Ken Griffin's message to young people coming of age in a complicated world
Ken Griffin, the 56-year-old CEO of Citadel, is popular with young people. 85,000 of them applied for 300 internships this year at Citadel and Citadel Securities, the hedge fund and the market making platform he founded. When Griffin came to Cambridge University this week, therefore, it was unsurprising that the claret leather benches of the heavily-heated Cambridge Union were rammed and that his arrival was marked by an awed silence befitting a rock star.
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Ken came bearing a challenging message for his Cambridge fans. These are difficult times. The world is a more dangerous place. What you do matters. “A life well-lived is a life engaged with the problems the world faces. You need to look at the pressing problems the world has and intervene in ways that match your personal gifts,” he told the students.
Griffin began trading when he was at Harvard University in 1986 and founded Citadel in 1990. He said it was a different world: “I graduated at the start of an era of world peace." But it was preceded by the tangible fear of nuclear annihilation. "Until the late 1980s and early 1990s, the world was embroiled in a cold war. My mother’s house had a bomb shelter, and we were told – ‘Here’s where you’ll go in the event of a nuclear war,’" Griffin recalled. "At school, we had drills about what we should do in the event of an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile.”
“There is no doubt that this era of peacefulness has ended,” Griffin warned Cambridge.
What can young people do about it? While working for a hedge fund or a liquidity provider may not appear the obvious route to making the world a better place, Griffin is a proselytiser for the power of capitalism. "We are all people who “care deeply about humanity,”" he told the students. “China’s embrace of capitalism pulled 1 billion people out of poverty. It is one of the greatest economic accomplishments of humanity, and they did it in roughly two to three decades.”
In the West, Griffin said productivity improvements will be imperative if governments are to be able to the fund the "generous benefits" that previous generations have voted for in their retirements. "It’s not all about capitalism, but about recognising that capitalism generates the productivity that we need to improve people’s lives,” he said. The subtext is that Citadel and Citadel Securities can distribute capital in a way that fuels this creativity.
Ken wasn't there to bang the drum specifically for finance careers, though. "Don’t do something boring," he intoned, pausing on each word. “This is the time in your life to take risks, to pursue the areas in which you have a passion, and to lean into the impact you can have on the world. You don’t have a mortgage to pay, or children or parents to look after." Studying at Cambridge is not a risky decision: "Real risk begins the moment you step out this door. “
Griffin didn't define what doing a boring job entails, but jobs pursued without passion and without engaging in the crossover between world problems and personal gifts, would seemingly fall into this category.
He's an admirer of Elon Musk. He's also an admirer of the arts, despite having "zero artistic talent," himself. “In my 20s, I was more interested in software, engineering and solving math problems,” he told the students.
Griffin said he had a revelation in his late 20s when he saw the Degas sculpture, 'Little Dancer Aged 14.' He was entranced by its sublimity. “You don’t know what in life will captivate you, but once you go through that door there’s no going back,” he told the assembled young people. “When a door opens and lets you explore a different side of yourself, go through it.”
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