Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis, your host and Chief Monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general.

Let's get to it.

In this episode, member D. Sika shares his path starting out as a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch

back in 2006 to transitioning twice internally with a critical mentor connection.

Learn how he pivoted to Visa, got promoted to director,

and eventually helped co-found his own fintech venture capital fund.

He also shares one piece of advice he gives to younger folk graduating today

to build meaningful connections.

Enjoy. All right. David, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Oasis podcast.

My pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

It'd be great if you could give the listeners a short bio.

Yeah, so my name is David Sika. I'm a partner. It'd be great if you could give the listeners a short bio.

Yeah, so my name is David Seca.

I'm a partner at Nica Partners, which is a fintech-focused firm here in New York City.

We're currently investing out of our third fund.

My background is I started my career at Merrill Lynch in 2006, actually into a financial advisor training program, and then broke into an investment banking

analyst class where I worked on CMBS origination and securitization.

Spent some time briefly in emerging market equity research sales covering Russia, Middle East Africa,

and then in 2008 met the guy that was taking visa public, Hans Morris, and was joining his president,

and I moved to go work for visa in San Francisco.

And at that point, really got interested in what was happening in the payment space.

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