Sands Capital Investment Research
How does starting out in a role (investment research) at a shop like Sands Capital compare to the more typical BB IB out of undergrad gig? Ultimate goal is to get an MBA and continue into an investment seat down the line; is BB IB the safer route or is buyside research out of college the way to go?
Appreciate any advice.
Intern in PE - Growth, bummer your thread hasn't had a response yet. Sometimes bots are smarter than humans anyways:
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Fingers crossed that one of those helps you.
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Yes BB is safest route
Ignore title work in AM. Agree that IB is probably the safest route from a purely career optimizing perspective, but there is a lot of nuance to it.
I think a top BB/EB group is probably equivalent to or better than the best LO offer post undergrad from a career perspective. this would be a different story if the LO associate program offered the opportunity to be promoted to analyst, but most don't, so you'll end up looking around for a new role in 2-4 years anyway. i think you will get more looks coming from IB, especially at hedge funds - at mutual funds it might be a wash. some top HFs will only look at candidates from top IB / PE roles.
however, I think it gets fuzzier if it's not a top IB group. for example, if you want to be a public equity investor long term, I think wellington / capital / d&c are probably better than the average coverage group at a bofa / barclays / citi type place.
In other words, it really depends on how good your IB offer is and how good your LO offer is. I don't know sands at all, but at a firm level you should look into performance, aum trends, whether you think their research process is rigorous, whether you like their investment philosophy. It is even more important to scrutinize the structure of their associate program, because these aren't super standardized and your experience can vary a lot, from great to terrible. what would your day to day look like? Would you be getting hands on with high value work? would you have industry coverage or be tied to a specific fund? would you work exclusively with a certain analyst? this last point is a big one. if you're working with just one analyst, they completely dictate your experience, so you need to figure out if they're the kind of analyst you'd want to work for. I am lucky to have a great analyst who is demanding but understanding, is invested in my development, and takes time to mentor me, but i also know people who have had less positive experiences.
The last thing I'd say is this has all been from a strictly career optimizing perspective, but there's more to life than that. If your shop pays well (RA program comp has a high dispersion, you can get really underpaid in the wrong program), LO probably offers the best WLB / comp combo in all of finance. you can get 8 hours of sleep every night, go to the gym daily, make dinner plans during the week, have your weekends totally to yourself, none of which is the case as an analyst in IB. IB takes a huge toll on your social life, physical health, and mental health; LO allows you to have a life and feel like a real person. i was fortunate to land in a good seat and make more than i would have in IB while working 50hrs instead of 75 and doing work that is far more interesting to me. i have not looked back.
Take all of this with a grain of salt; i am new to the industry so other than my personal experience the rest of this is based on my very rough sense of things from talking to people
This is some of the best advice I've seen in this forum -- incredibly well written. I would also that that even at mid-tier BBs, people can place really well at PE and that sets you up for the MBA. I don't know about the route from RA --> HSW MBA which seems like it's less common than the standard IB/PE guys (those are the guys that place the best for LOs post MBA).
Thanks! I had to make this exact decision so I have a lot of thoughts on it
Good point re: mid tier BBs. My thought was that if you do 2 years at an avg mid tier BB coverage group (not talking about a citi / bofa m&a type group) and then maybe place into a lower UMM or strong MM, i'm not sure if you're ahead relative to a top LO associate program if you want to be a public equity investor. don't work in banking though so no idea. Anecdotally, a lot of people do MBAs after my firm's associate program, and it seems like a decent number place into HSW with the rest falling elsewhere in the M7 (some selection bias going on of course)
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Really well written! Can tell from the post that working at LO does give analysts better lifestyles.
What are your thoughts about starting in an RA program compared to a lev fin group at a well-known bank. Don't know if lev fin would give the same optionality for LO as a traditional M&A group would
What is considered being underpaid in an RA associate role, currently making around 95k at my firm
If that's your total comp then I'd say you're definitely underpaid, especially if you're at a larger shop. For reference, I received an offer for 125k TC from a relatively subscale firm. Unfortunately, it's a tough job market rn so it might be hard to move elsewhere for the moment.
Does your firm's name start with a B?
Would agree with others that IB will give your career funnel the largest possible aperture; however, in the OP you noted that your end goal is to come back to an investment seat on the buyside. In that case, I would highly recommend taking a buyside seat like the RA program at Sands. Now that I have had the opportunity to sit on the other side of the table in the hiring process, prior buyside experience has been one of the biggest factors in candidate selection (at least at the resume filtering stage). TBH, banking experience just tells me this person can build models/use excel. Buyside work where you've had the chance to cover names (assuming not strictly just building models for some senior analyst) gives you experience dealing with the intangibles of public markets (sentiment, expectations, dealing with vol, experience wins and losses). I/we value prior buyside work over IB/Sell Side somewhat heavily, so if that is your end goal, the research associate programs at some of these shops are a great place to start and they do place well into MBAs. Further, most of these programs have a shelf life (2-3 years as an RA and then it is either find an analyst seat somewhere else or go to MBA), but it is well known in the industry that they have a shelf life. Thus, when you reach the end of said program it won't be looked upon negatively that you did not move upward into a full analyst role. We know that some of these places just don't have the capacity to add full analysts to the roster and generally seats only open up following a churn event.
So IB as a starting point probably has the highest risk-adjusted expected value, but if you already know what you want I would emphasize these types of buyside opportunities, and to some extent there is risk in assuming that you already know what you want without having actually sat in the seat. I.e. you could get into the seat, realize you hate it, and wish you had taken the IB approach instead. Just some additional perspective to the comments above
Not all spots are created equal and Sands is a top shop, only issue it's based out of DC (so limited lateral opportunities unless you wanna move). If you know you want to do HF/AM you're much better positioned being an RA there, BUT IB will give you more exit ops.
Why do you say sands is a top shop?
Industry reputation is an intangible thing? Know someone who was able to raise his own fund on the back of his track record at Sands. You could argue that last decade was particularly great for growth managers, but they do hire pretty smart people and afaik have been doing well.
FWIW, I remember doing a first round with Sands when I was an undergrad and they did not seem to have the same capacity or willingness to train kids as bigger firms. If you have been managing your personal portfolio this shouldn't be an issue but I think most ppl would prefer to go through a bank's analyst program, then recruit for LO
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