In 1981, Mike Bloomberg was 39 years old when the only company he had ever worked for told him he was finished…

In 1981, Mike Bloomberg was 39 years old when the only company he had ever worked for told him he was finished. For 15 years, Bloomberg had built his career at Salomon Brothers, then one of the most powerful firms on Wall Street. He had risen from counting securities in the back office to becoming a general partner. He ran equity trading, later oversaw computer systems, and pushed the firm to use technology more aggressively. Then Salomon was sold to Phibro. Bloomberg was one of a small group of partners who were not invited to stay. He later admitted that he was devastated. In fact, he wrote that if the firm had offered him almost any other job, he would have taken it. He walked away with roughly $10 million from cashing out his partnership stake. Most people would have protected the money. But Bloomberg put it at risk. He had seen something during his years on the trading floor that others had missed. Wall Street had enormous amounts of information, but much of it was slow, fragmented, and difficult to use. Bloomberg believed traders would pay for a system that could deliver market data, analytics, and calculations directly to their desks in a useful format. He invested $300,000, rented a one room office, and brought in three former Salomon colleagues. The company was called Innovative Market Systems. Then came the moment that changed everything. Bloomberg pitched Merrill Lynch on a system that could give traders instant analytics, yield curves, portfolio calculations, and market information. Merrill said it could build something similar itself. Bloomberg made them an offer: give him six months to prove it. If the system did not work, they did not have to buy it. He invested millions of his own money in the attempt. And it worked. Merrill Lynch ordered 20 terminals and later invested $30 million for a 30 percent stake in the company. Innovative Market Systems eventually became Bloomberg. The man who had been pushed out of Wall Street ended up building one of the pieces of infrastructure Wall Street could barely function without. The lesson is bigger than persistence: Sometimes the worst thing that happens to your career is the best thing that happens to your life. Bloomberg did not choose to leave Salomon. But being forced out gave him something comfort rarely gives you: a reason to build something bigger. #finexecutive