I recently left BB IB in London after several years to kick-off some new venture soon, so have now some spare time and happy to run Q&A session
My background and career path is not that usual, but may be helpful for some of you to think about career options:
- Started working full-time while I was half-way through my technical university: fast-growing telecom operator where people cared about job you do, not time you spend around
- Closer to my university graduation faced McKinsey consultants first time and learned about consulting / IB / MBA and other corporate buzzwords (never heard before). I thought would be nice to be there
- Moved to telecom-oriented PE having limited corp fin knowledge, so had to learn on the go. They needed someone who understand what is capex and real cost of rolling out networks to control several billion budgets across portfolio
- My new team were mainly MBA/LLM from top schools and I thought would be nice to be there
- After spending some years working around portfolio management, M&A and range of corporate matters went to an MBA in a top European school. These were one of the best years in my life, change in priorities and personal growth
- Participated in IB recruitment and got summer internship and then full-time offer
- Started with EMEA TMT coverage and then moved to leveraged finance, sponsors coverage
- I have been actively involved in both MBA ASO and ANL recruitment and interviewing candidates
Happy to help with your career thoughts, I'll do my best with answers
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Among PE, IB/TMT and IB/lev fin, which did you prefer and why? Thanks
Thanks for the question!
I did like all of them, they were at a right time in my career and my personal choice. It did help me enormously to overcome difficulties and grow professionally. If you don't enjoy what you're doing, better find alternative right away, don't burn yourself.
- PE came as a once in lifetime chance to join team managing large corporates, key responsibility was to support our board representatives sipping through DD / valuation / other board materials. Once you have question you can call CFO and they will pick up phone at any time, you tell them when you want to meet. My weakness was lack of skills - I had very supportive colleagues and spent time reading CFA papers, attended courses on management to catch-up, but finally was not at a level of our advisors' knowledge. Did I really need it? Probably no - you need to help make a decision, be thorough in thinking and analysis, ask your advisors right questions and challenge them once needed. So it was working well for me until I said - I want to be as experienced and knowledgeable as our strategy consultants and bankers and left for an MBA and then to IB.
- IB is about having capacity to process lots of materials for specific event, ability to give great insight or access to sources of capital/terms that other banks struggle to achieve. They all require great machine and people, so at the end of the day all turns into processing and some thinking, very repetitive work. Your should satisfy any request from client as competition is tough and you have several of them in parallel plus pitching to have more - this creates endless hours. In lev fin hours were relatively better as you manage industry team helping you and capital markets tend to have periods when they are closed and you can breathe and relax. In telecoms you can spend new year night working for middle eastern client as their festive period is different. Or work on a global deal with MDs in San Francisco, Frankfurt and Singapore - no sleep guaranteed.
Exactly this crazy repetition and constant out of comfort zone in IB is what teaches you quickly for some skills that you would never obtain in usual life. Transaction experience is a best teacher and very soon you become knowledgeable deep enough to be very valuable for a client and have them come back. Then you start specialising and then all again becomes repetitive.
Principal thinking in PE vs execution / transaction focus in IB is a big difference, but what I have seen in many of large PEs - their junior teams are in reality same internal IB, their thinking lies higher in the ranks or they compete in a different way (larger transactions etc). So for PE size will matter, operations vs financing focus will matter. In IB having access to executions will matter - you can be in a bank or team that only pitching, it is not an experience you like to have.
Sorry for a bit long reply, let me know if you like some more clarity on any of the points
Excellent! Thanks for the very thorough and insightful descriptions of all three.
Bump
What are the possible struggles you can encounter when starting a new venture?
Great forward-looking question!
My whole career was hired professional job. It is very different when you risk your own money and can't rely on stability of your Xbn employer. Professional organisations in many instances offer way more attractive risk/reward compared to entrepreneurship. Many banks were still paying settlements related to 2008 bubble - out of my pocket as well as this clearly affects total bonus pool. Did those people who were liable many years ago for actual situation pay anything? I think they got their bonuses before the event and left the firm some time ago. What happens if a small business fails to forecast demand and is insolvent? Likely founder will loose equity and that may be painful.
Despite all the challenges I think entrepreneurship is place to be now as you have enormous dry powder to allocate and not that many people who can take it and execute real job. It is great challenge and with some equity incentive may be rewarding as well.
I am trying to use my past experience at each turn of my life as much as possible, thus venture is about raising capital to acquire stable and cash generative business and manage it. So I may fail to persuade investors to provide me funding or target may be sold to a higher bid just because they have synergies. My gut feel that entrepreneurship here is not about avoiding all risks - you can't predict future - but about how you react and overcome these difficulties. I have plan in my mind and tried to think about each next step as much as possible, but honest answer to your question is - I don't know those real struggles. I just know that I can make it happen.
Not sure if you're from Europe initially and just stayed local, but did you have any coworkers from the US and/or classmates at your MBA from the US? Asking for those Americans that are considering a move to EU either to study or work, or both.
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