Has Jan Sramek quit Goldman for entrepreneurship?
Remember Jan Sramek, wunderkind extraordinaire, deemed one of the world's top three traders under 30? He may have left Goldman Sachs to take up the life of an entrepreneur.
According an update on his Facebook page (yes, yes, all very tabloid) Sramek has handed in his notice at Goldman, where he's worked for nearly two years, latterly as an emerging markets FX trader:
"Today, I resigned from GS. Taking the gamble. Going to build my own company or fail trying. 98% excitement, 2% fear. Or the other way round? Can't tell."
Unfortunately, despite our attempts to contact him, Sramek didn't return requests for comment. Goldman also declined to comment. We understand, however, that he intends to set up his own trading shop. At this stage, we have no further details.
If true, it suggests that even within the elitist halls of Goldman Sachs, perhaps banking just wasn't challenging enough for Sramek.
This is, after all, the man with 10 As and three distinctions at A-level, who found attending lectures at LSE "too slowly paced", ran four start-up businesses at university and still found time to become an "Olympic hope" in handball and co-author the philosophic guide to business success 'Racing Towards Excellence'.
All this before the tender age of 24.
This could be because has plenty of time on his hands due to his reported five hours sleep a night, but it may be just that he finds entrepreneurship more fulfilling.
His previous start-ups include Nicube (now sold), CrewDates and AlphaParties and now this new venture. Sramek has previously named Peter Thiel as a role model, who he described as "lateral thinker, hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, intellectual, philanthropist".
There is, of course, no shortage of people who have broken the shackles of full-time employment in banking to go it alone, and some of these have come from Goldman Sachs.
Take Teresa Clarke, former managing director at Goldman who now runs Africa.com, who said she works "as hard, if not harder than my Goldman days".
Then there's Antonio Garcia-Martinez, a former quant at Goldman who left to head tech start-up AdGrok. His less-than-glowing review of his time at the bank suggests he has no desire to return to finance.
