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July 31, 2026
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Congrats
First off congrats. Second off, I still think CD is going to be a different ball game from PE/HF. I got interviews for many CD roles at Mid/large firms but still struggled to get interviews at PE/IB.
CorpDev on the analyst level can be pretty depressing. For the most part you're living in Excel for 7 days a week and really don't get to touch any of the deals. maybe you'll see a few term sheets now and then. It's also pretty hard to move up in level since the managers usually come in from other firms. CorpDev for established companies with $50+ million budgets is great but CorpDev for a small startup like company is more like a glorified business development job. I think being on an M&A team will be much more fun. Congrats on that
I would still do IB then corp dev. You won't get the modeling skills that IB provides
I was at a large tech company and interviewed internally with Corp Dev / M&A and they were all prior IBs. Acquisition budget in the billions.
Definitely possible. I did 2 corpdev internships and got return offers for an analyst spot on both teams. Interning on the team is the easiest way to enter as an Analyst. One was at a large PE-backed financial services company and my other at a large public tech company where I joined full time as an analyst. Not trying to flex with all that, but in my opinion corp dev just sucks. Pay sucks, WLB isn't actually that good (in my experience), no upward progression especially if it's a small-mid sized team, and you can't move to PE. You could try to move to IB or a small/regional VC. I actually got some good modeling reps since we were highly acquisitive, but the strategy-oriented work I did was definitely the most fulfilling and taught me a lot about the industry (which was attractive to the VCs for recruitment purposes). I really hope they're paying you well because it's really not worth all this hassle when you realize you're only getting paid $5k more than the Financial Analyst counterparts at your company
What was the pay vs hours like in corp dev? Have been thinking of it as an exit op
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