May 18, 2026
Josh Steiner is a polymath of the New York and D.C. power corridors across government, media, and finance, and co-author of From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn’t Own You.
Josh rose to national prominence as the youngest-ever Chief of
Staff at the U.S. Treasury in the Clinton administration,
where he made a high-profile mistake he
unpacks in the book. He pivoted to finance as a
media investment banker and co-founder
of private equity firm Quadrangle Group in
2000, worked as an operator at Bloomberg in the
2010s, has served on Yale’s Investment Committee for
nearly a decade, and five years ago returned to private equity as
co-founder of SSW Partners managing capital for a few
families.
Our conversation focuses on mistakes,
quite a contrast from other discussions on the
podcast. We kick it off with Josh’s big mistake at Treasury
and analyze the nature of mistakes and what happened to Josh. We
then turn to his mistakes in investing across deals,
managing an investment business, managing people,
and serving on Investment Committees. We close with frameworks
to avoid mistakes and with Josh turning the
table on me to discuss an impactful mistake I
made that I’ve never discussed before.
Learn More
Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn
Subscribe to the mailing
list
Access Transcript with Premium Membership