Qatalyst Reputation in 2019
I know there have been a few threads on this, but they all seem to be a couple years old.
Is Qatalyst still considered a top shop in 2019? I know GS has been on the bigger tech deals this year and haven't seen Q on as many, are they still considered a legitimate competitor? How does the firm stack up to MS Menlo, and perhaps some of the other players in the tech space (JPM, Centerview, Moelis, Credit Suisse, etc...)
Does anyone have any information on their compensation/exit opps coming out of the bank? Are there any banks you would take/not take over Qatalyst if you were looking to work in the tech banking sector? Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.
Nope. Qatalyst is all washed up now. Imperva, Qualtrics, Hortonworks, Apptio, Looker, all completely irrelevant deals. Probably in the same league as Tobin and Co at this point.
Don't disrespect Tobin & co like that
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Qatalyst is the best tech bank in SF, with a slight edge over Goldman and MS. I'm just a student, but have networked with a few people from each office. Qatalyst people really wowed me and from their tombstones, you can see they're doing top notch deals daily every year
Not best for exits though.
Eh even that is debatable. Those who exited from the last analyst class of 4 people all exited to top 5/10 VC shops. I networked with the office, everyone there is much more into VC, and the exits reflect that
The “Q doesn’t have good exits” statement always makes me laugh. Every recruiter in the world will know Qatalyst, and every MF private equity firm in the world will know Google / Fitbit, SAP / Qualtrics and the like. Your analyst experience at Q doing sell side M&A deals is gonna prepare you well and be way more appealing to a private equity firm than working on random debt offerings or IPOs at a bulge bracket bank. It all comes down to preference of the juniors at the firm and what they enjoy working on after their banking stint
Quattrone stepped down as CEO in 2016, take a look at the deals they’ve done since then. Pretty sure over $200 billion in deals over 2 years does not count as “living off the fumes”, especially when you have guys like boutros still leading the firm. The former heads of TMT banking at CS, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley (consumer tech) as well as several MD's from GS and JPM are all at Qatalyst, I'm sure they'll be fine.