Questioning Start-Up PE Buyout Firm

I’ve gone through the ringer the past few months in recruiting and failed to land any significant 2023 Summer opportunities in IB up to this point. I saw a PE firm Avalerian recruiting on LinkedIn and randomly filled out an application just for shits. They have followed up with me and sent me an assignment to do as part of the application process. As far as I can see, they have no transactions and some of their associates have almost no background in PE and the firm has only been around for 3 months. Should I just ignore them or is the assessment worthwhile?

10 Comments
 
Most Helpful

You haven't indicated how old/what year you are so flying a bit blind here. It's always worth interviewing somewhere if you don't have anything else, especially if you're just trying to get something on the resume for Freshman/Sophomore year so you have something to point to to demonstrate interest in future interviews. You could potentially use the offer (if you get one) to try and leverage something better. Long-term though this is not somewhere I could recommend anyone actually start their career if they have the opportunity to go elsewhere.   

As someone who covers software, a few immediate things jump out to me about the firm:

  • Founder has 0 FT PE or IB experience (sure she worked with some PEs, but that's not the same), is 7 years out of undergrad (+ a 1yr MBA), and her longest tenure anywhere was as a consultant with McKinsey which, while a great firm, does nothing for building the kind of experience needed to actually run a PE firm well
  • Founder spent a year operating in fashion not software - sure it was "digital transformation & corporate strategy", but I'm also biased against consultants since they always seem to fluff up what they're doing/how impactful it is by cherry picking good stats and hiding bad ones, even if they're from MBB
  • Almost all the employees are student interns, even some of the "associates" - big red flag
  • The majority of the employees are Chinese or Indian - this is not about their race, but they all look like they're foreign students with unimpressive backgrounds who are fairly young which is a classic sign of a startup PE firm using a ton of unpaid interns that are desperate to get their foot in the door to handle scut work & basic admin
  • They advertise a ~90 day close - this can be hard even with an experienced team with good resources, which they appear to be neither 

I just can't imagine any smart LP putting money with these folks based on this shallow dive. But like I said, if you're a Freshman or Sophomore and have nothing better, no harm in giving it a shot. Worse case scenario it's more interview experience. 

 

Appreciate the extremely well thought out response. For context I am a rising junior with expected graduation in 2024 coming from a complete non-target. I have a boutique IB fall internship coming up and I think I will be able to at least get a 2023 summer internship with them if nothing else comes to fruition. The firm is way too sketchy imo based on your primary research and how nobody has any background doing Banking, PE, or anything really finance related. I will not be continuing on this process. Thanks again

 

You've got plenty of time to find something for next summer. I wouldn't waste any time on this one, good call. Good luck! 

 
Controversial

Hi all,

I am writing as the founder of Avalerian to address your points. 

1) Avalerian is a search fund, and by definition, we acquire one company as the initial target, within a 2 year time frame. This is also why we are a relatively new firm.

2) Search funds primarily hire student interns, thus the high number of student interns on our Linkedin page.

3) We are a real firm, backed by real LPs, as shown on our website.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly. Thank you.

 
Funniest

All facts to everyone above except the founder!! My roommate interned there before and got abused to write tons of emails and admin work unpaid. What's worse, he got questioned in a BB interview on this experience because the interviewer found it sketchy...

 

I also interned there. Unlike your roommate, I wrote investment memos on CIMs and built LBO models. I think all interns were given a little test which, if they passed, they got to work on deals. Sounds like your roommate failed the test. (edit: type error)

 

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