Rob Goldstein has never strayed far from his native Brooklyn. After graduating from college in 1994, he took a job at a then-up-and-coming New York City financial firm called BlackRock, which has since become one of the world’s biggest financial giants. Goldstein has spent his entire career at the firm and has risen to the rank of COO.
One year removed from his 30th anniversary at BlackRock, Goldstein told Fortune that he still views his company as a startup, which might seem an odd statement considering its market cap of nearly $170 billion. But in a private event hosted at BlackRock’s Hudson Yards headquarters on Monday, Goldstein celebrated what he described as BlackRock’s “challenger mindset” by debuting a wall featuring the dozens of patents the company has earned over its 37-year history.
