Feeling stuck and uncertain where to start my career

Hi,

as the title hints, I'm feeling a bit lost and unsure in which direction I want to start my career in. To give some background:

Completed my Bachelor’s at a European target university with above average grades. Took a gap year after graduating to get some more work experience through internships. Started a two-year Master’s program after that and currently have around 9-10 months left until I graduate. I completed my internships in different fields within the financial services industry (Big4, PE, IB, VC/Growth, all at well-known firms). After my last internship, I founded my own startup together with a friend in parallel to my Master studies. Unfortunately, we had to close our business after a little more than a year because we couldn’t get enough traction with our product (fully bootstrapped, no outside funding). I underestimated the workload of a full-time Master’s program in parallel to running a business, which unfortunately led to a pretty significant decline in my GPA compared to my grades from undergrad and high school.

I enjoyed being a founder and would start a company again but only with the right idea and the right people at the right time, not just for the sake of being self-employed. Therefore, I’m currently considering my options after I completed my Master’s program.

Looking back on my internship experiences, VC/Growth feels like the only field where I would consider ultimately pursuing a career in. I absolutely hated banking and found the work dull and repetitive. Don’t get me wrong, I see the benefits a career in IB brings and appreciate the skills that you develop along the way, but the extremely long hours combined with work on weekends is just too much for me and does not justify the higher pay imo. I love spending time with my friends & family and even the three-month internship was a tough challenge for me (respect to anyone who still pushes through it though, I couldn’t do it for longer than a year).

I found PE to be more intellectually stimulating but had the feeling that the culture is pretty much the same as in banking (especially at MFs) since almost 100% of most teams consist of former bankers or consultants. Also, I feel like it doesn’t make much difference if you have a 65-70 or 85-90 hour week. If you come home after 11pm there is no more time for hobbies/friends anyways.

I enjoyed VC/Growth much more. No nonsense facetime-culture, people who come from different backgrounds (tech, former founders, scientists etc.), interesting companies and interesting founders. The issue is that VC/Growth firms very rarely recruit straight out of uni (especially at the moment). Also, recruiting seems much more random to me (no advertised positions, comes down to timing and knowing someone at the firm). As I didn’t know what to do, I half-heartedly applied for a couple of internships at two different VC firms recently and received an interview invite for both. However, I was rejected by one of them and ended the recruiting process for the other one prematurely because they were extremely research-heavy and told me that they don’t hire straight out of uni. I figured that another internship after my studies is therefore unnecessary, since I can just start working straight away.

Right now, I am feeling a bit stuck because it’s very unlikely that I will be able to get an analyst position in the only field that I enjoyed so far. I also don’t want to waste time on additional internships where there is only a slim chance to transition into a full-time role. I thought about consulting or joining a venture-backed startup but I’m a bit hesitant to join an industry I have not worked in before.

Are there any people here who were in a similar situation? What did you decide to pursue? What do you do today? How important are by (bad) Master grades in this context? Also: was it difficult to start your career in a new city? Are there any people who took a less attractive offer to be closer to your friends/family? Do you regret it or are glad that you made this decision?

On a side note: for some reason, in all of my PE/VC interviews I felt like the dumbest person in the room. Particularly the commercial questions gave me a hard time and I sometimes feel like I couldn’t source and execute a good investment by myself. What does it take to be a good investor and what would you recommend me to do to be better prepared (readings, habits, courses, work) to become a good investor?

Thanks a lot for your answers, I highly appreciate it.