MBB consulting to HFs

Sure happy to. Been out of both now for a couple years, but can opine. Had always been interested in investing (was pretty involved in college with finance/investment clubs) but also very interested at the time in learning about how companies work, how executives make decisions, and how growth plans and strategies are developed. Joined MBB after college and had a great time. Think it's truly a special role out of college, bc you get to interact with senior executives at big companies, learn how to do business analysis, and present recommendations/ analysis to a really senior audience. From a skill building perspective, found it to be super valuable. 

Joined PE bc that was a pretty natural extension of the consulting skillset - essentially deep business analytics, but building a finance toolkit on top of it. Consulting pretty darn useful in terms of business diligence, etc. Enjoyed PE too, but there were some things that I didn't enjoy as much. Namely: 

1. It's hard to get a lot of deal reps. You'll be lucky if you close 2 deals during your 2 years as an associate in PE. Obviously you're looking at a lot of different things over time, but at most, you're probably underwriting 5-6 deals a year all the way. At the end of the day, I wanted to dig into more things - look at more companies, look into more sectors, and if you like something, buy the stock. 

2. it's pretty clear that the VP toolkit in PE shifts more towards process management and you're evaluated/rewarded based on how well you can manage a deal process (lawyers, lenders, accountants, consultants, other advisors, etc.). obviously these are valuable management skills, but not necessarily investor skills. Wasn't inspired by the idea that i'd spend the next 5 years as VP / junior partner managing deal processes but still not leading the actual investment decision-making (that's left to the partners and the investment committee). managing a deal is also just a lot of work and ultimately not what gets me excited about investing. 

3. you realize that there's a lot of cool investable ideas out there in the world, but b/c of how competitive the pe landscape is (and in general what happens when things go to auction), you can buy very few of them. kind of like how there are a bazillion great paintings out there, but you'll be lucky to get your hands on more than 1 or 2 of them. same goes with businesses you like. there's always going to be a handful of bidders who also like the business as much as you do, and somebody is likely willing to pay more for it. such is life in PE, but ultimately also something that gave me less joy. I like to buy the candy that I enjoy the most. 

At the end of the day, you've got to try the role out to figure out what you like and what you don't.