The Peanut Gallery in Pipeline Meetings
I am the sole Director at a ~2.5bn AUM secondaries fund and simply have the firm's owner on top of me. Apart from me there is a collection of VPs, associates, and analysts, so around 18 investment staff and a few ops members.
When pitching new deals my boss is adamant that it is done during daily team calls which has everyone present. In this setting my boss and I are the only ones talking and no one else speaks. He constantly shoots down my deals and then and only then asks for "back up" as to his decisions from my underlings. They often come to me afterwards and apologise as they don't know what to do when the owner is basically forcing them to take his side.
Overall I find the process to be incredibly inefficient, demoralizing, and downright unprofessional. I have since asked my boss to have a weekly pipeline call where it is just me and him on it so if he is going to shoot it down then at least the peanut gallery isn't present, and if he likes a deal we can discuss it more in the broader forum (even though no one will frankly say anything). TBD on if he agrees to this.
Has anyone else witnessed such a stupid process to go through the pipeline?
To play devil's advocate, wouldn't it stunt the juniors' growth to only have them witness discussions surrounding deals that you and the owner already like? I think it's important for them to see both sides.
Why not involve the juniors more? Obviously I lack context, but from your post it sounds like they're only the peanut gallery because they're not included in deal presentations, and they don't seem to be encouraged enough to speak up.
You guys have daily team calls? Sounds incredibly tedious
Preach brotha
Daily team calls is atrocious. Damn. Also, at my fund the analysts and associates are responsible for providing the initial summary for new inbound opportunities at our weekly pipeline meeting. Then the seniors discuss in more depth afterwards. I think it's helpful for junior professionals to get the experience introducing these businesses, outlining the key points, and providing their initial take on it before seniors starts to discuss it.
Maybe you should try to copy this model.
Yep that's a fair point
Sounds like you need a new job. Good time to be an originator of secondary deals so maybe capitalize on it.
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