PE Funds - Best Associate Training Grounds
With all the nonsense discussions on "rankings" and "prestige", I figured it would be interesting to hear from others in the industry on what firms they think are the best places to start out as an associate from a purely training/learning perspective (i.e. what places are best for shaping well rounded investors). Main factors being mentorship, exposure to portfolio company decisions/boards, technical skills/diligence process, etc. Places that are lean enough to be able to really learn from impressive seniors and have high enough deal volume to get great reps
From my perspective, a few names that are top of mind would be Apollo, H&F, SLP, Genstar, Francisco, CD&R (has become rather bloated at the bottom it seems recently though)
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Just one angle-something I've seen through the years is that the funds with significant consulting pedigree (H&F, Bain, Advent, Berkshire, etc.) are top notch in this respect. Very intellectually pure with respect to investing; very thorough and structured with regards to diligence, process, and thesis. Particularly for the bankers that go in with strong financial chops I've anecdotally been super impressed with the well-roundedness of the associates I've met/worked with
Would concur with this takeaway although I personally think some of this may come from a slightly different angle - the "feedback" culture in banking is either nonexistent or super unhealthy, whereas it's way better in consulting. In banking you get 1-2 formal feedback sessions each year which are typically communicated via bonus or a highly structured process, and that's it; any other feedback you get is usually in the form of some quasi-senior banker trying to make themselves feel better by taking out their stress on the junior team. However, in consulting, you have team norms and goals outlining sessions pre-project, you oftentimes have a check-in with the manager mid-project, and you have both unstructured and structured opportunities for post-project reflections, feedback, etc.
This translates over to PE firms, where the ex-consultants are super focused on continuing to grow as team managers themselves, giving balanced feedback frequently so that juniors can continuously improve rather than be surprised to hear they've been underperforming for 6-12 months, etc. So on top of the purity with which they approach market/competitive/business model structure (which I do agree with you on), I think there's also just a lot to be said for having mid and senior level deal team members who know what healthy development approaches look like and are bought-in to developing their junior talent. I say this as an ex-banker who did my associate stint at a consulting-friendly firm and benefitted a ton from it (and saw that it was pretty noticeably different than many of my friends at banker-only shops).
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