Seeking Advice on Running a Private Equity Club at School
I'm the new President of the Private Equity & Venture Capital club at my school and would appreciate your advice. I'm looking for guidance on developing a comprehensive curriculum, including key topics and recommended resources. Additionally, I'd like to know the best ways to invite industry professionals as guest speakers and build a strong network.
I'm also interested in effective hands-on workshops and activities, and how to organize case studies and competitions that will challenge and inspire our members. Any tips for managing the club efficiently, ensuring growth, and keeping members engaged would be greatly appreciated.
Lastly, if there are specific tools or software that would be beneficial for our members to learn and use, I'd love your recommendations.
Why are you the president of you don’t already know this?
Anyways, reach out early if you are scheduling people to come in. They are always busy and prefer to plan months ahead. Email or text the people you know in the industry (and even email ones you don’t know) to gauge interest first and plant the idea. Hopefully some are interested, or you might have been meeting the wrong people. Keep in contact and begin to get hard dates. Stay in contact with them.
To organize a club, I’d recommend airtable. Makes life so much easier. It’s like a better excel. You can organize and share.
In terms of curriculum, there is so much out there. And it’s free usually. Get the kids all started on excel and Bloomberg. Get them looking at financial statements. You can probably find online MBA level lectures for a class you like. There isn’t really any high tech stuff that needs to be used. If they can use email, do research, and crunch numbers in a sensible way, they will be better prepared than most.
I think you should shut this club down and do something more useful with your time. For example, get an internship somewhere. Do something in the real business world that teaches you how the world actually works.
Get a job answering phones at an HVAC company in your town or a roofing company. Figure out why PE is so excited about home services. Build a relationship with the owner and understand the business.
That's what PE really is. It's not spreadsheets and powerpoints, those are all a means to an end. Be different and actually understand the way businesses that are not on Wall St work.
You might find it's a better ROI to buy a franchise for something interesting by raising money from friends and family vs. working in investment banking.
Do you know how annoying it is to have to wire $20mm to the owner of an HVAC company that never went to college? That's likely 3x more carry than the average PE mid-level will earn over the course of their career assuming they survive long enough in the job to earn and realize carry.
Probably not the answer you wanted, but definitely the answer you need to hear.
Totally agree with this. PE/IB/finance clubs are SO much work and really don't add anything to your resume.
I'm not entrepreneurial and I admit to that, so for me the alternative would be simple - go get a boutique PE/IB internship, even corp fin at a regular company. Doing that 10-20h/week will look way better than starting a club that ultimately doesn't do much or add much for you.
Queens and Ivey in Canada are good examples of offering solid PE clubs. Check them out.
They offer high-level commercial diligence to PE funds for free. The quality of the work is pretty good considering the limited experience and age, and I’d imagine it’s a genuinely valuable learning experience for the members. Certainly more valuable than a panel discussion.
Just do a term time internship probably will help most. Unless you go to a target and wouldn’t they already have a good enough club? That feeds (GPS, WITG , Black Diamond)
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