College—> Cushy PE Job Pipeline

I should first applaud you for engaging in a supremely thoughtful approach towards envisioning the career you seek to build. This line of thinking will take you far.

I am a few months from leaving my IB stint after two years at a solid BB. Like you, I had interned at a smaller and WLB balanced fund while in college. The only finance relevant experience I had was a biz dev internship before that which was really relevant in the end lol. I chose to recruit for IB in the end even after being told there was full time potential for me at that fund because of the same worries you spoke on.

I agonized about that decision a good amount while grinding especially over the last year when M&A activity has picked up. But I can say that it would have been a long time before I was anywhere near as technically skilled as I am now if I stayed at that fund as an analyst. Even if everyone around you is super nice and speaks to how great the culture is the calculus you take as a junior professional vs someone more senior is different. All college kids need reps and IB for all its woes gives you that exactly.

I would also ask around to see if you have upwards mobility for promotions and see what the exits are like for those who leave. An analyst who gets promoted to associate but lacks a lot of skills they would get in structured training is going to have a rough go at lateral recruiting even if they already are in private equity. That is not to say this fund is not a good one as I do not have a lot of details to make that assessment like track record, AUM, investment type, sourcing vs execution focus for juniors, partner pedigree, and so on.

Currently at a more chill fund and I think it’s a reasonable concern. Would still take this job over anything else because the lifestyle is so good. You just need to make sure you work hard enough to learn because if this doesn’t work out you still need real skills. It’s a bit of a dilemma being in one of the best possible spots. Everywhere else would be worse in comparison. But I came from such a sweaty bank that anywhere I went after would have been an improvement. Can’t optimize everything, sometimes you just have to go for it and see how it goes.

I'm in an extremely similar position. I recently started FT as an analyst at a LMM PE shop (20 people) after interning here for one year. Currently, I am working ~40 hours a week but I feel like I'm really not learning that much, especially technical skills. Most of my tasks are related to our firms CRM and other business development related projects and part of me feels like I am missing out on "grinding" and really honing my technical abilities. 

The WLB, benefits, and pay are good for what I am currently doing. Candidly, I am a little bored and wouldn't be opposed to trying something else out. However, I really enjoy the people that work here and they specifically created this position for me, as they have never hired anyone below the associate level. I think breaking into IB would be difficult from my position and I'm not sure if I would even want to work in IB after being on the other side. 

Been full time for a little over two months now. I feel like I learned more as an intern than I have as a FT analyst. Would be interested to hear others perspective on my situation too.

If you do get a return offer, why don't you straight up ask the people working there if they think it would be a good idea for you to gun for an IB gig first, and then join them after your 2 year stint?

This will benefit them in the long run since they don't have to spend any time training you. If they're worried you will recruit for some other place, then you can ask them about deferring your offer for at least a year or two.

It's a good question and one that you'll get a different answer from depending on who you ask. The pros to your situation is that that at the end of the day, PE is an apprenticeship, the more deals you see and do, the better you'll be at doing deals, generally speaking. Modeling, building decks, etc are ultimately a means to an end. They are an important skillset if you want to rise up the ranks in a traditional firm, but if you're ok with being at a smaller firm you probably don't need as rigorous of a training in that skillset. You also know the people at your firm and they value you and your work, which is 80% of the battle at any job. Starting at a LMM PE firm, especially one that has room to grow (something I'll touch on in a bit) is not a bad career move at all. If the fund does well, you could end up in a much better position overall compared to your peers.

Now the devils' advocate position is that if you have access to more traditional and prestigious banking roles out of undergrad, so you go to a target school, have the grades/skills to end up at a top BB, your ceiling is ultimately much higher in terms of the types of firms you could go to. Yes the work life will be bad for a couple of years, but you'll have the optionality to end up at a megafund or at a top business school whereas starting in the LMM will limit your optionality down the line. Even if you got an amazing experience for a couple of years as a PE analyst and potentially a PE associate, coming from a non-brand name shop, it's unlikely you'll ever have a shot at an Apollo or the likes.

Now again, not necessarily a bad thing, and plenty of people do banking only to realize that the dream would be a chill, lifestyle PE shop, but if you're the type of person who will always wonder or if you have the ability to start on a more traditional path, it's something worth considering.

Personally, if I were you, I'd grind hard for the rest of the summer, get a return offer, and then assuming you're going back for Senior year next year, recruit during the year to see if anything better comes up. I'd also start asking more questions of your fund to assess who the LPs are, how the investments in the fund are performing, what the plan is for future fundraises, etc. To the extent you can access any fund level performance info, that would be helpful. Basically you want to make sure that the fund is doing well, on target to raise a larger fund in the next year or two, and has Partners who are good fundraising and solid investors. You'd be surprised at how much people get a lucky connection that allows them to raise money for a first time fund and then they end up squandering it. Lastly, I'd think about your own personal situation in light of what I said above, are you at HYPS or some other Ivy League school where you think you could pretty easily recruit for a top banking/consulting gig? Or are you at a Semi-Target/Non-Target where working at your current firm would be a big win. Are you a prestige person? Will you be jealous of your peers who work 100 hours a week, but go from MS M&A to H&F and are making $500k/year? Or will you be happy making half of that, but having a life. If things at your fund stagnate, will you be ok going back to a mid-tier business school, pivoting into a Corp Dev role, or going to another LMM/MM firm or will you lament the lack of optionality as you don't have the brand/training of your peers?

You're an adult now and despite what people on this forum tell you, there's lots of paths to success. As long as you accept the potential limitation down the line, staying where you are would be an amazing place to start your career. That send if you'll always wonder what-if, maybe push a little harder senior year and try to give yourself some more optionality. Reneging on an offer is tough, but at the end of the day you have to look out for yourself. Keep your options open, do some soul-searching, and you'll be just fine.