Valery Talma — HEC 1989 — CEO at Merlyn.AI
“Hard work and resilience took me from a blank page 3 years ago to being CEO of an exciting startup today.”
You came to the Bay Area in 2018 after an accomplished international career in finance and investment banking. What made you move half a world away in your early fifties?
My family and I had been living in the Middle East since 2009 where I was working in investment banking for Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank in Dubai, then for HSBC in Saudi Arabia, and eventually for Gulf Bank in Kuwait. As they were finishing high school, our two eldest children were accepted at Stanford. We did not feel like moving back to France and always had an attraction for the US — I did my undergrad at UCLA before getting my master’s at HEC. So we decided to move to the Bay Area for yet another family adventure. We were drawn to our version of the American Dream for us and our children.
That’s awesome that your kids got to lead the way there! But what was the plan for you?
It was a completely white canvas! I had not started job hunting before getting here. Our experience in the Middle East made me confident that I would be able to navigate my new environment. I was full of energy to build something new. I was not naive though: I knew that my skillset was not so much in high demand in Silicon Valley. I needed to reinvent myself. We had obtained our Green Card before moving and had the financial freedom needed to embrace this new adventure while enjoying being close to our children.
So what did you start doing?
I got very methodical about leaving no stone unturned. I enrolled in 3 classes in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at Stanford. I joined networking organizations and attended events. I started to conventionally look for a job. I was also pursuing a personal interest: investing in start-ups. Mostly early-stage investments, as angel or in seed rounds, for projects led by founders I felt inspired by and whose vision I could relate to. In 2019, a former client from Dubai, an investment fund, hired me to invest for them in Silicon Valley startups. This felt like a great achievement after a whole year of working hard at blending into the local ecosystem and meeting hundreds of people. It was a lot of fun: I had a $500M budget and I was making investments in mid-stage fundraising rounds. But at the end of 2019, the fund decided not to carry on. This was a pivotal moment when I had to ask myself whether I wanted to stay in finance or do something completely different. In parallel, I had personally invested in the seed round for a finance start-up, Merlyn.ai, that applies artificial intelligence algorithms to stock market data to identify higher returns and lower risks. This was really speaking to me. And by happenstance, they were looking to strengthen the team, so I became COO and then moved on to CEO.
Wow! That’s amazing and a great story about resilience! CEO is a pretty big deal! How was it to get this hat to fit and what surprised you the most?
After working in the Middle East, I don’t mind high-pressure environments. I grew thick skin. CEO is a new title but it boils down to any leadership role: define what is important and do what you have to do so what is important is achieved and what could negatively impact your business does not happen. That’s also a role that benefits a lot from 20 years of experience: I’ve learned how to make my way in the dark with just a flashlight in unfamiliar environments. The learning curve was really about understanding the structure of the Asset Management industry that is very different from Investment Banking. Merlyn.ai offers ETFs — which are baskets of shares and securities exchanged on the stock market — based on our proprietary algorithms. What really surprised me in the industry is the level of regulation of these products. The consequence is that you need a lot of partners to be able to put a product on the market. From idea to Wall Street, we need to work with a dozen of experts. Which makes human skills absolutely key in this industry. But the regulation remains vague in some aspects: case law does not have everything covered yet which leaves a lot of room for innovation and opportunity. And the risk-taking culture here encourages to seize these opportunities.
So you reached your American Dream?
In a way, yes. It is satisfying that hard work and resilience took me from a blank page 3 years ago to being CEO of an exciting startup today. It feels like the spirit of the pioneers and the saying labor omnia vincit are at work here. And on top of it, here in California, the powerful nature fosters this pioneer spirit and allows for space in the mind too to think out of the box.
