Does anyone know much about this group in Palo Alto or NY? Deal flow, culture, WLB, comp, interview process, prestige, etc? I know Advent is a top-performing megafund but I am curious about this group in particular.
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Heard very good things about the culture, team, and work content. Good deal flow / okay WLB. As you said, group is split between Palo Alto and NY but I’d guess they are always in sync. Seems like they had a very good first fund deployment and are healthily growing AUM. Investment mandate cuts across industry verticals and team is flexible on buyout vs. minority investment. Interview structure is likely similar to the other consulting friendly groups: Paper LBO, case study, fit & industry questions, and maybe a model if you have banking background.
Ty! Can you elaborate on anything you've heard on the WLB side? And do you know if there's any sourcing (Summit style cold calling) at the associate level?
No sourcing or cold calling involved. WLB won’t be any different from the other UMM / MF. Remember, the tech group is relatively new and is perhaps a growth engine for Advent as a whole which means WLB will be “intense” but tapered by a “collegial” culture.
Tech is a focus of the firm going forward. They’ve done tech deals across industries, including some large ones (McAfee take-private recently). The flagship is raising a $23-25bn fund and they recently raised a separate Tech fund, so looks like the group will be busy
The Tech fund and minority strategy is pretty new, only 3 years old. They have done tech for a while but it was classic buyout deals in EBITDA businesses. Went out and hired a ton of ex-TPG people, raised the new fund, and started doing minority deals. Probably too soon to tell if they're good although TPG built a great franchise and Advent had a lot of wins last year (Definitive Healthcare and CCC in the old buyout strategy were IPOs, Tekion and Thrasio in the minority strategy both been significantly marked up).
Culturally the people are smart and have a little more personality than your average MF (not a high bar). They go VERY deep in industries and are heavily thesis-driven. Also get pretty creative with deal structures e.g. the Nielsen carveout
They're still a tier below Vista / Thoma Bravo in the tech buyout world but it's a great place and you could do a lot worse!
It’s new and thus not very well known which is why you won’t find much about it here, but I’ve done a good amount of research into this group and wouldn’t recommend it. Advent is generally a solid brand, but don’t let that blind you into thinking that automatically makes this a solid group.
For starters, Associates are expected to source (despite what another commenter says). You can even read it in the descriptions on many of the team bios. Nothing wrong with sourcing, but it’s not really a part of the traditional PE or UMM/MF experience.
On that note, this group is quite siloed and separate from the rest of Advent. It also operates out of a separate fund that’s meaningfully smaller than the firm’s main and flagship fund. It's also the only Advent group on the West Coast (but it's not in SF - more on that at the end).
In part, that’s because the fund is new, but I also don’t think the fund is looking very successful. They invest heavily in growth tech during the huge valuation boom, and from the public numbers I can find for some investments, it looks like they paid a pretty high premium. However, those types of investments are all getting massive write-downs right now. For example, Thrasio, one of their main and highly advertised investments, is getting absolutely destroyed. Massive layoffs, replaced the CEO, etc. and its future isn’t looking very bright as that whole category looks to be on the decline now. The entire tech category is getting beaten down at the same time, which isn’t great for a new team like theirs.
It’s not a bad place to be, but if you’re looking for traditional PE, there are tons of better and more established firms (both in and out of tech), and if you’re looking for growth equity, the Advent name doesn’t seem to carry much (any) weight in Silicon Valley.
The last point I’ll make is important to me but maybe not to others. They are in Palo Alto, which is a horrible place for a 20-something to live. It’s about an hour from San Francisco at the least, you can’t get around the area without a car, and the only people there in this random suburb are college students. I won’t belabor this point because there are already plenty of threads on WSO about why Palo Alto sucks unless you’re a current Stanford student.
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