industry-level quality. The overarching aim of the re-launched version is to provide students with all the tools and insider info they need to land highly coveted internships or graduate offers, such as HireVue and psychometric test practice.
What process have you and your business partners gone through?
Basically, we saw an opportunity. As a student, I specialised in investments but areas such as finance and economics were, by definition, of interest to me and above all potential members of the online community we decided to build together. Me and my counterparts operate as equity partners, sharing the workload of which tech is my speciality and main strength. The investment banking industry is notoriously opaque and not a lot of students appreciate what the role entails. We have also realised over time that our site is generally not used by those who already have contacts in the industry through relatives, and started to think of it as a social mobility start-up, democratising access to information and uncovering to students how this industry actually works.
How has the site evolved?
The first and current versions of Canary Wharfian are very different. Back in 2014 there was no AI, platforms in the vein of HireVue didn’t exist, and useful content such as automated video interviews had not yet been developed. The other crucial difference is that as students we didn’t have a lot of spare money to invest or a great deal of real-world experience. Now there are many more opportunities to monetize the website. We’re delving into other business lines such as developing and/or re-selling psychometric tests, which are extremely useful for people in the job market to assess their skills, and platforms that produce AI-generated CVs and cover letters. We also publish a weekly newsletter that explains the latest movements in the global financial markets in a more bite-sized format and in plain English. I remember when I was a student trying to get my head around the FT, so this has partly inspired me and my partners to present just as highbrow content but in a more accessible manner. We’re planning on devising a course that will explain the ins and outs of investment banking and trading, but that is a project for further on down the track.
Who is the target audience of Canary Wharfian?
I would say that a lot of our visitors are from minorities and/or people who don’t have as developed a professional network as the Oxbridge graduates of this world. In short, we’re reaching out to those who don’t yet have the requisite industry connections but who can top up their knowledge of and potential for working in the industry via the content we produce and publish. Of course, we are an open community and our only “conditions” are to ensure the content we share is written by actual professionals and is of genuine professional interest and use.
What memories do you have of your Bayes student days?
I studied Investment and Financial Risk Management, which was a niche degree at the time and one that not many universities or business schools were offering. If I had taken a broader subject such as Economics then my life would quite likely have taken a very different turn, so no regrets whatsoever! I found the culture at Bayes in two ways: very friendly and international (which enabled me to appreciate different points of view, but also to work on communication skills), and also quite competitive and entrepreneurial. For those who wanted to go into banking as an undergraduate, it often happened that they had to “brute-forced” their way which required a lot of effort, although the Bayes brand name is good to have on one’s CV. Furthermore, by the choice of programme. I remember taking advantage of the CitySpark scheme at the time, one that still exists to this day and that served me well with my nascent business venture 10 years ago when we first launched Canary Wharfian.
I spent the second year of the BSc in the US, at Emory University, an opportunity made entirely possible thanks to the links Bayes had nurtured with Emory. This was a really great experience, helped no end by a generous scholarship that I successfully secured!
How did your career evolve post-graduation?
Well, I didn’t go down the finance route as one might have expected given the studies I had taken. Computer science and programming were hot topics then so being skilled in them proved a major tick on the CV. My father is an electric engineer, so I suppose technical knowledge is in the genes! Investment and financial risk management involve a degree of engineering – ok, it’s not the same but let’s say that the skills are transferable. I had studied financial engineering but then morphed into software engineering thanks to my IT know-how.
What advice or recommendations would you give to students considering a similar path?
Fo anyone tempted by an entrepreneurial journey, I’d say two things based on the conversations I have had with a lot of business founders and wannabe entrepreneurs. If you are a student and you have a business idea, try it and iterate until you succeed. A lot of success actually comes down to trial and error. Of course, at some point you have to give up, but go hard at it until reaching that potential difficult decision.
Start on a small scale, invest a bit of money, don’t be too shy and network with those who can put your business on a fast-track. Make sure you remain business-smart, especially in the early stages. And talk to and surround yourself with good people from the outset, as no-one can possibly know it all. Put your ego to the side too – there is not much room for it. Being motivated and smart alone won’t guarantee you success. You can gem up by reading a hundred books on the area that you want to launch a business in, but the real business world is so much different. So get out there, talk to people and remember: failures are something to learn from.
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