One Year of Buyside Hub

Welcome back!

January 16th, 2026 marks the one-year anniversary of the launch of Buyside Hub! We have a great annual compensation survey dropping in March, but the database is updated with new submissions every day.

Buyside Hub is the Company I founded a year ago to create 1) the best compensation analytics on Wall Street 2) A deep dive into how the culture actually is at Buyside and Sell-side firms, and 3) a new way to recruit jobs in an extremely fast and tech-enabled fashion.

Beyond that, we also aggregate actual interview questions that people got in their interviews.

This is an extremely mission-driven company for me. I spent way too much of my career thinking “fuck, dude are we about to do layoffs, an outsourcing, or get sold for parts?”. With the industry potentially consolidating and some funds on their last real fund, I think it’s extremely important that folks get a clear look into what’s going on at the firms they might start working for. Additionally, some firms have great culture, “work hard, play hard” mentalities, and high compensation that will set you up for life. But some firms are really sweaty, and in some instances a lot of people find themselves underpaid. Distinguishing between the good firms and the firms that need to change their culture are crucial, and accountability is paramount.

There’s kinda a software engineer version of Buyside Hub, so it’s paramount that there’s a platform for finance professionals. And if you’re in finance and not on the platform, there’s a serious opportunity cost. Not being on Buyside Hub may cost you $25k or $50k in compensation, if not even more for senior roles.

Additionally, while our name is “Buyside” Hub, we ultimately have become much more than just a place for the Buyside. We are LOADED with IB and Sell-Side comp data. Given how many people work at Banks across the U.S., you should expect to see very detailed banking compensation data, as well as very strong and vast insights about firms.

Over the past year, we have had remarkable growth and are zoned in on delivering. Like I said in the year-end newsletter, the focus for 2026 is on “Value” so a lot of my time over the next several months is spent on enhancing the product, as opposed to getting stretched adding new features.

To this day, I have zero clue why more “creators” haven’t spent more time creating actual businesses. I had figured that when I launched this that a few of the comparable Finance Meme pages would realize that they need to create something tangible, but it doesn’t seem like that’s been something they’ve gone after.

I generally believe a lot of the creators online are screwed. Ad sales to Instagram and TikTok folks change with relevance, and the shelf-life is generally 2-3 years. Additionally, with very low barriers to entry, competing on Instagram advertising sales doesn’t make a ton of sense. Beyond the ad sales component, a lot of creator oriented content is tied towards educational materials that aren’t going to be able to match the price of a ChatGPT or Gemini subscription. I’ve been building towards content that is everchanging and written by practitioners, but a lot of educational modules aren’t going to be in good shape as learning paywalls come crashing down. My job as an Executive now is to try to imagine what the world looks like 2-3 years from now and operate in advance of that.

Still, one of the more impressive monetization strategies I see from online creators are the Instagram girlies who post “Where did you get that outfit!?!?” and then post an affiliated link to the outfit on their IG stories. That is extremely seamless and you’ll start noticing it now that I’ve called it out.

But look, back to Buyside Hub.

To me, Buyside Hub was the most no-brainer opportunity out there. Even as I overlook the graveyard of similar predecessors that tried the same thing. But what’s been nice is that a lot of people are scratching their head at this. Like I said in the year-end newsletter, that’s exactly what I want!

There are natural difficulties though. It is much harder to get people to sign up for an application or software than to click the follow button on Instagram or X.

I’m also non-technical, so figuring out how to make technical fixes and resolve small bugs is something I wasn’t necessarily used to. But I have a deep devotion towards ensuring satisfaction on the platform, so please reach out to our contact email at anytime.

Top-line growth has been really solid, and we changed our access guidance last month to add longer access to sell-side folks. Basically, our guidance gives access to people who are more detailed in their answers around firm culture. We really want to flesh out how firms are treating people and what it’s like working there to give people honest and frank views about potential future employers. More detailed answers = longer access.

While we still approve a lot of Buyside folks for 12 months of access, we also moved back from the automatic 12 months expectation for Buyside folks, with a lot of Buyside folks now getting 6-9 months depending on individual factors weighted by the quality of their answers & compensation.

Separately from extending out access, we wanted to make the cost of non-contribution higher, so I doubled annual pricing and got significantly more vocal in telling people, “Hey we know your submission is wrong, or your submission is incomplete, please resubmit” so we can ensure that folks are either following the contribution process correctly or are signing up for a paid plan.

This platform structurally snowballs in value year after year and submission after submission, so ultimately I expect that we can execute for folks, but I also expect this will start to become a big part of my monthly revenue very soon and presuming my largest revenue stream in 2027.

For everyone who is already a user, I’ve been working aggressively to get users similar to you onto the platform. That way, we can enhance the analytics value prop about what you deserve to be paid. Additionally, the user growth allows us to be more attractive to firms that are conducting searches & hiring. Please know I’m hustling to make this a great product for you guys.

As I discussed, we’re more than just a “Buyside” Hub. Here’s the industries where we have the most datapoints:

1. Investment Banking

2. Private Equity

3. Private Credit

4. Asset Management

5. Hedge Funds

Here are the top 5 Buyside and Sell-side firms that we cover on the platform:

Buyside:

1. Blackstone

2. BlackRock

3. KKR

4. Ares

5. HPS

Sell-Side:

1. Goldman Sachs

2. JP Morgan

3. Bank of America

4. Citi

5. Morgan Stanley

The burden of hiring is far too high when Tech and the Internet are a no-brainer way to disintermediate:

As roles start kicking off over the coming months, we’ve added thousands of candidates with Investment Banking, PE, and Credit backgrounds, and have additionally added students at some of the top U,S. universities. Coupled with the reach of 100k+ newsletter subscribers, and vast social media reach, the ability to reach the right pool of candidates from both a narrow and broad standpoint is dramatically effective. Reach out to [email protected] to explore what we can do for you.

It’s time to shift your hiring budgets to Subscription Revenue:

When I look at what Finance companies are going to spend budget on, I look towards 1) productivity-based solutions 2) Data providers, 3) Time Savings, and 4) Money Savings. I believe Buyside Hub is a mix of 2, 3, and 4.

With Buyside Hub, I have been ridiculously methodical about getting the right people on the platform, with a significant emphasis on top candidates and high-performing Buyside professionals.

Please reach out to [email protected] to get started.

Here’s to an amazing Comp Report that will drop in March and to another amazing year!

Best,

Harry

In Other News:

• Upgrade to HYH Premium: Get access to my recruiting materials, restructuring writeups, and more. Join Hundreds of Premium readers:

• Come hang out on South Beach: I’m spending part of this winter in Miami. If you’re in town for the JP Morgan Leveraged Finance Conference on Sunday, March 1st, lmk. Small group and generally for credit professionals but email for potential access.