Mike Burgmaier: From Children’s Advocacy to Natural Products Investment Banking

Too many long water cooler conversations. I just wanted to get sh*t done." Dave's guest, Mike Burgmaier was given significant responsibility at a young age to lead a lot of projects, and learned how to bring people together. He found that at non-profits, you can be given work to do when organizations lack resources and can't pay much; he found they focused on trying to find younger talented people and then “put them to the fire” and see where they can go.

Later at business school, he found a third of his peers went into investment banking or private equity, a third went into consulting, and then a third other. He had no desire for banking or venture capital back then. Ironically, he later became a VC and now owns an investment bank. At business school he thought he’d try consulting: work with companies and help solve problems. He liked what he saw from Bain & Company when they came to recruit and gave their pitch on who they were. He put all his chips in on trying to get a job there and “fortunately, it worked out somehow”. Listen to the rest of his story in this episode of The H Spot.