Hey all, This site has been a big help to me over the years and I wanted to see if there's anyone out there I can help by answering some questions.
Background:
* Lower/middle class from the southern US, first generation * Started out at a semi-target in STEM , finished my freshman year with a <3.0. Had some personal baggage and immaturity that I didn't sort out till junior year. * Transferred from STEM to finance. Got GPA up and took on unpaid startup and PE internships while working part time. * Applied to over 1,000 jobs in the last 5 months, a ton of rejections, 30 first round screenings, 4 in-office superdays and finally a single offer which I took (canceling 2 other superdays in process). I'm now a first year analyst with a strategic acquirer of niche software companies. The analysis is similar to buyout PE, in fact they compete with a number of well-known MM software funds for mandates. My generic advice to all the students out there: rise and grind with enthusiasm and the opportunities will come. Q&A
so are you from Roper or Constellation?
That's not how an AMA works.
I love AMA’s that fail. Nothing better than someone who thinks they are interesting realize they aren’t.
I mean sure it's a failure in that people didn't ask many questions on the thread. My goal is to try and be helpful and encouraging to any college students going the non-traditional path since people doing that helped me turn myself around.
Believe it or not some people do this because they have time to kill and want to help others, not ego stroke.
For a semester I was taking CS classes in Python and SQL which combined with most of my friends being computer engineers got me interested in software. During one of my internships almost 2 years ago I had the opportunity to work on a couple software deals and meet with a managing partner of a large tech buyout fund. Talking to him at length smoothed over some of the knowledge gaps I had and made me want to commit to learning more about the space.
It probably also helps that another of my internships was in BD and product development for a niche SAAS startup, so I was able to talk about how that got me interested in more mature market-specific software companies.