During his freshman year, Jason Teo interned at Tangible Brand Consultants. He then interned at Bank of America Merrill Lynch as a Summer Analyst in Operations and spent another summer at Aberdeen Asset Management. In his final year in business school, he interned as a Summer Analyst at Goldman Sachs in Equities Sales and Macro-FX Sales. Goldman Sachs then offered him a full time role in Cross-Asset Structured Sales and this was where he worked from 2014 to April 2019. While at Goldman Sachs, he continued his passion for gaming and ran a gaming blog.
Upon hitting 30, he decided to pursue his passion, and left his job at Goldman Sachs to become a Manager at Garena, focusing on regional strategy and production. Earlier this year, he became Head of Business Development at ONE Esports.
Q: Could you share a bit about yourself ?
I graduated in 2014 and joined Goldman Sachs in June that year in structured solutions. This tied in nicely with my education at NUS, where I took a lot of quantitative finance modules. The 5 years I spent there turned out to be a defining period of my life. What I learnt in my first 2 years was very different from what I was taught in school. Simply put, what I learnt in Business School was a prerequisite to understand what goes on in the markets. However, it was insufficient. You can only truly understand while you are on the job. In the later years, you will then learn some business development knowledge.
When I first joined Goldman Sachs, I made a promise to myself: to make it through my time there and learn everything I can about fixed income markets. At the end of 5 years, I decided that I wanted to pursue my passion. It was not the case where banking was not enjoyable – my colleagues and bosses are still some of my closest friends. I was fortunate to be in a nurturing environment where my colleagues understood my move and supported me every step of the way. The transition was a move purely out of passion, as video games are things that are very close to my heart.
When I was 2, I was diagnosed with cancer in my left eye and had to replace it with a prosthetic eye. As a result, I was very conscientious of my looks, which resulted in problems fitting in and socialising in school. Video games turned out to be an avenue for me to make friends.
I learnt in life and especially from working in an investment bank that no matter how severe the consequences of a mistake, there is always a way to fix the problem. The only thing that cannot be solved are regrets in life. Hence, I realised that I needed to pursue my passion. When I turned 30, I realised that there was no better time to make the switch.
Q: You had a variety of experiences in internship experience – from consulting and transaction banking to middle office work in markets and asset management. Can you tell us more?
My first internship experience was with very experienced consultants. I was very fortunate to learn from them. I have since then applied what I learnt from consulting to finance.
Then, I did operations in Merrill Lynch. There was so much work there that I thought tasks could be managed better and faster. I optimised processes in the backend for the team through VBA.
After that, I went on to Aberdeen for an internship in fund management. My belief was that to work in banking, I needed to experience the whole cycle, from back office to front office, which explains my varied internship experiences.
Ultimately, I chose front office in structured solutions sales because the people I met changed my perspective. They made me realise that I could learn a lot of soft skills from them. There was a huge difference in the way people in the sales department interacted with people, as compared to others. I believed that trading was something that can be learnt from books, but soft skills can only be learnt from the right people. It is the X-factor behind the way these people presented themselves. That was something I wanted to learn, and the reason why I chose sales.