“It’s the company what matters!”

Matt Hougan
CEO @ Inside ETFs

Matt Hougan has had the good fortune over the past 10 years of helping to lead companies located at the center of the revolution in the financial services industry. He is the ETF industry veteran and CEO of Inside ETFs, a division of Informa Plc, where he spearheads the world’s largest ETF conferences and webinars. Matt is also involved in an aggressive expansion of Informa’s events footprint in the most innovative corners of U.S. finance, including (and particularly) fintech (where he led the transition of Finovate into the Informa family).

Hougan is a three-time member of the Barron’s ETF Roundtable, co-author of the CFA Institute’s monograph, “A Comprehensive Guide to Exchange-Trade Funds”, a frequent writer for the Wall Street Journal’s “The Experts” series on Wealth Management; and is a featured ETF columnist for the Journal of Financial Planning and CNBC.com, among other outlets.

It was definitely not a straight line from college into the ETF world for Matt Hougan though. He was a sea kayak guide, professional baseball mascot and a midnight shoe salesman before becoming a freelance writer at ETF.com (formerly IndexUniverse) and gradually working his way up to CEO. As CEO, he helped guide the sale of ETF.com in three separate, highly successful transactions, selling its Data & Analytics business to FactSet, Media business to Bats Global Markets, and Events business (including Inside ETFs, the world’s largest ETF conference) to Informa Plc.

Do you work for a company that can succeed and grow?

Do you believe in its mission?

Do you work with people you like and can learn from?

Matt Hougan believes these three questions define your long-term career success and in this interview, Matt shares his career advice exclusively with Jobs in ETFs.