The View from the office 

I met up with Sarah Yango O’Brien, a marketing manager at FactSet, at Pershing Square, an iconic restaurant tucked beneath the overpass just south of Grand Central Station. 

This is the place you go when you are meeting anyone arriving or departing the city on the train to Westchester. It’s always easy to get a seat.

Sarah had the banana pancakes. She asked if I was going to virtue signal by ordering the yogurt granola parfait. I was not. I got the scrambled eggs with bacon and rye toast.

Sarah manages product marketing for portfolio managers, traders, and research analysts on the buy-side. Previously, she worked in sales handling the educational market.

We worked together at Bloomberg about a decade ago. She had volunteered to take on a trial sales role in a group I was running that was publishing two dozen newsletters.

The newsletters – which I had overseen as it grew into a group of about 40 employees – didn’t survive. But our friendship did.

Sarah has a unique perspective on the financial data business because of her combination of experiences.

She’s probably the only person in the world who has a) worked at the two major financial platforms, Bloomberg and Factset b) worked out of both New York and San Francisco and c) worked in both sales and marketing.

We talked a bit about my theory of how the events business is being transformed by new entrants who are focused on making them more fun.

You can reach Sarah via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro.