Lateraling as an Assoc with no platform experience?

Looking to lateral as a PE associate with ~1 year experience (from LMM to ideally another LMM, just different geography). Only issue is that I have had absolutely no platforms closed, many MPs but nothing advanced post-LOI on the platform side. I do have one post-LOI experience, that's a relatively large add-on, but nothing on the platform side. I'm curious if this will count against me or how to best frame it

8 Comments
 

No issue, platform experience at that tenure is largely luck and not an expectation. I’d focus more on the experience that you’ve gotten so far and the depth of your training.

With that said, depending on the time of year that you leave, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had to repeat some/all of your associate year, albeit LMM to LMM might allow lateral at parity.

 

Yes it will realistically hurt you relative to other candidates that have 1+ closed platforms, but it’s not insurmountable. Would the large add-on have required new equity from the fund? I think your best bet is to really push on that experience if it was sizable enough that it could have been a new standalone platform deal (or close to it)

 

It was just slightly smaller than the platform (75% of the size on a revenue basis), we funded it entirely with co-invest and rollover though. Would that a negative against my experience?

 

Yea def going to spin it the best I can but it’s an easy Google to see whether my fund has done a platform or not during my time (it hasn’t) so was wondering how much of a discount to my having only 1 add-on would b

 

No no, I get that you can't spin the platform - but you are going to stretch the living hell out of that "1 add-on" into making it seem very intricate!

 

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