The wit and wisdom of David Solomon at Goldman Sachs: "I was extremely emotional"
David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, does not always seem like a laid back person. During the high stress events that are Goldman Sachs' quarterly investor calls, he can sometimes seem dry and abrupt. It turns out this is not always so. Speaking last week to students at the 2026 Wharton MBA graduation event, Solomon was warm and witty and treated his audience to an upbeat house music track created by AI.
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When he began his career back in the "prehistoric days" of the 1980s, Solomon said he had "long flowing hair" and was able to astonish clients with his "brilliance" by spending six hours researching historical stock prices in the Wall Street Journal and plotting them on graph paper. He was eager and ambitious.
He could also be volatile. "I was extremely emotional," said Solomon, recalling a time in his early 30s when he was working at Bear Stearns and a deal collapsed. It felt like a "spectacular failure," he recalled. Solomon had a mentor in the form of Richard Metrick, one of Bear Stearns' most senior investment bankers. He stormed into Metrick's office "all bent out of shape" and with his arms waving and shouted "Yes!" when Metrick asked him if he wanted to talk about the failed deal. Metrick told him to calm down and come back in. It was a lesson in self-control.
On another occasion, Solomon said he was a 29-year-old investment banker at Bear Stearns and was trying to ingratiate himself with an "impressive entrepreneur" planning to shake up Las Vegas casinos. The entrepreneur was invited for lunch at Bear Stearns but turned up two hours late and then left in a huff when he was served sandwiches. Instead of also getting into a huff himself, Solomon said he spent the next "several years" flying to Boston for hot lunches with the entrepreneur.
Seven years later, Solomon said he and the entrepreneur had developed "a deeply trusting relationship," and that the entrepreneur wanted to do a $1bn refinancing. The client duly asked Solomon at Bear Stearns to help, but said that he wanted Goldman Sachs on the deal too. Solomon could have succumbed to another huff: "I'd spent 7 years cultivating this opportunity, and now I had to share it with someone else," he recalled. He didn't get in a huff. Instead, he worked with Jon Winkelreid at Goldman Sachs on the deal and Winkelreid ended up offering Solomon a job at Goldman. Now he's the Goldman Sachs CEO.
The moral of the stories might be that if you want to get ahead in banking you need to swallow your pride, to level your emotions, not get in a huff, and keep your ego heavily in check. Solomon framed it differently: "Find strong mentors, embrace criticism, and be open to change," he instructed the students.
Solomon also said it's important to "show up when it matters" in your personal life. When his daughters were five and seven years old, he said they wanted a magician at their birthday parties. He already knew some magic tricks from his dad and spent "months" practicising a metal ring trick before appearing at their parties in a tuxedo. They still talk about the occasion 25 years later.
Solomon didn't say so explicitly, but his father - who ran a small publishing company - may have influenced his approach to managing people. He said his father never told him what to do, but always showed him a different way of looking at things. On one occasion, young Solomon was scooping ice cream at Baskin Robbins and wanted more money. When he complained about his lack of cash to his father, his father told him to get a second job. Solomon said he was too busy for that, but his father told him to "take out a calendar and write down everything I did each day." It turned out that Solomon was wasting a lot of time. Three weeks later, he was more intentional and "working a second job flipping burgers at McDonalds."
While this might suggest that Solomon likes his time heavily scheduled, he's also a fan of friendships and side passions. When people are in "challenging moments", Solomon says he calls them to say "Hey, I am thinking of you. How are you?," with no agenda. "The telephone is one of the most underrated technologies in the world," he adds. "A phone call to someone is 10 times more effective than a text or an email."
Lastly, while Solomon says it's important to be passionate about your job, you need to be passionate about other things too. He himself is passionate about being DJ D-Sol and 120bpm music. This has long been the case. At college, Solomon was the guy who made the mixtapes.
"It'll be a lot easier to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, if you stay connected to what it is that lights you up," said D-Sol. He proceeded to play the students his new AI house track with lyrics like, "Weâre fully alive. Hands up high, let it come. New world calling, here it comes."
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