Methodology
How Capstack knows what it knows
The advice on this site isn't theory. It's the cumulative output of a non-target candidate who broke into a top elite-boutique seat, then spent the years since coaching other non-target students through the same gauntlet — watching what worked, what didn't, and where the cycle's quiet rules actually live.
That's why Capstack's articles read differently from the rest of the internet. Most IB content is written by writers, or by bankers who recruited a decade ago. Capstack's is written by someone who recruited recently, from the school you're recruiting from, and who has watched the current cycle in real time across dozens of students.
The source: Matt's recruiting cycle and the years since
Matt broke into a top elite-boutique seat from a school with no real Wall Street pipeline. The framework on this site is the one he wishes someone had handed him at the start — built backwards from what actually worked, refined every year since by watching the next cohort of students execute (or fail to execute) the same moves.
Validation: the placement outcomes
Capstack's students have landed offers at 50+ firms across the BBs, EBs, MMs, and top buy-side institutions. The pattern across those outcomes — what kind of student lands where, which strategies generalize, which are bank-specific — is the data the articles draw from. Names are anonymized; the lessons are not.
The team: practicing bankers at top institutions
Where a specific group or bank requires deeper-than-Matt expertise (e.g., a particular EB's modeling test reputation, a specific BB's superday quirk), Capstack pulls in current analysts from those institutions to validate. They don't author articles; they read for accuracy. The byline stays Matt's; the credibility check is the team's.
What this isn't
Capstack's articles aren't ghostwritten by SEO contractors. There's no LLM running the show. AI does triage — restructuring legacy material into web-ready shape, surfacing internal-link suggestions, drafting FAQ candidates — and Matt edits every output before publish. The voice you read is Matt's; the depth is the team's.