The episode of Pencil’s Down features Kirk Michie, founder of Candor Advisors, a boutique investment bank and transaction advisory firm. Host Fed Baradello’s conversation with Michie uncovered Kirk’s unique approach at Candor, focusing on founder-centric advisory and transaction services, all undergirded by uncompromising values. 

Their broad-ranging and engaging conversation touched on many topics, including Kirk’s path from a financial advisor to leading his own firm; taking a holistic, purpose-driven approach focused on founders’ goals and not just maximizing fees; his emphasis on integrity and persistence as core values, standing up for founders against predatory buyers, and his aim to be a “guru, guide and gladiator.”

Fed and Kirk also discussed recent trends in investment banking and opportunities for greater leverage through collaboration platforms like Finalis. Their conversation was an extraordinary manifestation of the power of storytelling. Don’t miss it!

As fellow “recovering lawyers,” Pencils Down host Fed Baradello and True North’s Ed Gehres engage in a fascinating conversation about how their deep experiences in the field of law prepared them for great productivity and success in investment banking. Sound legal training leads to clarity in execution of business strategy.

Join Fed and Ed in this episode as they delve into a wide array of issues, including the blurring line between professional services and technology, and how this development has served their respective firms—a particularly timely discussion given how crypto and AI have recently swept the economic and investment banking landscape.

Investment banker and The Silicon Valley Podcast host Shawn Flynn’s turn as a podcast guest with Pencils Down host Fed Baradello is a beautifully rendered story of how human life is relationship-based, in all its fantastic and motley diversity. We all go through the twists and turns of fate and circumstance, and Shawn’s is a story of finding opportunities in the most unlikely of places. Join him and Fed in this episode of Pencils Down, be delightfully lost in their converging stories… and then find the amazing inspiration and life lessons in both of theirs. This will surely go down as an epic episode of this podcast.