Blair Is Paradise

It is spring semester of sophomore year at your Big 10 school from the Midwest.  After 3 semesters of blacking out and wheeling broads, recruitment season has finally arrived.  You look at your resume: 

>3.5 GPA: barely, but check

Finance/Accounting internship from your uncle: check

Brother at [Mid-Tier Frat]: check

Member of [School Mascot] Investment Fund: check

Member of Investment Banking Academy/Workshop: check

Luckily, you’ve also delegated some of your time to doing the [BB Bank with big alumni presence] bake-off/pitch competition and searching through WallStreetOasis.  As you look through your networking log and start cross-referencing your target banks with interns’ rankings you start to see a familiar name pop up.  William Blair, a m̶i̶d̶d̶l̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶r̶k̶e̶t̶  Global Boutique with a very strong culture.  You decide it's time to start making your mark at such a revered firm and begin sending emails with the same template to everyone you know there.  After 10 intro calls and your emails being torn apart in the analyst groupchat, Brennan, AN1 and former treasurer of your fraternity, forwards your resume to HR.  You promptly submit your application through their website and wait to hear back.

A William Blair Analyst is Born

Flash forward to March, you get a 1st round invite with Brennan. The interview consisted mainly of behaviorals that you tied your experience getting hazed to show you can handle stress and one technical - which two financial statements you would choose if you were stranded on a desert island? Brennan gives you a nod of approval remembering the elephant walks he made you do and leaves the Teams meeting.  A week later, while at a mixer with Phi Mu you get an update telling you that you're invited to the superday.  You celebrate by pounding 14 white claws and promptly blacking out.  The next morning you wake up next to a big regret and immediately think she's the same number on a scale out of 10 as the number of transactions worth >$1B that William Blair did in 2022 (5).  "Fuck," you say as you check your phone for your interview time slot.  You realize you now only have a day to prepare for technical questions since you only have the BIWS guide down.  You immediately get to work and spend the whole day learning how to solve a paper LBO and memorizing the rule of 72 for each corresponding MOIC. 

Fast forward to the morning of your superday, you have your blue Macy's suit on and are scouring the William Blair website for any interesting transactions.  You fail to find any so instead you remember all the financials, consideration, and buyer rationale for the only public seller you found.  As the clock approaches 9am, you log into Teams and start the interviews.  After messing up the paper LBO in the interview with a VP, your 3 other interviewers vouch for you claiming that you reminded them of their son (upper middle class, Finance major at Big Ten, white).  Your phone rings - it's the MD "You did a great job so we're extending you and everyone else that interviewed today an offer.  Say hi to Bradley for me too."  

Full Time

After a summer of adding zero value to any deal team and grinding out your intern project (sell-side pitch of an industrial widget manufacturing company), you are placed in the tech group alongside Brennan and receive a return offer along with all the other interns you met.  This raises alarm bells in your head.  "Why is a m̶i̶d̶d̶l̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶r̶k̶e̶t̶  Global Boutique expanding headcount exponentially during times of slowing deal flow and deal value?" you ask Brennan.  "William Blair has a strong culture brah, they really want to invest in juniors that will one day be running the firm and not leaving to a PE shop they did a deal with.  It's also employee-owned brah so they don't cut like Goldman and Morgan Stanley," Brennan said.  You feel reassured and after 2 more semesters of blacking out weekly and telling broads at the Alpha Phi mixer about your summer at William Blair (that they followed up with "Who is William Blair?" every time), you graduate cum laude with a 3.61 GPA and are ready to start full-time.  After a couple of months of doing Wall Street Prep courses, fetching seamless orders for your horizontally challenged MD, and being staffed on a $100M software deal every two weeks,  you suddenly feel a vibe shift.  The market is now dogshit - lenders are too scared to lend to MM tech shops and a recession is looking inevitable now. William Blair just spent the past two years raising base above street and expanding headcount as if they were the next Qatalyst but their culture is very strong and they're employee-owned so they're going to continue to do well in this environment, you think to yourself.

The Cracks Start Appearing

Bonus day comes and you hear Brennan yell "SON OF A BITCH" before punching a hole in the wall like the random ones you found in your frat castle at [IU, UIUC, UMich, UMN, OSU].  You run to Brennan to ask what happened and he shows you his bonus: $15k.  "This is why I'm leaving to Gryphon Investors next month," he tells you.  You look around the office and everyone looks distraught.  At least it's employee-owned, you think to yourself.  You decide to go home at 6pm after a long day of pretending to work and continuing to fetch Seamless orders for your gravitationally challenged MD. 

The next day you arrive and find the office entirely empty aside from your husky MD.  Must be WFH today, you think to yourself.  Your MD comes up to you looking worried and immediately puts you on a live deal.  You finally have work to do so you try to outsource it - you log onto Outlook and send an email to the most hardo analyst you know.  His email bounces.  Strange, you think, I thought he didn't have a PE offer lined up yet.  You decide to try sending it to Jared, the office bitch, but his email bounces too.  You email every single analyst in your group (Caden, Aidan, Braden, Hayden, Jaden, Chad, Brad, Thad, Connor, Tanner, Zach, Drew, and Kyle) but find that all their emails are invalid.  You decide to run to the Starbucks in the lobby and find no one there.  You feel as if you're in I Am Legend until you run to Porter Kitchen & Deck and see all the big-boned MDs feasting.  You breathe a sigh of relief, at least the culture is great. You go back to your desk and find an email notification from Brett Gladmound.  

William Blair's severance package is literal paradise. 

Life is good.