#MeetTheTeam Monday
Szymon Brodziak has an academic background in law with a special focus on theory and philosophy of law as well as in corporate finance that he studied at Columbia University and Cracow University of Economics. His professional experience in investment banking includes companies such as Vienna Capital Partners, Rothschild & Co, and Santander where, apart from short stints in asset management and consulting, Szymon would specialize in M&A advisory within the TMT sector.
Szymon, hi! Having such an impressive experience, please tell us first what’s your role at Market One Capital?
The official name of the position is Analyst, but my responsibilities include deal sourcing, initial meetings with the founders, market research and building sector investment theses, supporting the ongoing investment processes.
Those are quite a lot of responsibilities. Are you rather in a “handwritten task list” team or do you prefer task management apps?
Hands down a digital to-do list guy here — I’m not too meticulous and ordered by nature, so implementing some kind of time/task management system into my workflows was an essential step and a real game changer. I use simple productivity hacks such as a to-do list, calendar time blocking or setting a daily highlight on a day-to-day basis, but lately I’ve also started to explore the idea of building the so-called “second brain” as a methodology for saving and being systematically reminded of the most important ideas, insights and inspirations I come across. My personal one is still a long way from being done, but the inspiration for it was actually a Notion knowledge database that we’re developing for internal use here at MOC.
Since you mentioned you’re rather a digital guy, I’m sure there are some technological gadgets that have changed your life and ever since you find them essential, am I right?
Airpods Pro — for some reason the sole detail of dropping the wire from the headphones has significantly influenced the way (and the amount) in which I consume music and podcasts. Nowadays you’ll rarely find me without those two white plugs in my ears, be it during the morning commute, while working at my desk or at the gym.
Is then gym workout your favourite physical activity?
Definitely not! For me, it’s gotta be all things martial arts — I started training Kyokushin Karate back in elementary school, then switched to Muay Thai around college and lately got hooked on BJJ. I’ve even managed to spend a few months of my life training Thai boxing in Thailand, which turned out to be quite a formative experience for me in terms of how I approach my training routines and think about sparrings. My favourite thing about martial arts is how well they work in regards to developing one’s general physical shape while keeping you grounded by humbling you each time you step on the mat.
Having favourite sport, let me ask whether you have any favourite subject or area of study?
I think it’d have to be philosophy, in all of its different shapes and flavors. I got an initial grasp of it by reading Jostein Gaarder’s “Sophie’s World” as a kid, continued to explore different ideas within the space throughout middle and high school and then managed to get some more formal education at Jagiellonian University and Columbia (with the former being focused more on the philosophy of law, bioethics and political philosophy and the latter on the analytic philosophy of mind and language). I believe that getting even a basic philosophical training equips one with a broad set of tools and concepts that can enable us to think in terms of first principles and look for more unconventional, out-of-the-box solutions to the problems we face.
Would you say it’s a quality of people that you like to work with?
Without a doubt! I also like to cooperate with people who are ambitious, open-minded and constantly curious of the world around them, value meritocracy and make data- and logic-driven decisions.
