Reed Rayman, Aaron Sobel and Robert Kalsow Ramos
Recently read an article about these three men and how they became partners at Apollo at a young age. Anyone have any insight on them :their personality, stories about working with them, how they got to where they are?
Although they're young, they were all promoted on-cycle to partner at Apollo. The associate-to-partner track at Apollo is 9.5 years, so making partner at 33-34 has been the norm (though this may change going forward, given the stagnation in fund size / glut at the partner level). They all joined as associates and survived the grind. They have their own personalities and obviously all are very smart. What are you trying to figure out about them?
Just thought with the article about them that it isn’t the norm to become partner so early, and was wondering how they accomplished this.
I can see why you'd think that, but it's really just Business Insider's finessing that makes it seem like their promotions were accelerated. There are a couple partners that were promoted around the same time as the three mentioned in the article, but they were not mentioned for reasons I don't understand. Might be an internal politics thing.
Tbf the timeline to partner will likely stay the same but some will def be pushed out or leave to start their own firms.
Why do you believe it will likely stay the same? There aren't many non-productive partners (max 1 or 2), so I don't see a significant wave of pushing people out to create space. Sure, some might leave to start their own firms - I can't handicap that probability. In the meantime, the factors influencing a longer path to partner are: (i) the new PE fund will be, at best, the same size as the last one; (ii) there are more principals coming up for partner promotion than in previous years because of reduced attrition; (iii) Rowan has repeatedly talked about increasing the bar to be named partner; and (iv) Apollo is introducing the Managing Director title in its equity teams (though it hasn't crept into PE (yet)).
For what it’s worth since no one else has chimed in meaningfully on them yet, I believe I have met Reed and maybe Robert as well in the past potentially. Friendly guys to me, seemed to be standard Apollo cultural carriers and good employees for the more senior people there which is why they may be rising stars or the like at that place. Good luck
Can't beat my boy Kunal Shah
whom is he?
Made MD at goldman at 27, made partner at 31 LOLLLL. Joined GS at 21, he's been there ever since.
These guys are at the pinnacle of the private equity profession, but business insider latching onto them like this is a bit over doing it.
Just Apollo related, the arguably more impressive thing is that David Sambur / Matt Nord are 6 or 7 years ahead of both of them and have been the co-heads of private equity since 2019. They effectively made co-head of private equity 17 and 18 years out of college at the firm that had raised the largest PE fund ever at the time.
In Infra land, head of Stonepeak America, Jack Howell is a couple years younger than them and Stonepeak just raised 14bn for its latest vehicle.
In HF land, Ryan Tolkin at Schonfeld is CEO there and is same age of the guys mentioned, Jamie Sterne is a couple years younger and has a few billion under management, Marc Steinberg is four years younger and is running activist campaigns at mega-tech firms for Elliottand getting board seats. Generally in this industry, lots of impressive people just generally around.
I know these guys. Very talented.
Lol. Used to work for one of them. Fun.
hi aaron
:)
Haha no
created an account 2 days ago just to say these guys are "very talented." definitely one of the three.
🍌
Since this thread got bumped and I haven’t chimed in since 3 years ago, I can add more color to the pot. I also have had some more time to think things over and perspective.
I still remember meeting Reed during Apollo PE OCR my 1st year of banking. My Murray hill roommate at the time also shared commentary with me that corroborated this.
Reed seems to be the nice guy or the “good cop” of the good cop bad cop routine that can be found at a hard nose valued investment firm like Apollo. For a firm known to be tough (and rightfully so when working hard to generate returns for their investors), Reed seemed to have carved out the “nice guy” niche role. Seems like that positioned him well to lead the consumer facing investment in Yahoo.
Also on the above chatter about partner ranks and stuff. Ultimately, there are only so many people who can succesful write a $1bn check and turn it into at least $3bn within 5 years more or less. That skillset is hard to build which is partially why fund sizes haven’t gone straight up. H&F seems to be a strong firm that develops $1bn PE check writers and maybe Apollo will just need to adjust their partner class to saying being a partner means writing $500mm checks and therefore to hit higher fund targets will just need more partners.
Aaron and Robert if I have met them, I am not sure if I recall. Maybe I have some second hand info on them through friends or word of mouth but probably not worth commenting on.
peace ✌️
Reed looks like the frontrunner to eventually lead Apollo’s equity business given his heavy involvement across tech exposure, hybrid strategies, and AAA, plus the visibility from the Yahoo investment.
That said, Apollo has historically prioritized deal execution over visibility, so I’m not sure how much that actually moves the needle internally. Do you think that Reed is the clear successor or are there other partners better positioned?
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