JMI Equity - Reputation?

Does anyone have any insight on JMI Equity in the growth equity space? Headhunter ran them by me and they seem like they've been doing software investing for a very long time, but that's about all I know.

Where do associates end up after their time?

 
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One of the all time great growth equity firms. One of their old more venture-y investments (edit, can't remember the name for the life of me, it's not RingCentral, it's not AppFolio........ think it might be ServiceNow come to think of it) is a $100bn company so they've had not only venture-y wins but also more growth-y capped in the low $bns wins. Get ready to source (not a bad thing, they know how to train you like an Insight or TA, someone who has done this a million times with Associates. I can think of two people I know who went there, one went to GSB and one went to HBS. The one who went to HBS went to Permira then WCAS and the one who went to GBS went to Iconiq (top 3 sexy growth investor with phenomenal theses these days). 

As you think about what the HH brought you, the #1 thing you should think about is: do I like tech? Do I want to be talking to management teams? Do I like talking to founders? Because if you are interested in a career in growth, you can't find a better place. To candidly reflect on my own career, if I could go back, knowing what I want to do now, and go to JMI, I for sure would, but at the time I thought, y'know I'd rather go work at a big LBO fund. To be frank, that was silly - JMI does super cool work and has great exits in a cool space. But it's not for everyone, if you want to go work in industrials, JMI won't help at all.

 

Appreciate the detailed response. At a top tech banking group, and our group alumni mostly went to General Atlantic, BX Growth, Softbank, and ICONIQ Growth, so I wasn’t too familiar with JMI except for older people saying they’re very good software investors that have been around a long time.

My biggest concern was their location not being in a major city. But if that ends up being a big issue personally down the line, it seems like it is very feasible to lateral to another good growth equity shop in NYC/SF?

 

It's not an issue. I remember one day I got a JMI job spec and I was like man, Baltimore? San Diego?

The reality is Baltimore is perfectly fine and San Diego is amazing and you'll at least have going for you that you're not one of the jillion ex-bankers in NYC/SF. You will truly live like a king. You'll have to go make new friends so if that's a huge turn off then... you probably don't have the sourcing personality in the first place if the idea of meeting new people sounds bad rather than good (not to be confused with hard vs. easy, because it is hard).

BX Growth is a completely different beast than BX Horizons, General Atlantic is also sourcing but more of a PE focus these days despite some of their headlines, ICONIQ I already mentioned (would say that's the best of the lot) and personally would stay away from the Softbank experience but you never know, that may be your thing.

If you don't like San Diego or Baltimore, just move after a year and start your associate years over at Iconiq or TA or something. They will happily snatch up someone trained by JMI, without a question. Interviews at that point would be to make sure there's not something wrong with you, rather than to see if you are qualified.

 

It seems daunting. It's trainable. I would practice 10-20 mock calls before even getting into an interview because some places will have the interviewer go to another office room in their office building and call you and do a mock sourcing call. 

At first it feels weird but you soon realize that asking entrepreneurs questions like "What are you guys doing in ARR these days?" are perfectly fine questions to ask (they feel taboo but they're really not). Then you just get more used to commanding the flow of the conversation to get all the info you need from them.

You can tell if sourcing is for you if you like being on the phone and talking to people. There's a case to be made that it's mundane in the same way that there's a case to be made that modeling is mundane - same thing over and over. But if you like modeling, you like the math or the structuring or whatever. If you like sourcing, you probably like going to conferences to source, doing what you can to get ahold of CEOs and then building relationships with them, etc. Just different challenges. 

Each one has its own benefits / drawbacks which has been covered on this forum but I'm happy to elaborate having had a half of an Associate experience sourcing and almost a full classic LBO experience.

 

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