LMM PE or ACN Consulting?

I just received some recruiting outreach from the founder of an LMM Search Fund to potentially join the team this spring as an intern. The role would be remote, and I would work closely with him, as he cited "significant mentorship" in the message and also talked about my experience being the reason he reached out.

This role could also turn into a return offer that would begin this summer after I graduate in May. I know this type of gig may not appear to be attractive to traditional finance folks, but I've been working at startups while in school for about 2 years now and one of the primary goals behind working in roles like Revenue Operations, Product, and Customer Experience was to someday get an opportunity to work at a smaller, agile fund where I'd get lots of hands-on experience and could toe that line between "investor" and "operator" in terms of the work I'd get to do each day. Then, eventually, I'd want to take those skills and use them to start a micro-fund and invest in SMBs.

I like the challenge of granular analysis, but also enjoy helping to drive strategy, operations, implementations, etc. From that perspective, the internship could be a unique learning experience for me.

The caveat here is I have an offer in hand with ACN--much more of a guarantee since I already have it, and definitely a great stepping stone in terms of diving further into analysis and strategy. Also is a much bigger name for my resume since I'm still early in my career.

The comparison might seem dumb, but is a caveat to me because this PE role doesn't appear to be very traditional (within the context of most analyst-level roles that I've read about), as all of these team members have a long history as operators and revenue drivers in their previous founding/executive roles, but not as investors. Their investments appear to be very hands-on and focused on taking advantage of the largely understated/underserved SMB market full of ready-to-retire boomers/older gen-Xers that have 7-8 figure, cash flowing, sustainably profitable businesses that may just lack the leadership, tech enablement, capital, or operational infrastructure to scale within their current market or adapt to/enter new markets.

I would love at least to take the internship to see what it's really like to balance DD on one end with operationalization on the other, but I also could see a full-time offer from the fund being a delayed gratification play where I get to take ownership of a lot more in the day-to-day and drive more direct impact; all while also potentially reaping the benefits (material and educational) of helping to scale businesses within the fund. On the other hand, I can join a company like ACN where my impact is less notable but I get a lot of reps that can still apply to my end goal, and where my lack of direct impact is also subsidized a bit by the company's name and reputation.

Since I'd assume you all have way more PE experience/exposure, I figured it's worth asking: Is this a stupid way to look at it? Do you think going the PE route (based on this context and my goals) is worth it? Or does it make more sense to go with a solid thing (ACN), then approach MM PE after an MBA or something in the future?

This feels like a unique opportunity for someone like me without a finance background (studying data analysis) and who wants to prioritize getting good, applicable experience early on. Again, prestige/fund size matters a lot less to me on the PE side as long as I'm getting to learn a lot contextually/tactically and my TC is at least relatively balanced with my output.

Any thoughts/advice?