Two career options – risk/reward tradeoff

I graduated from college in May. I love working hard but haven't found my "aha" niche in finance. I currently work in MM lending at a top IB. I hustle and stand out, but I am not learning as much as I would like, and my group's exit opps aren't good (small exposure to modeling). Lateraling internally is possible, but is typically done at the completion of the 3 year analyst program (2022).

My goal for the first few years of my career is to work in a position that maximizes my career-freedom / exit opps. Ex: if I work at a top IB and want to switch roles my options are wider than if I were a bank teller, because of the experience/network. I hate feeling like my options are restricted. This is one of the reasons I want to work in IB, and early in my career. I would hustle, hopefully like my group and try to climb up, but if not I can move to another group.

A close mentor is looking to hire a couple of analysts to his boutique IB firm. They focus on convertible offerings, perpetual preffered offerings, IPOs, PIPEs, minimum M&A. Most transactions are in the range of $xMM - $xxMM for healthcare companies (some TMT). It's an extremely lean team - I would work directly with senior MDs.

This opportunity is faster paced, promotes more learning, but doesn't necessarily have better exit opps. If I went down this path, I would hope I could use this experience to switch into a prestigious IB/PE role (keeping with the "maximizing career freedom path" - but this seems rather unlikely). However I wouldn't love to work under my mentor while thinking of what the next step is. Or I would hope to deepen my connection with my mentor and follow him when he moves around to other jobs, though he doesn't seem likely to switch into a larger IB. Alternatively, I can stay in my current role, advance the big fish/small pond narrative, and try to lateral in IB. This may not be possible until mid-2022 though.

I would highly appreciate career trajectory advice from someone with more work experience. I'm torn between staying patient and trying to lateral internally down the line (ideally in 2020, but perhaps not until 2022...), versus switching into this boutique IB and developing my finance skills/connection with senior MDs faster, but I don't know how effective this will be if the bankers stay at this firm and there is little brand equity for when I wish to switch into higher IB/PE.

Any insight is appreciated. Thanks.