Breaking Barriers: How Two WashU Scholar-Champions are Revolutionizing Investment Banking Recruitment with AI

PRETUS
 
ST. LOUIS, Mo. – In November, Washington University in St. Louis juniors Lucas Vogel (men’s basketball) and Cosmo Guion (football) won the Skandalaris Venture Competition for their AI startup Pretus.
 
The Skandalaris Venture Competition (SVC) provides mentorship to WashU ventures and startups to ready them for commercializing their idea, launching and pitching to investors. The SVC provides up to $25,000 in awards in three levels: Innovator Funding ($2,000), Disruptor Funding (up to $5,000) and Catalyst Funding (up to $10,000). Pretus was one of two companies to win the Disruptor Funding.
 
Pretus is an AI platform designed to make preparation for investment banking interviews accessible to everyone. Pretus’ mission is to break barriers and level the playing field in the world of investment banking recruitment. From its mission, “We believe that talent is universal, but opportunity is not. We’re on a mission to democratize investment banking recruiting by breaking down the barriers that have traditionally limited access … For too long, success in investment banking recruiting depended on exclusive networks and insider knowledge. We’re changing that by harnessing the power of AI to create accessible, high-quality preparation tools.”
 
Conceptualized more than a year ago, Pretus now has more than 3,000 users from 200 schools since launching in September.
 
“It kind of started because I was going through investment banking recruiting and Lucas saw me struggling and thought that there had to be a better way to prepare. He came to me with the idea for this platform and I took one look at it as someone going through the process and thought ‘this is an awesome idea,'” said Guion. “I actually ended up using the early prototype version in May to get my first investment banking offer.”
 
Pretus is designed with two components in mind: flashcards and mock interviews. Vogel and Guion interviewed around 100 students to hear the questions that had come up in past investment banking interviews as well as core technical questions. The AI model provides feedback every time a student answers a question and you can customize modules to prepare for specific companies.
 
“Every time you answer something, it gets stored,” said Vogel. “You can track what you know, what you don’t know, your strengths and weaknesses as an interview candidate. For the mock interviews, we can generate really realistic mock interviews where we give you a question, you record your answer and then you get rated at the end of it.”
 
After getting their idea off the ground, Vogel and Guion worked on spreading the word to other students at WashU and beyond that could benefit from their platform. The duo began reaching out to other schools’ investment banking clubs to offer the platform for free, including Stanford, the University of Pittsburg and UCLA. They’ve also partnered with organizations like the Wall Street Guide and the National Scholars of Finance. Throughout the process, the goal was to refine the product by getting feedback from the very people that would be the target demographic.
 
Using the power of social media, Pretus spread the word on platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn. Through social media, various events and a newsletter, they started to grow a community that continues to expand every day.
 
How do Vogel and Guion juggle academics, highly-competitive athletics and managing a startup? Prioritization and communication.
 
“Both Cosmo and I enjoy having our bandwidth stretched,” said Vogel. “It really gets rid of distractions.  Our coaches and all of our teachers are super interested in the stuff that we’re building. It’s challenging but you just have to be super communicative with them about our priorities and they’ve been super accepting.”
 
“My coaches have been awesome, super flexible,” added Guion. “One thing for me is that football is the one time of my day when the only thing I have to think about is football. I have all these things running through my mind and I realize when I’m at football, there’s nothing I can do about building this or doing homework or preparing for this test. All I can do focus on football. It’s a really great time to take a break and just do something I really enjoy.”
 
As for the future of Pretus? Continuing to build and help future investment bankers. The pair is looking to continue promoting and growing the platform, utilizing resources such as Olin’s Holekamp Seed Fund.
 
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