In desperate need of advice (joining startup pe company)
If anybody would take the time to give me some advice, I would appreciate it more than I can put into words. No one in my family works in finance and I am in desperate need of advice. I graduate from college in May. I have received an offer to join a start-up private equity company based in the PNW (Portland, Seattle, etc.) and I need help figuring out if this is a good opportunity. To anyone who helps, I truly appreciate it.
The situation: The firm was started this month, and I would be the second employee. The founder is in his 40’s and has a strong track record of scaling businesses and marketing, but doesn’t have any type of private equity track record. He has experience growing and scaling brands, not in PE.
His plan is to specialize in deal sourcing for the first few years, with most of the money coming from finders fee revenue. He will find acquisition targets via cold calling and email campaigns, and then give the deal to larger pe firms for a finders fee and will co-invest if he likes the deal a lot. He is planning to target mom-and-pop type owner residential and commercial service businesses with 2-10m ebitda. The money will come from finders fees for the first couple years. Then, once the track record is established and he feels like he is great at finding deals, he will raise a fund and start deploying capital.
Does this sound legit? On one hand, his LinkedIn and his past check out. He is far from sketchy, seems to have made some solid money, and passes the eye test. Plus, there is lots of room for me to grow within the firm. If his plan takes off, there is no reason I couldn’t be the #2 guy at the company in 5 years. I like the idea of being involved with deal sourcing and analysis, and I think I would learn a lot. On the other hand, I would be joining a completely unestablished company that has never raised a dime of equity. I would be learning from someone skilled at scaling businesses via marketing, but with no pe experience.
How common is this finders fee revenue source as a fund getting started? He is a very skilled marketer and has solid relationships with people at bigger funds who told him they would look at deals he brought them. The compensation is a small base + commission. I would be allowed to co-invest and receive carry once a fund is raised. So to me, it seems like a high upside play but I can’t decide if it would be dumb to do this instead of taking a more traditional route. Thanks so much everybody. You are really helping me out and I truly appreciate it. I welcome any feedback.
I don’t think it’s a scam, but it’s definitely a very risky proposition.
I think one important thing to think about is how wealthy your family is. Will you be able to rely on them for financial support if it is slow going the first two years and you don’t get much in the way of commission? Because you mention a small base, so that sounds like ~$50k to me.
Another thing is to compare this offer to what else you have. If it’s between this and a Goldman analyst job, I’d take Goldman. But if you have no other offers, or crappy ones only, then you can roll the dice on this one.
But it sounds like you’re not going to learn much.
He’s going to cold call small businesses and encourage them to sell. Not much to learn intellectually besides have a good work ethic.
Very helpful. Thanks for the feedback.
In my opinion this is a pretty low-quality opportunity, both for the comp reason the guy above mentioned, but also because I don't believe in the founders' premise. Ability to find good deals is definitely one of the things LPs evaluate when backing new managers. However, they also care about ability to diligence them, and ability to impact them operationally to get to a good outcome. In this case, you're riding sidecar for a big fund during DD (they know what they're doing more, and have way more resources to do it effectively) and post-close (you likely have 5% ownership unless the guy is rich, so can't drive much yourself) so it's very tough to prove out either of those things.
I don't think the guy is sketchy, just naive about how institutional fundraising works. Your average independent sponsor (who ultimately wants to raise a fund) is a team of ex-career PE guys who did deals end-to-end by hustling the money on a deal-by-deal basis. If I was an LP and had a choice between this guy or my example, I'm picking the latter 100 times out of 100.
I would not make this move... your first few years out of college are exceptionally important and if this is a huge bust, you'll have a hard time getting a new role from it. You also need to pay your bills every month, and joining something where comp is some type of undefined finders fee, from someone with no experience... run. far. These roles are one thing once you have an established resume and you're making an educated decision to jump (usually involved substantial equity, btw, which this doesn't seem to at all) but get yourself some true work experience first.
At least with a boring corp finance job, you'll always be able to go to MBA and reset there. MBAs and second jobs will not be impressed by this type of fly-by-night venture. As said above, the whole thing sounds a bit naive
I would keep looking
No.
Absolutely not
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