Jenny Just, co-founder and managing partner of Chicago-based PEAK6 Investments, shared lessons from her career journey and philosophies on leadership at BizTimes’ annual Women in Business Symposium last week. The Brookfield native and self-made billionaire co-founded PEAK6 in 1997 as a proprietary options trading firm and has since led its evolution into a multibillion-dollar fintech
Jenny Just, co-founder and managing partner of Chicago-based PEAK6 Investments, shared lessons from her career journey and philosophies on leadership at BizTimes' annual Women in Business Symposium last week.
The Brookfield native and self-made billionaire co-founded PEAK6 in 1997 as a proprietary options trading firm and has since led its evolution into a multibillion-dollar fintech empire with 2,000-plus employees and eight subsidiary companies. Chief among them is Apex Fintech Solutions, the back-end trading and technology provider for now more than 50% of the online trading platforms on the market, including SoFi, Ally, Public, Stash and formerly Robinhood. In 2020, Just co-founded Poker Power with her daughter, Juliette. Power Poker is an app designed to teach women the game of poker and improve their decision-making skills.
[caption id="attachment_595997" align="alignleft" width="400"] The keynote discussion featured Chicago fintech exec Jenny Just (right) and was moderated by U.S. Bank SVP Nina Johnson.[/caption]
Click here to check out Just's keynote conversation with moderator Nina Johnson, senior vice president, Wisconsin branch banking market leader at U.S. Bank.
Ahead of the event, Just shared insights on her career journey and how she’s blazed a trail for other women. We previously ran a shortened version of that Q&A. The full version is below:
BizTimes: Can you share more about your experience growing up in Brookfield? Are you still connected to family and friends in the Milwaukee area?
Just: “Growing up in Brookfield was a wonderful Midwest childhood, with two hard working parents and four brothers. This instilled in me a strong work ethic, the ability to compete and a passion for trying to make things better every day.
“I went to Brookfield Elementary, Pilgrim Park Middle School and Brookfield Central High School. The most memorable part of my childhood is and always has been the sisters I never had. The 13 ‘Gidgets’ came together in high school but many of us knew each other from before grade school. Many of the women still live in the area as well as their families and mine. We are back together often and are truly Packer fans and cheeseheads through and through.”
What were some of the early career decisions that helped set you on the path to become the business leader you are today?
“My earliest career decision was that I was determined to live and work in Chicago. Growing up in Wisconsin, Chicago was ‘the big city.’ I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I interviewed in different fields. One of the companies I interviewed at was O’Connor & Associates, and honestly the beer in the fridge (Wisconsin girl!) and the Haagen-Dazs ice cream intrigued me. So, I took the job at O’Connor, started as an options trader on the Chicago Board Options Exchange and it has had the most profound impact on my career and life. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into and didn’t know anything about the trading floor or what my job would be like.
“O’Connor was one of the few premiere options trading firms in the world. The trading floor was like a sporting event, a physical and mental exercise every day, and I was one of only a handful of women there. Since I grew up with four brothers, stepping into a male dominated industry really didn’t faze me, so that definitely helped.
“I like to say that I was really good at saying ‘yes’, and that allowed me to do a lot of things early in my career that I would not have otherwise. Some I loved and thrived at, other experiences I hated, but I learned a lot very early on.”
Who have been some of your mentors as you’ve advanced in your career and how have they supported you?
“I have two mentors who made an indelible impact on my life. Firstly, my father, who taught me incredibly valuable lessons. He taught me that ‘Every day is a work day’ and ‘don’t let anybody else manage your checkbook’ as well as ‘it’s not just about making money, but saving money and knowing your money.’
“Another mentor is the legendary Clay Struve, one of the best risk managers in the world, who really took me under his wing. I first got to work with Clay in 1992 when there was the catastrophic Chicago Flood which saw the whole financial district shut down. The two of us moved into the building behind us, because they had a generator and then worked late into the night, with a sliver of light, quickly rebuilding our positions by hand. Clay is one of the smartest people that has ever existed in options, and I learned invaluable lessons from him.”
Looking back at your decision to leave O’Connor and Associates and launch PEAK6, what led you to ultimately take the leap into entrepreneurship?
“Launching PEAK6 was really about circumstances. In my mid 20s, I had started the OTC Equity Derivatives desk with Matt Hulsizer at O’Connor, which was incredibly successful. But when we were faced with a merger and being told we were going to have to move to Connecticut, neither of us wanted to and we said to each other, ‘We can do this ourselves,’ and remained in Chicago. So, in 1997, Matt and I, with $1.6 million in startup capital, created PEAK6 with the goal of using technology to do the same thing that was happening on the exchange floor. We were one of the very first to do that. And the world decided we were smart. Today, we’ve been around for 27 years.
“What started as a proprietary options trading company – if you're not familiar with it means, we are investing and managing a portfolio in some very complex financial assets that move very quickly, using technology and modeling to predict the future as best we can – has grown into a fintech powerhouse.
“We’re a company of companies, 2,000-plus people, with multiple operating companies. What we are probably most famous for today is being the backend technology to Robinhood for its first six years and now more than 50% of all the other online broker-dealers (i.e. SOFI, Ally, Public, Stash, etc). This company, Apex Fintech Solutions, has over 20 million end customers and $160 billion in assets under custody.”
You’ve grown PEAK6 amidst an incredibly transformative period for technology and how it’s utilized for stock trading and investing. How has the ever-changing technological landscape and shift to digital shaped PEAK6’s trajectory as what’s now an umbrella of fintech companies?
“We are always on the lookout for companies that are shaping the future of fintech. To do this, we focus on how technology can deliver better user experiences. A great example is a new product we are working on bringing to the world, stock rewards. Through our APIs, a publicly traded retail brand could reward its customers with shares of its stock, and not just points. This is just an example of how digital experiences can pull more people into the world of investing and trading. These innovations, made possible through technology, are why PEAK6 continues to grow its stable of fintechs.”
What are the greatest challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for PEAK6 as fintech continues to evolve and expand?
“The greatest opportunity is continuing to harness technology to help empower everyone worldwide to take more control over their investing and financial journeys. The challenge is ensuring we continue to innovate as people’s needs expand and shift. In this increasingly digital world, everyone who serves an end investor is under a lot of pressure – whether you’re a fintech or a financial advisor. There’s going to need to be a major evolution in the industry to tap into the power of cloud-based infrastructure and real-time data, all with the end goal of taking any and all friction out of the investing experience.
"Apex recently released a revolutionary platform, called Ascend, that enables financial advisors to run their investing operations in a way that can deliver better, more digital experiences for their clients, making investing easier and more accessible. For example, a customer at a large financial institution might have to wait hours, days or even weeks to open an account. Apex dramatically simplifies this account opening, and now we’re doing this for RIAs (registered investment advisors), not just fintechs.”
What’s been the most valuable lesson from building a career and business in a traditionally male-dominated field?
“One of the most valuable lessons I have learned is not to shy away from failures and to get comfortable with failure. At PEAK6, we’ve started, or bought and turned around, more than 15 companies. More than half of those were failures. We also lose money on 46% of our trades. The only way I ever got comfortable with failing is by doing it a lot. You shouldn’t be afraid of having ups and downs, but rather you should be afraid of NOT having ups and downs. That mentality has taught me how to lean on innovation and intuition to build – and more importantly, rebuild – as needed.”
What have you done to pave the way for other women to advance at PEAK6 and in the broader fintech industry?
“It is a passion of mine to see other women grow in this industry as well as outside of the industry. Paving the road for more women in finance, we created programs to help women advance their careers in trading, fintech and technology. We founded the Women’s Trading Experience and Women’s Technology Experience programs in order to create a path for more women in fintech as currently only 14% of the 25,000 money managers worldwide are female. I’m proud to say we have 36% women capital allocators. It took us six years and two failed attempts to get there, but we’re enormously proud to be number one in our industry. Nobody has a higher percentage of women actually making decisions, hitting the button and making the trade.
“Outside of the finance industry, I wanted to find something tangible that I could bring to more women and help give them the opportunity to practice taking risks and make decisions at the money table, and that's where Poker Power comes in. Poker Power is a company I started with my daughter, Juliette Hulsizer, led by women for women with the goal of teaching one million women how to play the game – the game of poker and the game of life. Poker teaches courage. It teaches risk-taking, strategy and capital allocation. It teaches you how to win, how to read people, how to bounce back from a loss. Poker is an incredible toolbox for life, career and even social relationships.”
[caption id="attachment_595347" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Jenny Just, co-founder and managing partner of PEAK6 Investments[/caption]
What’s the story behind Poker Power? How did you and Juliette come up with the idea? How many women has it impacted since its launch?
“It was spring of 2019 and my daughter was 14 at the time. We’d come home from her tennis match – that she had lost – and her father was frustrated. Since he didn’t want to show her his frustration, he said to me something strange: ‘She might as well be hitting against a wall, she may as well be hitting with her teacher. She doesn't realize she is playing against someone who is thinking on the other side of the net. She needs to learn poker.’ The funny thing was that neither of us were poker players; at first, I ignored it but two weeks later the question popped back into my head, ‘Should I teach my 14-year-old daughter how to play poker?’ And what really bothered me was that I was asking myself that question, but I wouldn’t have asked it about my three sons (and it turns out they already somehow learned how to play).
“So what did the entrepreneur in me do? I started an experiment. I got my daughter and a group of her friends and moms together, found a local public school teacher who knew how to teach poker and started a series of lessons. And what happened next was magical: From lesson one to lesson four, the skies opened up. At first, the girls were timid, they asked each other for help, if someone lost their chips they said, ‘you can have my chips.’ But then by lesson four, they were sitting up tall, peaking at their cards, and NO ONE was taking their chips.
“I had no intention of starting another company - I already had six under the PEAK6 umbrella. But once I saw what it could do for girls, and what it could even do for women in the middle or later in their careers, I couldn’t leave this alone. Poker aside, if you had told me there was something I could do for women and girls that would activate life, business and money skills, I would have done it. I've been looking for that for years, so I had no choice but to pursue it."
What’s been Poker Power’s impact so far?
“To date, Poker Power has worked with over 290 organizations in 40 countries. But one of the most impactful initiatives Poker Power has is its partnership with the Global Give Back Circle. Global Give Back Circle is a nonprofit organization that provides Kenya’s largest gender-based mentorship, education and employment readiness program that has scaled to Rwanda, South Africa, China, Uganda, Ghana and India, impacting over 4,600 once-at-risk girls. For the past two years, Global Give Back Circle has partnered with Poker Power to deliver poker lessons at its leadership development programming. Poker has been proven to equip these young women with confidence, leadership abilities and strategic decision-making skills.”
How was the experience launching a company with your daughter?
“Launching Poker Power with Juliette was eventful to say the least! As a middle schooler, Juliette was at a critical juncture of her teen years and all the reasons we are doing Poker Power were exactly for where she was at in her life. It proved how important what we were doing truly could be. We even did a TedX talk together: When you watch you will see how well poker worked building her confidence! We had never worked together before then, but it is incredibly rewarding to build something with your children and I hope to be able to do so with all my kids in the future.”
What’s the greatest challenge you’ve faced in your career so far and how did you overcome it? What’s been most rewarding?
“One of the greatest challenges, actually changed the trajectory of our company. In 2012, the SEC called us, which in itself is incredibly rare and asked us to take over the then-failing company Penson, a clearing house that we used for our company Optionshouse. They had announced fraud and needed someone to take it over and bring $70 million to save it. Matt and I had clearing experience as O’Connor was a self-clearing firm, but we never dreamed of owning a clearing firm. But 13 days later, we took the risk and went from clients to owners. When we got in there, we had to make tough choices. We drew the line of what kinds of risk we would accept when dealing with potential partners. And after getting rid of more than 65% of the customers, we had to go to court with remaining customers to enforce our contracts. We played fair, but we played to win.
“To put it mildly, we didn’t make everyone happy. But because of the choices we made, that company, now called Apex Fintech Solutions, is today the back-end technology used by more than 20 million customers. It was the back end for the start of the fintech revolution and continues to be at the forefront of democratizing investing for people all over the world. What we learned from this challenge was to go through the risk rather than going around the risk. We recognized our skills building other companies could be very helpful in distressed situations, and we realized that it was all about the people – the great people we were so fortunate to have on our team building all of our different businesses."
What’s your favorite way to spend time outside of work?
“I adore spending time with my family. I have four children – three sons and a daughter – and with the kids off at college and starting their careers, technically we are empty nesters, so having everyone together is a rarity but also incredibly important and the most cherished time for Matt and I.”
