Anyone have info at all on this program?
Claims to be the "number-one most-applied-to job among graduating MBA students at The Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School, and Wharton."
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From what I gather they hire dozens of MBAs a year and give them all the CEO title or a path to it. It’s basically just blatant title inflation. For example they’ll have a holdco with a real CEO at the top and do a rollup of regional services or small software businesses and call each of the regional leaders CEOs. In the real world they’re just called general or regional managers. They sell that really well to MBA students. A few obviously become real CEOs.
Ahh makes sense. Do you think there's a world where the title inflation is useful and accelerates your career? For example, do the Alpine job for 3-5 years and then exit to a leadership position in a f500
Zero chance.
If that’s really your end goal, your question betrays a lack of understanding as to how these F500 leadership roles get filled. It typically involves decades at 1 or 2 companies and a mountain of politics and bureaucracy.
If your goal is X job, a good bet is to look at people who have/have had X job and see the path they went down. At a place like F500 mgmt, that’s a very tried and tested playbook with next to no deviation.
LMM to some of the largest companies in the USA lol
There's more info on Reddit, but the above is correct. Extreme title inflation to attract better candidates, at the end of the day it's a LMM PE operating role and usually in a random city. If you want to be in a portco role, sure - comp is pretty good. If you want to be a PE investor, keep looking.
Any idea what comp is like?
All from Reddit so grain of salt, but $260k cash + equity in your portco
I would take that marketing as the most sought-after title with a grain of salt (given b-schools hold that data tightly). I imagine any PE Investing role / MBB is up there in terms of competition, having gone to one of these schools.
I would say all-in-all this position is attractive if you know you would like to be an operator, want to be in a real decision-making seat day-1 (vs. going through a general management rotational program), and (to a lesser extent), worked at an MBB before business school given network/training. While compensation is probably higher than the rotational program by virtue of being associated with PE, I personally would be focused on the role/responsibilities you'd actually cover (along with how that would scale if a company grows). There is still a world where going to a Danaher / equivalent is a better gig than this long-term given the brand, training, reputation, network, etc.. Same goes with an MBB -> Operator role if you haven't experienced this already, given this is tried and true path and you benefit from the network, diversity of projects, etc.
Would give the role a 7-8/10. A great gig but not a no-brainer/best gig on the market for everyone, as it's marketed.
All good info in this post and from what I've heard, the all-in year one cash comp is ~$250k, so that $260k figure sounds right to me. This is a couple years stale, but I don't think it's changed much, back when I looked at it, it was $200k base with 20-30% bonus based on the business. Pretty much puts you in line with all-in MBB.
I think when this CXO program was more novel 5-10 years ago, you were likely be put into more impactful role to start. The classes were smaller, the roles were more limited, and there was more of am emphasis on keeping talent in house. They've really expanded the program over the past couple of years and now have multiple derivatives of the program, CFO in training, Investor in Residence, etc all basically with the same general idea of getting post-MBA folks to work in small-ish services businesses in some capacity. I do think there is some merit to learning the Alpine method of operations as it's clearly been proven to be successful, but given that the program has expanded so much, I honestly think that if this is really the route you want to go, you'd be better off just raising a search fund and keeping the economics yourself. I've heard of some folks getting hired as the "CEO" of some really small services businesses, like sub $5M in revenue roofing businesses in the middle of nowhere and getting hired as the regional GM. Sure, some folks grind it out and more up to a regional role and then eventually to the top, but I think that was much more common 5 years ago as these platforms were getting off of the ground. Alpine is agressive enough now in each category so to me there's less whitespace to becoming the CEO of a $100M+ revenue businesses a couple of years post-MBA. Typically, once that company starts to scale, they put in more serious folks.
All that said, if you want to roll the dice on getting a good opportunity and know you want to go the PE ops route, it's a good option. I've seen a mix of some home run successes and I've also seen folks do it for a year and realize that $250k to live in Idaho isn't quite worth it.
That 250k number includes options monetized at exit. It's like 150 base, 25k bonus, some sign on bonus and then assumed options at an assumed exit (for their portco) reaching 250k
I looked into this before (was getting recruited after my first year post mba in IB), and thought upfront cash in our high inflation environment to be too low (and the open portco roles were near Boston and seattle).
Interesting, was that explicity an offer for the CIT program? Or just a CXO type of role at an Alpine rollup? I recruited for the CIT specifically and they told me $250k cash, but I guess that could have been "cash" including monetized options, which would be deceptive.
I guess one more small insight I'd add is that the CIT program vs a role at an Alpine company aren't necessarily the same. The CIT comes with more training, specialized attention, etc, whereas you can just be recruited for a portco role at an Alpine company, which often times isn't quite as prestigious. The CIT program itself only takes a handful of people/year (even though I'm sure that's expanded since I last recruited), whereas I know of folks from my year in B-School who didn't get the CIT program, but ended up in roles at AlpineX or Evergree or other Alpine platforms in CXO types of roles. Sounds like the comp might be variable across the roles.
Cxo. Let me see if I can find the comp slide deck and upload it here
Lol. Thats peanuts compared to more traditional PE exits from a place like GSB or HBS. Post-MBA comp at a GTCR or Warburg is like $500-700k cash, plus $5-10m in carry.
ok, adding the comp here (sorry realize this isnt Alpine but shorehill who also has a similar program, assume they comp similar) (they sent this to me unsolicited and I didnt sign any NDA, dont care about sharing their decks here). overall wasnt impressed by it enough to do it (but for some, it could be a great opportunity).
the "co-invest" opportunity being prorated as part of total comp is pretty stupid imo (yeah let me just dump 50k into LMM PE portcos as a post MBA grad with grad school debt.....)
Could you provide the deck?
Some really confusing presentation and comparisons. "Avg 4-year Comp: Priceless"? which serious deck would have that?
A deck that is MARKETING $325k annual comp post-MBA to a GSB/HBS grad. You’d make more than that going to work at Harris Williams. And that comp figure included upside from the equity/promote.
Can’t believe they dupe unsuspecting MBAs into this.
You can find the people in this program on LinkedIn, their title is Operating Executive at Alpine Investors. They tend to have pretty unimpressive backgrounds — nobody I found from a quick skim worked at MBB/BB/EB/tech, and certainly nobody I found was coming from buyside roles. Perhaps there’s rare exceptions, but the traditional background is something like FP&A at Walmart (completely made up example) and then a top MBA.
I like his message but the guy who runs Alpine annoys me.
He waxes poetic about finding a mentor, how everyone has a chance, and all that other bs, then only caters to the most elite MBA programs and himself was private educated and then went to Princeton.
Not sure how this can be targeted at one individual. Like Alpine or not (I'm indifferent and work at a rival firm), that's the industry. Last I checked, there aren't any reputable PE firms, especially one's with a similar track record, that are hiring from the University of Phoenix. Ivy leagues and other so called "elite" institutions in the US and around the world are built on exclusivity. So, for the highest paying organizations, where you went is a "signal". I don't think it's right but thus is life. Orlando Bravo does the same shit.
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