Stanford MD/MBA > PE
Hi all,
I have a slightly nontraditional route. I was fully gung-ho planning on being a surgeon for most of my life and throughout undergrad. I even won a research Fulbright Scholarship. I got into Stanford for medical school and was fully planning on going. Then an opportunity came up in a startup that I founded, and without getting into too many details, we raised a few million, but raising more rounds is tough. It's been 3 years since I graduated undergrad.
Our startup maybe raises a Series - A, but if it doesn't, I'm going back to medical school at Stanford. Without any business experience, the acceptance rate for GSB from SMS is >50%. With my experience, the places we raised money from (I would say but I don't want to doxx myself), and other things, I think I'll be able to just walk into GSB. I would be in school for 5 more years total.
I really don't want to practice medicine. I love it still, however, and would be happy to be on the investing side of healthcare. My question is, with an MD/MBA from Stanford with my previous experience, do I have a chance at PE or a hedge fund? I know some people go into VC, but any chance at a traditional white shoe firm like BX, Apollo, or Warburg?
Why do you want to do this? I am the only person in my family not in medicine. Tag line is not updated but I am currently in PE. IB and PE are stressful but they are not nearly as stressful as medical school. Moreover, by going to med school and B-school you are spending an absurd amount of time and money on education for a small likelihood that you’ll end up where you want to be. When my fund is looking for healthcare experts, we only look for experienced clinicians, researchers, and people who’ve worked in healthcare finance. Going to only med school doesn’t qualify you for any of those. If you were to get a PhD and become an expert researcher, you would have a ton of biotech/biopharma VC, PE, and HF opportunities but just going to med school won’t help you get these roles. With that being said, the one route that is possible for you with this plan to end up on the buy side is to do consulting. I know a couple of people who’ve done MD/MBAs and then gone to MBB consulting and they all have either gone to the buy side or had numerous offers to. However, this is a long, circuitous path.
You’ve launched a startup that has raised a couple million. You can probably get into an M7 and break into VC or LMM PE without going to med school. I think HFs are almost entirely out of the picture for you but I would seriously think about why you want to go to med school and if med school will help you go to where you want to be.
I think healthcare vc would be best fit
Coming from Stanford GSB and Med School with previous founder experience, you could definitely land at a top VC fund in healthcare or biotech. There may also be some hedge funds that do biotech that could be options, but these are far less common. PE is very unlikely, except maybe something like Blackstone Life Sciences. MBB is also definitely an option, but they (especially McKinsey) hire tons of MDs so the MBA is less vital there.
Second this. The way I'd think about it is, there's a specific type of analysis where the physician credential is a powerful differentiator, and then having the business/finance background basically unlocks it. As opposed to a non-finance physician who still might have that differentiator but the MBA really ensures that the med skill set is accessible in an investment context.
That type of analysis is evaluating the path to success for new med technologies and services . . i.e. how much better is this really than the incumbent solution, how will insurance/payers tend to view the value proposition, what are the pitfalls to reaching success. A non-medical professional can learn these things but you can be damn sure a VC fund (or a hedge fund investing in relevant areas) would prefer the MD label when possible. Doubly so when it's Stanford.
Agree with the commenters saying PE unlikely *immediately* out of b-school. But I also think over the mid- and long-term stages of your career, PE will be reaching into earlier stage while VCs will remain involved into later stages, so those lines will become blurred. It will be less about the differences between PE and VC and more about who can evaluate the tech and build the right relationships.
You need PE exp before MBA to go to UMM/MF after. URM/Women can sometimes get away with just banking/consulting before.
One possible path is HC IB -> PE but it won't be to a MF.
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