Did I Make a Mistake? Looking for words of wisdom.
Just curious, don’t think this will effect anything in the immediate term other than the pace of my networking.
TL;DR – low GPA, nontarget school took job at a brand new fund with one serious investor however unsure if I made the right decision for me
I decided to study finance at the end of my sophomore year but I had no connections or industry experience. However, I had learned enough about network through conversations with a group of seniors who decided to take me under their wing (they were the guys who encouraged me to do finance since I was a math student at the time). One of them helped me secure a financial consulting position at a startup (that is now failed), which I then used to network my way in as a research assistant in the finance department.
From there, I gained some more programming and math experience and started networking hard core. By the end of junior year I had secured all I could… an unpaid internship with a new hedge fund with one committed investor who would give us the money by the time I was supposed to leave. I was one of two interns and there were two employees. I was the youngest, unable to legally drink, and the two others were master’s students from top schools (ie, HBS).
By the end of summer I had worked my ass off (the principal guy wasn’t a finance guy at all but he was well connected in the industry to big names) and gotten a job offer from them over the two other guys. I was the third employee. I accepted because it was too late to get into Investment Banking or anything else relevant to what I seemingly wanted to do (investment).
Fast forward to now. I graduated. Working full time there and loving it and the people. But I worry that if we don’t raise money (one of the top people is fresh out of college after all) I won’t be able to get anything else since it’s not a recognizable brand name.
Any words of wisdom? Did I make a mistake?