Smaller Respected PE Firms
Looking to network into a role for a 2026 summer. What are some smaller but respected PE firms across north am?
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Take a breath. It's 1Q 2024, you are waaaay too early to recruit for 2026 internships. The smaller funds sign interns 6-9 months out.
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I would stay in London - find your way to a US-based firm's London office, and then come over on an L-1 visa after a year or two.
A couple things working against you here:
- PE firms do not traditionally recruit from masters programs. Those are best for people trying to get into IB who just need 1 more season to land
- Most PE firms do not sponsor since the chances of you staying beyond your OPT time is very slim
- Even for those that sponsor - it's a lot of headache and expense, there are so many qualified US citizens it's a tough sell
Bump
Bump
Shore Capital in Chicago seems interesting
Heard Apollo (the one with the public stock ticker) is pretty small with only about ~2800 employees but they have great returns. Solid place to start out if you're looking for less hours, more WLB and a lower-stress environment, can always try and move upstream later.
Damn you got everyone laughing chief
Golden Gate Capital.
Is this because the running joke is that there's a new spinout coming out of Golden Gate every 9 months? If you look up recent news, there's easily 5 "spinouts" over the last 5 years. In that sense, I guess you could still call Golden Gate a smaller manager, simply because they have continuous team turnover. My understanding is that the founder never wanted to share economics so partners / any senior folks at the firm peace out as soon as they get the chance to do so.
Both are true, in effect. Think about it, how good of a shop do you have to be to have 5+ spin outs and have them actually manage material assets?
Must be a good incubator. Their returns are good too. Founder is easily a billionaire. What you say is true. Will never split economics. Fuck it, can you blame him?
Do you know how the process for summers works? They don't advertise openings?
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