Building ECs - Society position or business?
Hi there,
In terms of building my ECs for upcoming SA applications (London-based), would I be better served by putting my time towards scaling my business (E-Commerce, mid-6-figure revenue, potential to grow to low 7-figures by next year with enough time invested) or taking up a (likely equally time-consuming) role like President of a finance-related society at my uni? Which would be looked upon preferably?
Many thanks!
Get a leadership position on a finance soc, not president (should be v low intensity work). That will show you have the interest in IB on your CV and you still get plenty of time to work on the business.
Agreed, but only if this position takes no time away from your biz. If you can have a 7 figure revenue biz on your resume, that's far and away more impressive than the same finance clubs that every single applicant has.
This was kinda my conundrum, do I want to get what everyone else is getting or do I want to pursue something unique (but potentially less relevant and thus less highly-regarded)
I'm just in university like you, but if I were reviewing hundreds of resumes and all of them had finance clubs and one had "founded a business that pulls revenue in the millions" the latter is gonna get the interview hands down, no contest (assuming everything else is close to equal). If you can join a finance club that meets once a week for an hour and this wouldn't detract from your business, then go ahead and do that as well to cover all your bases, but if these are mutually exclusive then it's not even close.
I suppose not necessarily mutually exclusive, especially if I could get a low-effort position in a society. But yeah seems like the smart thing to do is prioritise the business for the time being.
why would you recruit for IB when you can earn 6 figures running your own business
Well plan A has always been to stay growing the business rather than getting a job after uni. However, my thought process with recruiting is also that, I'm already doing an econ degree at a target so I may as well utilise that to get a decent internship under my belt so that in the case of plan A going tits up, at least my plan B will improve as I'll have a more solid CV to hopefully allow me to compete for 'better' roles.
It is something I've wrestled with for a while though so if you think I'm being crazy taking any focus off my business, please tell me haha!
Scaling the business is the obvious answer imo. If you really are able to scale the business from let's say 500k to 1500k revenue, with an EBITDA margin of 5% (lower side of quick google search, not into e-commerce myself), you are creating 50K EBITDA * whatever appropriate multiple of value within a year.
Haven't started full time yet so not speaking from interviewing experience from industry viewpoint, but I think above scenario is far more impressive than leading a student run organisation. If you are considering PE SAs, they will absolutely love this as they love to tout their entrepreneurial spirit. Bankers should be interested as well, but have your 'why not PE' story ready.
Get the most important sounding title with the least amount of responsibilities in a random investing club to tick the box of finance ECs like "President of TMT Sector Team".
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