Nick Trent

I'm Nick, a 22 year old BCom. Economics & Finance student at the University of Guelph with real world experience across tech, manufacturing, sales, and digital strategy. I’ve operated inside early-stage startups, run my own digital strategy & marketing freelance, and actively invest in public markets through a data-driven fundamental approach.Take an honest, informal, and completely transparent look at my journey and who I am.

• Thinking in Public: A Thought Experiment

• Professional
• Academics
• Investing
• About
• Contact

• Back

Professional

What I've Done So Far At 22

I’ve worked across three very different environments: two early-stage tech startups on only performance based comp. A family run specialty glass manufacturing business, and my own marketing / digital strategy freelance where every result and every mistake is mine to own.Trent Network
Trent Network started as a desire to do more with my free time. It later became a training ground for everything I now know about marketing, systems & ops, consumer psychology, and general business optimization. Through this experience, I’ve built sales funnels, targeted campaigns, back-end system automations, and helped clients with everything from brand strategy to system optimization. Every project, workflow, and campaign is different. It's forced me to grow up fast, network and grow my personal book of business, stay accountable, and continuously systemize my thinking.wellneste.com
This was my first exposure at an attempt to build something structured and real. Wellneste was a platform designed to clean up the misinformation epidemic in the health search space during the pandemic. A trusted content hub that gave people simple, actionable, honest health content. Through a double sided business model - it was secretly a B2B marketing engine. We gave practitioners digital real estate (landing pages, SEO articles, videos) that would generate high intent local SEO leads.
I took on a general role, spanning direct sales, marketing, and business management. I helped craft the messaging, build the B2B value prop, and joined the conversation on business direction. In a grassroots startup, on a performance reliant comp plan, it taught me a kind of pressure that no course ever could.GoLocal Virtual Events
GoLocal truly opened my eyes to small businesses & tech. Small businesses don’t care about flashy or vague promises. It’s simple: you either help them make more money, gain productivity, or get out of the way. If you can’t deliver clear value fast, and cheap, you’re done (insert buzzer sound). I worked on performance only comp in B2B sales and partnerships, refining email marketing campaigns and executed a plethora of cold outreach methods.
Different environment. Different lessons. But the same need to perform under constraint.Pegasus Glass
Pegasus is the family business, a specialty borosilicate glass manufacturer that’s been operating for over 50 years. I’ve spent the last 16 months deeply embedded in the environment. My role here has centered around integrating systems, streamlining ecommerce, and supporting the shift toward more modern digital processes across marketing and backend operations.
What makes this experience so impactful isn’t just the exposure to B2B manufacturing, it’s being able to learn directly under my role model, my dad. Watching him lead through constant pressure, from supplier setbacks to internal bottlenecks to big client demands, has given me a front row seat to the weight of responsibility that comes with running a business that dozens of people and families depend on. I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to learn by observing. And being close to the core has taught me how real businesses function under stress, how true leadership actually looks in practice, and how important systems are when you’re juggling customer relationships, margins, and time-sensitive operations. It’s made me think more practically, act with intent, and see the value of doing hard things well.

• Back

About

Born and raised in Cambridge, Ontario. Grew up playing AAA hockey, and high level lacrosse. I captained my lacrosse team for four years, and won the leadership / captaincy award five years in a row. The competitive sports, and leadership roles were a big piece of shaping who I am today, arguably more then anything else. Now that the sports are behind me, the gym’s my way of staying in shape. I train almost every day. It initially came from the desire for abs and to get bigger - much like every kid. As I mature, it is driven more and more by simply wanting a healthy, more active lifestyle. It keeps me feeling alive and constantly pushing my physical and mental ceiling higher and higher.To spit ball a few things I love outside of my work, school, and fitness - I’m into cars, how they work, how they're built, watching them, tracking them. Golf - which has become a fun part of my life as well, and I've seemingly become halfway decent. I've always enjoyed those things that keep you brutally honest and as the years tick by, I believe that may be why I like business so much. You can’t fake outcomes. The numbers either back you up or they don’t.At 22, I spend a lot of time training, reading, and thinking. It used to be a forced "hustle" like mindset, all rooted in sporadic motivation. As of now, it has evolved into something more disciplined and out of genuine curiosity. I enjoy figuring things out. I like doing the things that force you to think, slow down, and see clearly. And best of all, I've been learning how to learn, and learned to love it.

Please read below for more information.

• Back

Contact

If you’ve made it here, feel free to reach out or see my resume below. Whether it’s related to work, investing, networking, or opportunities - Please do provide the necessary context, as I'm always open to conversation and real opportunities.You can email me directly at [email protected], or [email protected]

• Download
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

• Back

Academics

• Journey
• Grades + Awards

Straight out of highschool - 2021~2022
I didn’t always know what I wanted to do coming out of high school. I knew I was driven, curious, and had leadership experience from years of playing high level sports, but I didn’t yet know where to point that energy. So I took a year off. I worked, saved money, lived life, and used that time to figure out where I wanted to start. That’s when I found digital marketing. It felt like the perfect intersection of strategy, psychology, and execution and it was something I could learn fast and use immediately.I decided to enroll at the Toronto School of Management (TSoM), a private college with a one year, hands on diploma program in digital marketing and moved to the city of Toronto. I spent every day learning the fundamentals of modern marketing: SEO, consumer psychology, analytics, advertising, brand building, and funnel design. I received my diploma with honors and a 4.0 GPA. Through this program I got certified in Google Ads & Google Analytics, applying everything I was learning to real work through freelance projects.Alone in Toronto - 2022~2023
With that marketing experience I landed my first exposure to startups (Wellneste and GoLocal). I built real confidence here. And throughout that year and change in Toronto, I made connections that still impact my network and business today.
As much as I loved the work, I quickly realized I wanted more, I wasn't as interested as I originally thought in this industry. And so, while living in the city, I started attending events and meeting people from finance, venture, and investing backgrounds. These conversations opened a new curiosity in me. I started reading, studying, and realizing how critical the money side is to everything: to business, to people, to decisions. I came to realize finance and economics as the heartbeat of business. How money moves, how it’s valued, how it’s deployed. I wanted to understand that deeply.A pivot of interest - 2023~Present
That, coupled with conversations with family is when I decided to go back to school and commit to a longer runway of education. This time in Economics and Finance. I enrolled at the University of Guelph and began first year building a foundation in general markets, economic theory, valuation, and strategy. I treated every course like something I could apply and often, I did. Currently outside of studying and my work, I spend time researching overall market psychology, macroeconomic trends, valuation models, and financial metrics. I built systems in Excel to track my personal portfolio and analyze investment decisions. I have since studied fiscal / monetary policy, valuations of public companies, yield curves, credit spreads and much more. I wanted to go deep not to simply prepare for exams, but because I genuinely want to understand how this world works.

• Back

Investing Overview

• Philosophy
• Fundamentals
• Financials + Metrics

My Investment Philosophy - 5 Quick Standards.

1. Long Term Horizon

I prioritize fundamental value investments that I'm willing to hold for decades, allowing a great company and compounding to do the heavy lifting. This long view also keeps my focus away from the rollercoaster most retail investors fall into - trying to time or bet on a market that they don't have the resources, data, or edge to compete in. I stay in my lane with patience and conviction.

2. Risk Management & Downside Protection

While chasing upside potential is thrilling, not losing money is just as important. Asking myself "what's the worst that could happen here?", often leads me to asset rich companies with a strong balance sheet, steady cash flows, and good management. Not overly cash heavy, but do still keep capital on hand. Preserving capital in means of safety net, and for when opportunity shows up, I've got a loaded gun - not scrambling around looking for bullets.

3. Price ≠ Value

Looking for disconnects between price and value. Whether it's a business trading below it's intrinsic worth, or the market ignoring the value of individual verticals within a larger company. Value hides in different places. Sometimes it's cash flow. Sometimes it's a brand the market doesn't know how to price. Other times, the sum of the individual parts is worth more than what the whole trades for.

4. Diversification - Asset Classes & Industries

Diversifying across asset classes and industries, not for the sake of spreading myself thin - but to protect against a single point of failure. For me that means broad equity exposure through indexes, complemented by company-specific allocations in industries like tech, healthcare, financials, and defense. Gold as a hedge, and cash as optionality. Rebalancing regularly - trimming when things are hot, adding through pullbacks. Keeping things aligned without media-driven emotion.

5. Conviction based Position Sizing

I size my position based on the depth of my research and the reliability of the downside. Investing in things I truly understand, where the risks are limited, the driver is clear, and most importantly being able to answer - how do they make money? These get more weight. The more speculative, the less weight. Simply put, the size of position is directly correlated to my personal conviction. This keeps things stable and limits emotion.

Fundamentals + Personal Litmus Test

A quick practice test I run before committing to any investment. Does not guarantee upside, but it helps filter out the garbage. Inspired by a plethora of the best value investors, current and past.

Financials and Metrics