I really like private equity, but I’m not sure yet if I want to follow this path my whole career. Would you say that, let’s say at VP level, you are ready to leave and run a business/pursue a CEO/CFO position? Does PE prepares you for this?
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Yes and no. If you've been a lifetime banker/PE professional I think of it kind of like a quote from the movie Rounders, to paraphrase "You'll see all the angles, but you'll never have the fucking stones to play one."
Conceptually you'll think you'll know what it takes to run and operate a business, but to actually execute is a different story. Just to take one discrete part of a business, sales. As a VP at a MM PE firm, have you ever been a sales person, managed sales people, set quotas, managed a closing motion, set up sales tools and infrastructure? How about for marketing? product? legal? etc.
While that stuff isn't rocket science, usually a good CEO generally has superpowers in a few of those areas and can extrapolate to others. Coming from PE, you'll presumable know finance/ops pretty well, which is a start, but obviously there's a ton of other things that you'll be the chief decision maker on, not to mention the interpersonal element of running a business and managing people.
Good investors aren't necessarily good operators and in fact, they rarely are. The skillset that is needed to be a great GP of a fund is different than being a CEO. With that being said, being in PE, especially at the LMM and MM levels and with funds that are highly operationally involved will give you a sense of what it takes and perhaps even tastes of what it takes to be an operator. PE is a selective enough field that you'll usually be able to work your way into Finance/Ops/Strategy related roles and work your way up from there.