Help with my story
I am trying to prepare for interviews for my story about myself, I was going to tell a little about how I have been always interested in business since a young age (Started my own internet business/website) and that led to me exploring business/finance classes and clubs which eventually brought me to my interest in IB and of course why I was interviewing.
Is the internet business/website experience acceptable? At first I thought it was good but a friend told me that he thought it was a little unrelated and not too interesting of a story.
Thoughts? Thanks.





Not interesting to me, but I
Not interesting to me, but I have no idea what might work with other people. Running a small business is very different to working in IBD. You usually deal with really massive companies and just do financial models and graphs. In your first years you rarely get to make any decision, it's basically just following orders. If you're interviewing for your first internship it might help a little with your reason why you like finance, but I wouldn't spend much time on it.
IB interviewers would likely
IB interviewers would likely be more interested with how much time / effort you put into your business/website. Dedication / stick-to-it-iveness will help you in IB, so don't tell them you built a site, got bored and moved on.
Did you make money with this venture? Did you build a spreadsheet tracking your income versus costs? Maybe modeled different pricing assumptions for your product? These kinds of activities are more inline with IB tasks and may be more helpful to you in an interview than saying website --> business --> finance --> IB?
grosse: IB interviewers would
IB interviewers would likely be more interested with how much time / effort you put into your business/website. Dedication / stick-to-it-iveness will help you in IB, so don't tell them you built a site, got bored and moved on.
Did you make money with this venture? Did you build a spreadsheet tracking your income versus costs? Maybe modeled different pricing assumptions for your product? These kinds of activities are more inline with IB tasks and may be more helpful to you in an interview than saying website --> business --> finance --> IB?
Thanks, I spent a 4 years on this certain venture so I can say I was pretty dedicated to it. I generated a decent amount of revenue from it as well. I later sold the business though. I never really did any tracking/spreadsheet other than the basic expense/revenue sort of thing. I'm having trouble on being able to tell the experience and relate it to IB.
Well if you sold the
Well if you sold the business, that's directly related to being an IB analyst.
Questions from your interviewer:
How much did you sell it for?
How did you view that price versus what you thought would be fair value?
How did you negotiate the sale?
How did you find a buyer?
Did you use any third parties (lawyers, etc).?
The above is what a lot of IB is about, so you've got a gold mine of a story. I would make sure that this venture (and specifically that you sold it) is on your resume.
Then when you are in your interview, the story is about how going through the process of selling your business really excited you and that's what led to your interest in working in IB.
Thanks for the response. How
Thanks for the response.
How should I describe selling the business on my resume?
I currently have: "Valuated the business by using 20-month projected revenue and membership growth to negotiate and sell the business to an interested buyer"
Any suggestions on how to better reword it?