Comp check — Associate at small first-time Swiss PE fund (CHF 90k base + deal fees + 0.5% carry). Fair or getting squeezed?
Looking for a sanity check from people who know small fund / lower-MM PE comp.
Setup: Small buy-and-build PE shop based in Switzerland, deals in CH and Germany, first fund launching this summer. I was the first hire two years ago and have been full-time since finishing my MSc at a Swiss university a year ago. Very lean team. I effectively run two buy-and-build platforms day to day and I'm one of the only persons in the firm successfully doing proprietary origination (cold outreach, building owner relationships, getting deals done).
Proposed package with the new fund:
- Base: CHF 90k
- Bonus: ~25% of base, supposedly close to guaranteed
- Deal fees: 0.5% of EV on deals I source proprietarily, capped at 100k/year. Realistic volume is 2-3 closed deals a year at maybe 1-10m EV each, and only if I go flat out. So the cap is unreachable and realistically this pays idk 20-40k in a good year.
- Carry: ~0.5% of the carry pool (not fully confirmed yet). The GP's own mid-case puts that at ~CHF 400k over 6-8 years, but that mid-case assumes ~5x MoM / ~60% IRR. Buy-and-build at low entry multiples, they model aggressive returns.
- Co-invest at GP terms is possible, but if I ever leave, the terms effectively flip against me to LP conditions for the remaining part. So real money in means a hard lock-in and basically zero negotiating leverage afterwards.
The firm's stated philosophy is low fixed comp, performance-based upside.
My questions:
- Is this package market for someone one year out of grad school but with genuine origination and platform responsibility at a micro fund? I am employeed as an Associate, however, work fulltime in PE only since 1 year.
- Deal fees: what structures have you seen for employees who source proprietary deals? Is % of EV with a cap standard, and at what levels? For context, external advisors would charge a multiple of this.
- Carry: how do you sanity-check what 0.5% is worth when the GP models 5x/60% IRR? What would you discount that to? At GP terms, the same ~400k outcome would only require a co-invest commitment of maybe 60-80k, which makes the carry feel a lot less generous than it sounds.
- Co-invest with a leaver flip: how would you think about committing meaningful personal money when leaving kills your terms (LP conditions -fees, carried)?
Appreciate any input. How would you rate my total package overall? And please feel free to just drop the full comp packages you know or have had at a similar level (first/second year out of grad school, small funds), base, bonus, carry, fees, everything. That's honestly the most useful benchmark for me.
Sounds to me like you have 2 years of experience and being offered ~110k guaranteed comp.
And then you might get some bonus upside / sourcing bonus, so in a good year you’ll then make ~140-160k total?
The carry is maybe worth half what they quote you and you should discount that quite heavily in my opinion given timing/uncertainty of payout. So perhaps 200k discounted at 10-15%?
It’s probably not top of market but sounds fair for a small cap fund in Switzerland?
Only question is if you should get a premium / more upside for being an early employee.
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