The numbers arrived first. Goldman Sachs posted net revenues of $20.34 billion in the second quarter. Earnings per share hit $20.98 — up 92% year-over-year. Against that backdrop, CEO David Solomon sat down with the firm's 2026 summer intern class and talked about a piece of paper.
The piece of paper has a line down the middle. Solomon has used it for decades. 'I force myself to think more deeply about what things I might not be thinking about, that should force me to consider the other way,' he told the interns, according to remarks shared exclusively with Fortune. The exercise is not about changing the decision. It is about earning conviction in it.
The habit traces to his father, Jerry Solomon. 'My dad had an incredible way of never telling me what to do, but always forcing me to really wrestle with things and think through issues,' Solomon said. Jerry never argued for the other road. He simply made his son stop before turning left. The son internalized it. The CEO still uses it.
The intern class listening to him was selected from an applicant pool that kept the acceptance rate below 1% for a third consecutive year. They are, by any measure, already fast movers. Solomon's message ran the other direction. 'Some of the most important decisions I made were saying no to things where the grass looked greener in the short term,' he said. 'I stayed in places longer and that therefore opened up bigger opportunities than I would have imagined.'
The data point behind that line matters. Solomon spent nearly a decade at Bear Stearns before joining Goldman in 1999 — reportedly after being turned down by the firm at least once. Two decades of patience later, he holds the CEO seat. 'Being patient and taking more time can open up a broader range of opportunities,' he told the group. 'Try not to be in a hurry and enjoy the ride.'
The same friction-before-adoption logic shaped what he said about AI. He acknowledged the technology's reach: he has said publicly that AI can now draft roughly 95% of an S-1 IPO filing in minutes, a task that once required a six-person team and weeks of work. He is not dismissing the tool. He is calibrating it. 'Ask questions, challenge the conventional wisdom,' he told the interns. 'You have to challenge what the models give you.'
His own practice treats AI as a sparring partner, not an oracle. He uses models to stress-test a view, not confirm it. The distinction he draws is precise. 'The technology has no ability to do what we do as human beings — to think about whether something makes sense,' he said. 'There is a form of intelligence which is analyzing data, but there's also a form of intelligence which is taking life experience and using it to think about or infer things that data wouldn't.'
The market has already voted on Goldman's quarter. What Solomon offered the interns was something the income statement cannot supply: a decision framework that holds up across a career, not just a cycle. Free enterprise rewards speed, yes. It rewards judgment more. Capital accumulates at the intersection of both — and the CEO running a record quarter learned that lesson from a man who never once told him which road to take.
