Question That's Never Been Answered: Deal Experience

Perhaps it's because this falls under the category of "why would I want to help my competition" but every single time that this question has been asked, no one has ever given a clear answer on it, I have some idea of how I'd do this in an interview, it's just that I don't have any accessible mentors or trustworthy people to ask this of.

How do I walk through my deals when none of them have closed and they are all early stage pitches/pitches that have not made it into the RFP or "live-deal" part of the process?

One of my deals listed on my resume is a buy-side (phrased as a "potential buy side" that closed recently (not by my bank) but we never got signed on by any of the clients we were pitching and I really have no idea how to elaborate well/BS it when the interviewer will ask me, I just feel frustrated and confused. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

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Have you never been on a live deal? Closed deals are better since you can openly talk names, but people aren't going to fault you too much if you've just been unlucky with deals getting across the line. Only working on pitches is an issue though unless you started recently.

Usually the framework is to give a very broad overview of the deal, talk about what your role on it was (i.e. ran the model, owned all materials including management presentation and board decks, organized all admin stuff, data room etc) and importantly the view as an "investor". Strengths and weaknesses of the company, why the deal did or didn't make sense. Then people will dig in with questions.

Have you owned the model on any of these pitch processes? Or done more detailed materials than your typical pitch deck? Focus on those. And importantly, know the idea/metrics/company really well. Even if it didn't get very far, the important thing is how well you talk about it since they won't see your work at all.

 

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