I met Tim Arthurs, the second week when I joined Millennium and knew he was an “A” player. He still has notes from every time he called me on a stock. He’s a process guy. And it has led to his success. 

He founded Seaport Research Partners, which has become the fastest-growing independent equity research platform by attracting the top research analysts and empowering them with aligned incentives. Early in his career, he moonlighted as a QB coach for Heisman winner and #1 overall pick Bryce Young teaching him the importance of the right motion and process.  

“What have I learned from some of my biggest failures is keep getting up. You’re bendable, you’re not breakable”

“You can’t be a big man at night and a little man in the morning”

We cover:

• The Bryce Young story — a Craigslist posting, a dad who lied about his kid’s age, and six months of tennis balls and candy wrappers before he ever touched a football. It starts with good habits

• The MiFID II unlock: how unbundling and vote/rate-card transparency exposed what individual analysts are actually worth — and made an eat-what-you-kill platform possible for the first time

• The brutal math of the sell side: ~3,500 published analysts in North America, and two-thirds of coverage is “watered-down, check-the-box” — subsidized by banking and syndicate

• How Seaport recruits the top 1% of the 1%: never a recruiter, 550+ interviews, ~40 offers, 30+ conversions — the clients feed the talent

• The reference-check questions that actually work: “When did they make you money?” and “What’s a 60-minute meeting with them worth?” — asked across 20-30 buy-siders until the trend is undeniable

• The 3-step analyst checklist: investment judgment (best call, worst call, the consensus view you think is wrong), research edge (what do you produce that clients can’t get elsewhere — and what’s proprietary in the process), and client franchise (your top 15 advocates who raise their hand no matter what)

• The salesperson hierarchy: good salespeople are concierge, great ones sell outcomes — “we get paid to anticipate, not analyze” — and the cream of the crop sell feelings: becoming an extension of the client’s investment process

• “You can’t be a big man at night and a little man in the morning”

• Why analysts leave the bulge: “Why do I get comped down 10-15% a year when my franchise wasn’t down?” — and what they control at Seaport: coverage, distribution, pricing, input and output

• The three-stage distribution model: ~400-500 readership, top-100 tactical, top-40 opt-in

• Proof of concept: #1 global market-share gainer at some of the biggest wallets on the planet, 3 → 30+ analysts in five years, and only one analyst ever lost

• The next five years: the best 45 analysts in the U.S., replicating the model in Europe and Asia, and filling the void the bulge brackets left

• Triathlons, 1,440 minutes a day, and the 5% you owe yourself — plus the cause closest to home: the Epilepsy Foundation of Chicago and his daughter Athena

_______________________________________________________________

💡 This episode is powered by Fiscal.AI – Delivering Modern Financial Data Infrastructure

Pitch The PM Episode Links:

Doug Garber on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-garber-42aa508 

📩 Subscribe to our Substack for research updates and new high-conviction episodes from top PMs, and our Job Board:⁠https://pitchthepm.substack.com/⁠

Links:

Tim Arthurs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-arthurs-06b3179/

Seaport Research Partners: https://seaportrp.com/

Seaport Global: https://seaportglobal.com/

Chicago Epilepsy Foundation: https://epilepsychicago.org/