Photograph by Courtesy of HBO Max
- Financial meme startup Litquidity hired its first public employee: a former FBoy Island contestant.
- The contestant, Mark Moran, left Centerview Partners earlier this year for the reality TV dating show.
- Moran updated his social media to say "Employee No. 1" at Litquidity.
Popular financial startup Litquidity hired its first full-time employee, a former "FBoy Island" contestant and investment banker named Mark Moran, the company said Tuesday.
Thirty-year-old Moran, who graduated from the University of Virginia's law school and has worked at Centerview Partners and Credit Suisse, updated his bio on Twitter and Instagram to "Employee No. 1 at Liquidity." He is now the head of growth and operations at the firm.
New York-based Litquidity, run by an anonymous former Wall Street banker who goes by "Lit," has gained prominence for its financial meme account that teases at the lives of investment bankers.
In a Tuesday interview with Insider, Lit said he was looking for to hire someone who has been on the inside of Wall Street, someone "who has lived the lifestyle, who has felt the dread of the long hours and sort of gets that humor."
But he also needed someone willing to "take the leap from a lucrative career." Enter, Moran.
Moran left his job at Centerview earlier this year - where he made $400,000 in 2020 according to Bloomberg - for a reality TV show. He appeared in HBO Max's first season of "FBoy Island," a show in which three women look for love among a pool of 24 men, half nice guys and half so-called "FBoys," according to WarnerMedia.
He messaged Lit on Instagram after being mentioned in a Litquidity story and the two started talking. Last month, they met in Central Park.
On his personal website, Moran shares videos of himself, and in one explains the concept of mergers and acquisitions. He said, "M&A can be compared to something I'm also pretty good at, which is dating."
Litquidity has been making money from merchandise sales of so-called "Dad hats" that read "Lehman Brothers" and "short squeeze specialist," and mugs that have well-known Wall Street phrases like "pls fix, thx."
Amid the surge in retail investors this year, the firm also has started a newsletter called the Exec Sum, which serves as an additional revenue stream to its merchandise and advertising dollars, Insider reported previously. The newsletter has about 84,000 subscribers, Lit told Insider, adding that the firm is on track to hit $1 million in revenue this year.
Lit said he plans to hire a couple more people after the firm closes an initial funding round, which he said will likely be in November.