Cold calling for PE firm
I recently interviewed with a small PE firm (15-20 employees) in NYC. On the job description, it said that analysts would be helping negotiate deals and strategizing for current acquisitions. But in the interview, they made it very clear that 100% of our time would be dedicated to cold calling CEOs, often repeatedly. Is this normal, or is this firm a red flag?
Based on the most helpful WSO content, cold calling is a common task for analysts in various roles, including real estate private equity (REPE) and development. Here are some insights:
Cold Calling in Real Estate PE and Development:
Success Stories:
Industry Expectations:
Concerns:
In summary, while cold calling is a standard and often essential part of analyst roles in real estate PE and development, a firm should be clear and transparent about job responsibilities. If the interview reveals a significant deviation from the job description, it may warrant further consideration or clarification.
Sources: Random cold call from analyst lead to fantastic deal, Random cold call from analyst lead to fantastic deal, Cold Calling in Acquisitions at a Developer, Cold feet and dread, Analyst Question
Red flag if your goals are similar to most people who post here.
There are buyout (usually growth though mainly / in addition) firms that do this — it is viewed as inferior experience relative to traditional PE associate roles which is viewed as superior.
If you learn to source deals as an analyst, you have just developed the most important skill in PE at a young age.
That said, is sitting around making cold calls trying to make lowball offers to business owners all day what you really want to do? It’s brutal work.
What shops offer a good mix of the two? I know there’s TA, Insight, firms like TriVest - any others?
Also need to realize that sourcing means much different things at different investment sizes / firm archetypes.
At LMM (first institutional ownership, 5-20m ebitda sweet spot) — I’m less familiar but I think a lot of these come from various sources like lawyers and brokers based on my friends experiences. Then you sell the owner on it, I think.
Mm/UMM (generally buying from other PE, 30-100m EBITDA) — these are all banked processes. The name of the game is getting ahead of the process by knowing the selling sponsor and the bankers and keeping those relationships warm and participating in processes. On the other end, you have to build internal conviction around names ahead of process launch, which can mean content creation that is made grueling by the lack of a concrete quid pro quo sometimes. Some smaller MM stuff probably has shades of LMM vibes and as you get larger the UMM assets are targeted by “UMM and MF archetype firms” for lack of a perfect mece way to discuss such topics.
MF (overlaps with UMM, and extends up to the mega buyout range including large take privates): similar to UMM. Gets more corporate and you do more work internally. On the complex stuff like take privates or rx deals, you work more with bankers.
So one takeaway is that the cold calling you do at firms like TA is prob only really helpful skill building for SOME LMM, and some smaller growth equity.
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