Best time to go to a Family Office from PE

It seems as though for any PE investment professional, the though of joining a lean deal team at single family office (think $400m - $2B AUM) will inevitably come up as an option at some point. Assuming doing direct deals, fund investments and coinvest.

Does anyone have thoughts on when the best time to make the jump is? Senior Associate vs VP vs Partner level. Seems like a decent WLB and strong comp and even better if you like the family & the team but risk of a lack of mobility/upward trajectory if you join too soon? Any benefits to joining earlier?

Would love to hear thoughts from anyone who's made the move or is considering it.

5 Comments
 

As senior as possible. Know several people at family offices and juniors do mostly boring deal admin and get paid reasonably okay with phantom or no carry. The only people maximising it is the CIO/CEO who just wines and dines, does a few comments and then banks half a mill plus incentives. They also sit in these positions for 20 years playing politics with the family so big ceiling for promotion

 

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