Career Progression beyond Post-MBA Associate

I have a follow up question: what is the attrition rate like for post MBA associates? How many actually stat with their original firm and make it to MD or higher?

With MM funds, getting to the Partner position - in which you'd have carry - isn't very straightforward. Either the firm raises a new fund and gives you a stake in it, or a current Partner leaves. Current Partners aren't usually happy about giving up their carry.

I'd somewhat disagree with that statement. The best time to promote people to the partner level or give them significant amounts of carry is right before a new fund is raised. And existing partners usually aren't dumb enough to put their greed before the general good of the firm. Most of the smaller mid-markets have between 20 and 30 investment professionals, so everyone has to carry quite a bit of weight. Most partners would rather give up carry than see good partner-level investment professionals leave for another firm. On top of that, in most cases subsequent funds are larger in size than their predecessors, and a lower percentage of carry does not necessarily translate into less dollars.

I would second GT's comments. I would also disagree with the original statement that promotion to partner is less straight forward in a PE firm vs. a bank. I would say it's the opposite. Quite easy to move around in banking but in PE its more rare to jump around. The vesting of carry makes it more difficult to do so. It is quite common to start at sr. associate and make your way up in the same firm. Sometimes splinter groups forming new firms is an opportunity to move up/make partner, but this isn't quite switching firms altogether.

Ibleedexcel and Gametheory,

So your saying that is is reasonably possible for a post-mba to make it to partner without ever leaving the fund? And if so, what have you seen as the length of time it takes to go from 1st year post-mba to partner? 8 years? 12 years? I guess the real key is finding a fund which offers carry to the lower level associates, thus indicating a tendancy to keep employees longer and promote from within the fund.

Yes, you can make partner without ever leaving the fund. Length? - it varies. 2-3 years as a sr. associate, 2-3 yrs as a VP, 2-4 yrs as a principle = 6-10 yrs to make partner, with closer to 10 being more common than closer to 6. This would be a "junior" partner position. It could take several additional years to become a "managing" partner, which entails higher carry.

If you can source and execute your own successful deals and make money for the firm you are adding value and you will be paid and promoted to stick around. If you are helping to grow the pie that you are taking a larger and larger portion of, you are not necessarily taking any skin off others' backs. That is the model of a successful/growing firm.

You can always check the bio pages at some MM PE firms and figure out how many places the Partners have been to...

Never really done that myself but I've definitely checked up to VP/Director and it seems that those people started off as Associates, were sent to get their MBA and came back.