Careers after MBA for PE associates?
Lucky enough to get in to H/S as a MF PE associate. Team has verbalized I’m a strong performer and am on track for return offer post MBA but am feeling very burned out of PE and don’t see myself wanting to come back.
What are the best career options to be thinking about for a jaded PE associate post MBA? I like the work enough currently but just can’t keep working 100 hours for the next 10 years and don’t think there is every really light in the end of the tunnel anymore (all the more junior partners I work for still clock crazy hours and never see their families while senior partners scoop up all the economics). Gotten very jaded about the role and don’t really see a happy life staying in MF PE. Lots of good threads recently on this topic so won’t go into detail but currently leaning away from this career path.
Is the move to go down market to a smaller PE fund? Growth equity or VC? Family office? Hedge fund?
Want to find something that still pays well (hard to turn down a $500k+ PE VP offer) and has good upside in long term but lets me work something in the realm of 60-80 hours a week vs 100+ forever. Have the classic 2+2 background.
More importantly, how do you go about figuring out what makes the most sense? I think I like “investing” and think I have decent enough instincts but no idea how that will translate to a hedge fund, VC, etc. Know that MBA is my chance to take stock and decide on a career path role and would welcome any advice.
Following
Following - very curious.
See if you can explore other strategies or asset classes during your MBA. Not every fund is pulling insane hours and you can get economics at smaller shops that provide enough upside to be worth your time. Cash comp is understandably lower but factoring your personal time it may be worth it. The MBA is a great pivot point and you’re coming in with basically the best possible background to be given the benefit of the doubt as a smart, pedigreed person looking to give something new a shot.
Assuming you want to stay in investing and also want reasonably high cash comp (thus I’m excluding VC), you should probably try to intern at a LO equities shop, SM hedge fund, or private markets in a better WLB area, like secondaries. You already know the PE life, and tbh life as a VP at another shop is likely not significantly better or different as compared to other areas of finance.
Maybe I'm too biased, but do anything except for PE over the summer. I personally find it incredibly stupid to waste the one single summer you have full control over and use it doing the exact same job that you know you hate.
Apologies if this is included in any of your previous comments, but have you gone to business school?
The reason I ask is that I'm currently in business school and this was my view coming in (and what I largely agree with tbh), though I'm working with an exploding PE offer right now for the summer and debating whether to take or not. Have heard it's been a rough hiring market across the board and especially out of business school programs so would be curious to hear your perspective on this.
What abt growth equity / VC? Not taking into account cash comp.
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The days of PE associates walking into H/S are sadly over...it's like 50% H/S at a lot of MFs now
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Maybe become an allocator / LP?
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H/S grad here so I don’t say this lightly. You should seriously consider skipping H/S if you are just going to end up in a role that doesn’t need it where you are trading lower comp for better lifestyle. The savings of 2 years of working instead of burning cash will help ease the sting of taking a lifestyle role. If you burn $400k of cash and opportunity cost to get a role in private credit that you could get today you may regret it. To me, H/S is worth it if you use it to step up into a higher paying path.
I don't think the people coming from PE going into a top MBA are primarily solving for higher comp, so it's debatable how much the cost / opportunity cost of $ factors in. Basically any area of investing would already be open to someone. People do the 2 years because it's an experience you don't always get when you've been slaving away the last 4-5 years, and know that whatever they end up doing the real $ will come later anyway. Anyways, it's a personal choice but none of my friends who went and then did Corp Dev or back into an investing seat they already had regret it because that's not really why they went in the first place.
H/S grad here. Definitely go.
Explore the more emerging asset classes - private credit, hybrid, infra, etc. You can also sample some of the even more high beta stuff like start-ups, search funds, corp dev, cypto.
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