I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. The mindless number crunching, logo resizing, PowerPoint formatting and endless pitches have not exactly won me over. For some context, I’m entering my second year at a BB in NYC. I went to a good school (Ivy, not HYP). I’ve had a tough first year in IB—I realize that I came in to take away skills, but the lack of predictability in my schedule has had a greater impact on me than I anticipated. I have had a hard time being super engaged at my job, and I think that rubbed some people the wrong way. My review didn’t go as well as I expected, and it’s made me think more deeply about what my next step should be. I went through a few interviews in on-cycle recruiting for PE in the fall and didn’t land anything, and took a step back from the process.
I have been weighing PE, VC, and joining a startup (at least Series A funding, thinking like a DoorDash) post-banking and would like to go to business school (preferably HSW). Before anyone gives me sh*t about this—I don’t anticipate b-school being a mandatory step. It’s expensive and I’d only be willing to pay for a school that would potentially have a very high ROIC for me personally. Here are my thoughts on each potential path:
PE – I was initially interested because it seems like it’d take away some of the unpredictability in my schedule, and would be a good platform to continue improving my technical skills. PE is interesting to me mainly because I’d prefer to work with just a few companies very closely over an extended period of time, versus having 10-15 accounts across a wide range of verticals where I can’t invest too much time in any one. I would like to not be in a client-driven environment, and to be given greater responsibility to evaluate and manage portfolio companies.
I would prefer to go to a smaller buyout fund, perhaps industry-focused (think Freeman Spogli). My fear with this route is that my review will keep me from getting a foot in the door, and that I don’t consider myself to be a “quant”. I can do the work but don’t think I’d be exceptional at it—and I don’t want to get average/subpar reviews/recommendations that would prevent me from going to one of my target schools. I’m not sure if I should be shying away from it because of this, or if I should just push through for the skills. Also know the best time to do PE is now since it’s much harder to get into post-MBA without pre-MBA experience.
High Growth Startup – I think my personality is truly a best fit for a startup, but am nervous about the risk here. I would really enjoy the opportunity to help a company scale, and from an internship I did at a startup I enjoyed the independence and room for creativity there is in startup environments. People actually welcome novel ways of thinking/doing things and things are constantly changing. I would want to go to a larger company and eventually be in a place where I can lead a team. I’m just worried that going this route will end up closing more doors for me in the long run, but am not super familiar with how going to a startup now could play out for me since I don’t have a lot of contacts in this space so advice is limited.
VC – the actual work/day-to-day in VC seems more interesting to me than PE, as I think meeting with founders and attending conferences/pitch events etc. would be a super interesting aspect of the job. I like the idea of working with early stage companies that are focused on manifesting their vision and would enjoy helping them work out the kinks along the way. I am under the impression that VC is a little less quantitative than PE (correct me if I’m wrong), which I believe would be beneficial for my current abilities. However, I understand that positions can be elusive and I’m not sure how doing VC vs PE impacts my chances at getting into one of my target schools, and potentially MBA recruiting if I want to exit VC. This is mostly based on everyone I’ve talked to in PE who gives the same “it’s harder to go from VC (or corp dev, or corp strat, or literally anything else) to PE than to go vice versa.” What if I go into VC and wish I’d just done PE?
Not sure if this matters at all, but will be applying to b-school as a woman, URM, athlete, 3.5 GPA. I need some help either planning out what the exit prospects would look like for these three paths, realistically how they would impact recruiting for other positions in b-school and beyond, whether I should be trying to do something interesting or just something that is more skill-based/technical at this stage in my career, etc. Any advice would be helpful in general. Sorry if any of this is vague, it’s my first post plz cut me some slack
It seems like banking is not a long term solution for you. Hours will be better as you become more senior, but working with boatloads of different companies and meeting as many people as possible will become more important as you climb the banking ladder.
I think a small/mid PE fund, with less rigid recruiting processes, could be a good option for you. You'll work with a handful of companies and your schedule usually revolves around regular business hours. The work is also less abstract, and your input could result in action in a short amount of time.
I wouldn't discard the VC/Growth route, but for me personally, I think the expected value of those paths are lower than for PE. In terms of work, the VC vs PE grunt work, is not that different but the people working in the two industries tend to be quite different. To oversimplify; you gotta choose between having strawberry flavored craft beer or Bud Light on tap at your firm's local waterhole.