Wall Street Diaries

max@wallstmastermind.com

For verified host and producer emails, sign up to view.

S4 EP2: Wall Street Success Is 50% Luck

June 24, 2026

Andrew spent over 12 years at Goldman Sachs investing the firm's own balance sheet across public equities, high-yield credit, real estate, and venture capital before leaving to found 8FIGURES, an AI native investment advisor. In this episode, Max and Andrew dig into what a cross-asset mandate really looks like from the inside, how AI is transforming the tasks that used to define entry-level finance jobs, and why retail investors are getting a fundamentally different quality of advice than ins...

S4 EP1: Black Hawk Pilot Takes Over Wall Street

June 23, 2026

Frank Van Buren flew Black Hawk helicopters on combat missions in Beirut and Central America before walking into an investment banking associate role at Wells Fargo. What happened in between? A chance conversation on a beach in Cyprus that changed everything. In this episode of Wall Street Diaries, Frank breaks down his full journey from the Army to 26 years on Wall Street, including 5 years in IB, 16 years in high-yield sales and trading, and a final chapter leading talent development for 1...

S3 EP10: AXOM Partners--The Hottest AI Investment Bank

June 19, 2026

AI isn’t replacing analysts. But it is separating the ones who adapt from the ones who don’t. Brandon Hightower is the co-founder of Axom Partners, the boutique M&A firm Forbes called Big Tech’s go-to dealmaker for AI acquisitions. In 2.5 years they’ve closed 15+ deals representing $5B in transaction value advising names like OpenAI, Salesforce, and Meta. In this episode, we get into what Big Tech is actually buying in the AI arms race, what it takes to build an investment bank from scratch...