I really want to be in investing/PE but it doesn’t seem to click for me
Hello I am one year in so far. I seem to be able to do all the basic stuff like call notes and presentations and making them look all pretty and data cuts but I feel like I do these tasks on autopilot and I’m not learning anything. when it comes to modelling, leading calls or discussions about deal terms or deals I can’t seem to be able to get close to even being able to do these things and my associates either always talk and fill in for me or field questions for me.
Meanwhile my fellow peers they are able to step in to help answer questions and they’re ramping up much faster than me. I genuinely don’t feel like I can be an associate at this rate as I always hide and don’t step up responsibility? What do I do? I really struggle to think critically /quickly of good questions and to banter about an investment ideas with seniors. If I don’t have modelling experience nor able to talk about my deals intellectually how would I recruit even to go back to banking? Do I leave finance entirely if this isn’t clicking for me
Why do you really want to be in PE? Do you actually enjoy the work? What is it about the work you enjoy? Figure this out to know if it’s even worth it.
What happens when you try and lead expert calls? Eg do you have nothing at all ti say or just not have “smart” questions? What kind of prep have you been doing for these calls and how do you review after wards to get better? Also how are you approaching feedback more generally with seniors and have seniors mentioned developmental issues to you as well?
What I am getting at man is I like to think that in this world, if you put in enough elbow grease into something , you should get a reward. It sounds like you’re an analyst— which means you clearly have the horsepower because those jobs are really hard to get. Yes, it’s super possible you just might not be able to be good at this job, but I wouldn’t start there. I would start by trying to get super specific and tactical on your “issues” and come up with a plan to fix . If you do this with a ton of thought and still are not progressing (in a way validated by seniors not just your conjecture), it might not feel like it, but that also wouldn’t be that deep; you have your whole life ahead of you and would still do incredible shit.
Xx
Yea I run expert calls fine and have to prep the night before for calls and have 20 questions to run through before the call starts. With a script. But others can just run through calls asking questions without requiring as much prep it feels like. Expert calls are fine but the other technical stuff is hard for me
You may be overthinking it.
You know what a PE firm does right? We raise capital and deploy it, and try to get 20-25% irr on what we deploy so we can keep raising.
So will this investment get us 20%?
Well, what is the company? What do they do? What is the precise revenue model? Ok, and how fast is that market growing? And why are they selling? Who is selling it? Do we know them? What do they need to make on this so they don’t get fired? And are they gaining or losing share? Any five forces things we should think about? Is their operating leverage? Either way we shouldn’t assume any. What’s fcf, how much debt can we support? So what’s the overall merits / risks? Whats the need to believe on getting to 25%? 20%? If we hit that, how much of the TAM are we at the end of it all?
It is really not more complex than aggressively asking every question until you feel you have as good of a perspective as you’re ever going to for this stage.
In terms of expert calls, usually I start by just deeply understanding how the company generates revenue (invoice structure). That usually branches into basically every other piece worth considering, but there is other stuff, but I think you may be overthinking.
Yes all that is easy to me and make sense on paper. And definitions from school all make sense but putting them all together in a real world scenario and understanding why the different parties are involved or the complex transaction structuring is the part that confuses me the most. I don’t understand the messy negotiations on transaction structuring and it all flies over my head
What’s an example?
If you can’t think through a transaction from everyone’s perspective, then it indicates to me that there is either some conceptual gap or there is a confidence issue.
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