Vista vs Thoma Bravo
Basically title. Which firm has the best long-term potential for someone who is interested in tech investing?
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it’s difficult enough getting an offer from one of them and chances are you’ll never be in a situation where you’ll have to choose between them. Both are the best software PE firms in the world and it would really come down to personal fit and location. They also both hire to promote, so I think long-term potential is a moot point imo
Thoma > SLP > FP > Vista. This will get me MS from the Vista analysts that throw MS at anyone that says Vista isn't the best, but that's the true ranking for pure play SaaS.
Thanks, intern.
Not an intern and I'm not wrong. FP is returning 3-4x MOICs to LPs, TB's fundraising and performance has been insane. SLP will always be considered the top in tech PE, but not necessarily better than TB for SaaS. Vista has the worst performance out of three, took 3 years to raise their latest fund, and just took a loss on their 3.5bn investment into PluralSight, will likely lose money on Solera and Greenway. This is just the beginning on the bloodbath for them. None of that includes the key man risk of Robert Smith and all the previous senior MDs that have been jumping ship.
What Vista is doing with the PluralSight write-off is as scummy as it gets and will likely hurt their reputation in private credit long-term. They literally took all of the collateral IP and moved it to a shell company, so all of the previous private credit lenders now have no claims to any securitized assets in a bankruptcy situation. The lenders are forced to now lend money to the shell company to gain rights to the IP and if they refuse, their loan will be unsecured for the future. Seems on brand for a company led by a scumbag like Robert Smith
You might not be an intern but this guy heavily biased from something personal that happened, jealously, or something like that. Before even reading any comments (on this thread, and other threads), just take a look at what “Intern in IB - M&A” has to say most of the time, just a straight personal vendetta like someone else said above.
Edit: He even took the time to use Vista’s announcement (less than 10 hours ago) that they are raising their MM fund after their long flagship fundraise, in order to fit his narrative. Just beware of the bias.
Also, I don’t care about the rankings (I have no skin in the game), but there’s no sighting of Hellman & Friedman, which is on every software mandate known to man, as anyone would know. And everyone in the space knows SL hasn’t been very active recently in the tech investment space - most relevant news recently on that end was their $20 Billion fund.
Everyone here also just needs to take into account basic psychology: framing. When someone phrases it like this: “TB has raised 32B, Vista took 3 years to finally raise, just blew up Pluralsight, CEO tax scandal, etc” what does that sound like? Anyone can pick and choose specific events to frame the story to their narrative. Someone else could easily swoop in and say “TB just blew $58B in 2021 at peak multiples, Vista just hit a $20B fund, a huge exit with PowerSchool, etc.”
Most helpful comment on the thread isn’t actually this one, it’s one made by Analyst in IB - Cov - “who knows?”. Nobody can predict the future of any of these firms, it’s a long investment cycle. Everything is just short term speculation, based on past indicators, which isn’t very useful for long-term outlook in an industry like PE… but even then, bottom line is silver lake, Vista, TB, FP, H&F - none of these are going anywhere anytime soon.
You might be knowledgeable but definitely not a reliable source with your levels of bias and it shows, might as well keep the title as Intern.
I am 100% in the space and know these companies well and their returns and the ins and outs of these investments. I work for an Hg-type firm. H&F was not mentioned because H&F does much more than software. If you mention H&F, you can throw Permira in there as well. That's useless to the conversation because the four companies I mention only do Tech. All funds these days have software/tech focused sectors, but I was talking about the larger tech-only PE funds. I know about all the funds from Luminate to TB. You can't refute anything I've said previously
This guy changed his original comment of what I responded to so I'll respond to his new comment.
If you've been keeping track of the thread I never said that I wasn't biased. I mentioned that I have friends that worked at Vista that felt like they were screwed over from the firm, which is why I know as much as I do about the firm.
Regardless of my admitted bias, nothing I said has been incorrect. TB and FP have outperformed Vista and even though SLP has struggled as of late SLP is the incumbent and has the same blue blood prestige as BX/KKR/APO. I acknowledge that things may be shaky at SLP considering they cut their intern and analyst program.
Next, it's not some narrative I'm pushing, I'm actually stating the facts, I only brought up Vista's fund raise because the article a) mentioned the slew of senior departures that I mentioned to once again confirm what I've been saying and b) show Vista's poor comparative performance across all of Vista's funds, another incorrect narrative on this site that their performance doesn't suck. All the article did was confirm EXACTLY what I said a few weeks ago. So is the article biased and unreliable?
On the part where you talk about the fundraise and powerschool exit, that "framework" isn't correct because that's not entire story. Vista announced its intention to raise $20bn in 2021. In 2022, TB announced and raised a $20bn flagship and additional $12bn for two other funds ($32bn total), while Vista could barely raise 50% of its target. FP announced and raised $17bn in 2022 as well, so it's not like LPs didn't have money to give to tech PE funds. To put this all together it took FP and TB a couple of MONTHS each to raise $50bn combined and it took THREE YEARS and multiple extensions for Vista to raise $20bn. That's objectively awful for "the best software PE firm". More context, Vista raised 50% of their $20bn flagship slower than it took TB and FP to open and close their fundraises. It took Vista 2 years to raise the other $10bn.
This take is biased, but powerschool's exit it largely Onex's investment not Vista. Onex made the intial investment and Onex currently owns twice the amount of shares that Vista does. Vista is just riding the coattails of Onex. Back to PE 101, Vista entered the investment in 2015 and it's initial IPO was 2021... It's 2024, the IRR impact won't be as pronounced.
Again, I've addressed multiple times TB deploying $58bn in a longer comment above, so see that one for my take on it.
Agreed overall, who knows, but I can correctly state that the one in the worst position right now is the one that struggles to raise money and has had it's best senior investors leave
Edit: the only reason why his comment is voted highly goes back to my first ever comment. Vista employees stalk these threads and throw MS at any narrative that Vista isn't the best. Every single remotely positive comment about Vista has a bunch of SBs whereas the negative ones (not only mine) gets a bunch of MS if we're talking about pushing narratives
Not sure where the MS is coming from cause this is pretty accurate
Haha I've seen "IB Intern M&A" on basically every single tech PE thread shitting on Vista. Definitely feels more like a personal vendetta.
Some notes here from someone who was in the industry (thankfully got tf out) and is still pretty in tune with it (I have a lot of friends still going through the dogfight): FP's 3x and 4x returns are not from their large-cap funds... it's from their mid-sized fund (this is shit TB and Vista did like five years ago). They are very unproven when it comes to large-cap tech PE and it would be pretty stupid to put them ahead of any proper large-cap investor until we actually see how the investments pan out (which I don't think will be too hot given how much they deployed in '21).
SL is doing dogshit right now. The past two funds are in the shitter - if you actually know anyone at the fund you would know this. This is why they don't have an analyst program anymore and junior folks are leaving quickly.
Also, like I'm not gonna be a Vista glazer either, they've definitely been on a steady decline lately and I see them as more middle of the pack right now for tech PE but this guy is wayyy misrepresenting things here. At the end of the day, it's a brand-name large-cap tech PE shop and you will do fine in your junior years there (as with literally any of the other funds that have been mentioned). This risk that I am discussing genuinely only matters when you have your own money at work (usually VP plus). But if you want to discuss what would be the best long-term seat in tech PE right now it would have to be H&F for me. The private structure and lack of a strong founder presence make it way more appealing to be a partner there than say TB, Vista, or FP. Also, returns have been solid and fund size is 20B+ as well.
Not to further any argument, but isn’t it still kind of crazy to call Vista “on a steady decline” or “‘middle of the pack”? Obviously RFS’s negative press has stuck around, and they’be just lost money on Pluralsight, so seems to be a lot of negative recency bias on that … but how can the 2023 Tech PE firm of the year, and arguably the most intelligent private tech investor in 2021 be considered “middle of the pack”?
Also, on H&F - sure, that statement holds true for being a partner (which is insanely difficult at any of the firms listed), but what about when you add in the factors of promotion feasibility (much easier at TB & Vista than H&F, who are 2-and-out and reserve probably 1 post MBA seat for every 3/4 associates, and that’s just ONE of the many steps to becoming Partner). Also, please correct me if I’m wrong, but H&F invests in all sectors out of their Flagship funds, so not like it’s full tech deployment like SL Vista TB?
SLP had a company file for chapter 11 earlier this year
In 2024? What company?
And Vista wrote-off their entire equity stake in Pluralsight and is engaging in LME games with lenders...all of these tech funds that put significant money to work in '21 are going to have sub par returns at best
Thoma has a slight edge right now but long term I think they made a bunch of shaky 2021 investments that Vista did not. Likely will be switched in a few years. See below article.
https://fortune.com/2024/03/05/private-equity-2021-tech-investors-sweat…
Agreed on this. Overall PE is such a damn long investment cycle, literally nobody knows in this thread, and anything is just pure short term speculation.
Of course people are saying TB is #1 because of their fundraising and investments the last few years, along with FP bc of their exceptional growth … but that’s just the last few years? Silver Lake may have just raised 20B, but has really strayed away from their bread and butter tech investing, leading to some questions from LPs and just their returns overall. Same thing with TB’s ridiculous amounts of deployment in 2021 - this will absolutely hurt, at one point or another. And of course everyone is focused on the short term, so Vista’s Robert Smith and the loss on pluralsight makes them “on the downfall” in people’s minds, despite just raising a $20B fund.
Realistically nobody knows. TB could be screwed over from their 2021investments in 5-6 years time. We could see a Clearlake ZIRP scenario with FP. Vista could be in their seemingly only period of underperformance and absolutely rebound with this 20B AI-focused SaaS fund. Silver Lake may keep on with their “big bets” and non-core tech investments and could go either way.
Who knows? The Beauty (and beast) in the game of private equity
Just curious — how has SLP’s recent performance been? They’ve done a lot of unconventional investments in entertainment that I can’t really imagine having excellent IRRs but what do I know. Would love some color
RT to the first response on this thread.
Youre never going to be in a scenario where you’re choosing between the two. Just not realistic at just about any step of your career, unless you get poached as a senior for being one of the best software investors on the street when you’re much older.
Although I will say there are a LOT more factors to consider than just pure performance. Obviously it would be much nicer to be a partner at the firm with higher MOIC & IRR, but that’s just unrealistic.
For example, Vista has way higher internal promotion (seems they even prefer it much more than any outside hires at any level), whereas TB seems like a bloodbath to even make it to senior associate, at any fund, probably harder to get into Harvard than that promotion at Flagship. And on the same topic, there’s also the culture argument, and many things have been said about both firms.
Bottom line, there’s a lot to take into account, but you’re just never going to be in a position where you would make a decision (honestly you’d be lucky to have an offer from either, not to mention their MF competitors too) - so just would not worry about it.
The one where you receive an offer.
Any insight into % of senior associates who get the VP promote at TB and Vista?
Most. Asso -> Sr. Asso is a pretty difficult promotion because one of Vista’s funds has to choose you as their Sr. associate. After placing into a fund, the VP promote is yours as long as you maintain performance and don’t burn out
What about at TB?
How hard is the Sr associate promotion at Vista?
At either firm, the answer is simple: a LOT more welcoming and feasible than most MFs.
The only other ones that even come to mind in this same regard are Bain and Warburg, but they are not raising funds at even half the clip of TB or Vista (pretty sure Bain has less than 50% of Vista/TB PE AUM despite being founded much earlier), so those carry economics are definitely diminishing despite being privately held at those shops.
Very hard to say one is better than the other when the overall sector is not doing great. Valuations are down, revenue/ARR growth rates we saw in 2021 are hard to find, and many investments are having to service debt payments that were funded at much higher valuations. It is crazy to see a lot of PE held software companies restructure debt agreements. The business model of a software company is built for high growth and large reinvestments into R&D to sustain this growth. SLP held Thrasio filed for chapter 11, Vista wrote off PlurarlSight, and many software companies are restructuring debt arrangements.
With the above said, any of the large players in tech PE are great and it is not likely you are going to get offers from both. If you do On-Cycle, target all of them and try to land one. Does not matter if it is Vista, TB, SLP, FP, H&F, TA, or whoever...
How should one think about doing GS/MS TMT/M&A then Thoma/H&F/SLP vs the Vista analyst program?
Even at GS TMT, Evercore MP, MS MP, whatever - there is still an extremely small chance you receive an offer from any of Vista, TB, H&F, Silver Lake, or more.
People tend to forget that even at the best groups in the country, the median outcome is MM PE, or UMM PE at the absolute best. There’s simply not enough ASO seats at these shops even if every offer went out to a top tech IB group.
So to answer, if you are fully interested in tech investing, and receive an SA or FT offer from not only Vista (although I do think this is the optimal outcome), but also Warburg Tech, KKR MP, and other similar groups - you take that offer and don’t look back, since that opportunity probably won’t come up again.
What about learning experience at a top M&A group vs PE?
I legit remember a WSO post recently that asked anyone else if all their ex-Vista analysts sucked, and tons of comments poured in with similar stories and anecdotes about the incompetence of Vista analysts haha. And the fact Thoma Bravo has an elite name, whether it’s bc of fundraising or not, is your answer in and of itself.
“Also, I think I saw that like Vista analysts interview poorly or something like that some times ago, but I believe buyside interviews are pretty much just down to the individual (also Vista is also known to not ask diversity candidates any techs which is interesting given how much of their class is diversity haha) and I know plenty of smart Vista analysts at some top, top tech seats right now (Lone Pine, Dragoneer, Coatue, Greenoaks, KP, etc.). Once again, I think this comes down to the individual more.”
- One of the most upvoted comments on the thread. I think the vista analyst program is the top notch place out of undergrad for tech investing (maybe GA/Insight if you want more growthy). I still would definitely take them all day over IB (as someone literally in a top tech IB group). Recruiting outcomes depend all on the individual at the end of the day, like many of the other comments have discussed above.
"Intern" here again. Vista is looking to raise money for it's middle market funds. Doubling down on what I've said before, Vista's fund performance isn't impressive enough to be in consideration for the best software investment firm. Everything I've said I've provided proof for and is 100% facts.
compared to TB and FP
Am I dumb or are those figures not bad at all, esp for a firm who is more “conservative” and “goes for less home runs” or whatever I read above. Idrc who is the best software investment firm, I just want a job at any of these and all those figures look fine to me 😂
And obv my knowledge is limited - does anyone give af (aside from the invested LPs) about middle market funds - all about flagship the way most ppl view fund performance right?
Performance is relative and is typically benchmarked against other comparable companies. For example, if you're running a fund and you had a 20% year in the stock market, without context that seems great. It's not great if the S&P 500 is your relative benchmark and the S&P 500 returned 40%. Even though on the surface you returned 20%, you underperformed. If you look at the FP filings I posted. They post the quartiles their funds are in and they're all top quartile. You can't just look at the numbers at face value. You have to compare them to their peers. Vista underperformed their peers regardless if the headline number isn't bad.
The reason why middle-market funds matter a lot is because it is easier to outperform in the middle-market than in a flagship fund. AUM growth in any asset class makes returns harder to achieve; this is why some HFs will stop allowing new capital to come in because returns don't scale with AUM they deteriorate. In theory, a MM fund should typically outperform a large cap flagship fund.
It's part of the reason Vista, TB, FP, and SLP have different funds in the first place. If you had all the in the same fund the 100m equity check that return 4x MOIC will not have a bigger impact than the 1.5bn equity check that returned 2x MOIC. Another significant reason is, again what I said before, relative performance and your comp group.
You seem to know a lot about tech PE, so wondering if you think it’s better learning wise to go top IB analyst to SLP/H&F or Vista analyst?
Jesus fucking Christ if there’s one thing the whole thread and WSO world can agree on is that you need to stfu - you’ve asked the same question on like 3 other threads, and there’s 100 other precious threads that can help…
I agree vista is not that good and hasn't been for a while (there are numerous questionable companies in funds flagship IV, V and VI), but you posted a comparison of TB as of 9/30/21 (i.e. peak valuations) vs. 12/31/23 and 03/31/23 for Vista. At least show a fair comparison...
“Vista is not that good” LOL what a joke
You are obsessed. Go outside and do stuff
Ah yes, let me compare Vista's fund performance in 2023 with TB/FP's in 2021 lol. You're actually stupid.
You might be retarded actually and it's unlikely a VP promote is in your future because you can't read nor interpret data. Let me spoon feed it to you. I posted these to compare Vista's historical performance to FP and TB... Do you understand that you compare fund vintage to fund vintage... Vista's comparable fund vintages are beneath the equivalent FP vintage. Historical performance for funds that have been completed deployed and capital distributed back to LPs isn't going to change buddy.
For example, so to spoon feed you further Vista's 2011 vintage fund returned 2.0x TVPI compared to 3.2x and 3.6x for TB and FP. Those numbers are concrete and set in stone and will not change....
Oh actually, you're probably the Associate 2 in PE - Other above that said FP wasn't proven and Vista and TB was doing 3-4x MOICs with their MMs funds...
You now (before too) look so stupid because I posted proof that you were wrong. Vista has done >3x MOIC once in 2009 out of their 6 MM funds. You absolutely have no idea what you're talking about.
This hasn’t been mentioned yet but in terms of earnings / lifestyle Vista blows Thoma out of the water. 1st year associates are clearing 400k over there and none of them look as haunted and depressed as the overworked monkeys over there at Thoma.
Source on this? Both firms have the same promotion structure (ASO -> Sr.ASO without MBA req, and dedication to one of the funds).
How would Vista and TB compare in this regard in terms of getting promoted - I have heard Vista is up there with Warburg and Bain in terms of the best MFs for culture and also internal promotion. I’d imagine TB is more like H&F in this regard? As in, it’s possible to get the promo without MBA, but it’s a much more cutthroat culture and most do not get an invite to come back after 2 years (at least that’s the gist of what I’ve been told from contacts).
Also what’s the comp breakdown for Vista & TB if Vista ASOs get 400k first full year?
Not to sound like an asshole - don’t want to reveal source so as to not dox myself, but I am credible. As far as I’ve heard, Vista’s comp is the number one best on the street (until we find out how much APO guys are making). In terms of promotion visibility, don’t think you can really distinguish between the two firms. Both are very similar.
I’m not really 100% sure what all of the previous comments are about but I’ve recently started to view Vista as the most ideal MF to end up at, particularly because I care a good bit about culture. I’ve worked on several deals with both Vista and TB, and it’s pretty striking the difference in quality and overall happiness of the people. Know a good bit anecdotally about how much juniors grind at TB and IMO it’s comparable to the horror stories you hear about Apollo. At the end of the day, the overall performance of the fund and the comp difference that will result in down the line pale in comparison to the lifestyle difference. That’s the main point I want to make here.
But even if you are solely focused on maximizing your carry $, if you start your career and end your career at a fund that has returned a 37% IRR since inception, you will be just fine. I think the above commenters (especially the guy up here who’s decided to make Vista slander his personality) has to do with recent performance — Vista has lagged in the past couple years but it’s my strong belief that it won’t be more than 2-3 years before the bounce back is apparent. Discipline recently, especially when other firms didn’t have the same discipline, is the main rationale for me. I could be wrong, but so can anyone else on this thread. NOBODY on here has any idea how any of these shops are going to perform over the next couple years — 8 years ago, if you said that Clearlake was going to be in the shitter in 2024, nobody would believe you. Today, I personally believe TB is more likely to be in the shitter 5 years from now (not sure why FP keeps getting mentioned, they’re not even in the same echelon as these 2 as they are primarily a MM/UMM, not a MF strategy), but again, anything that I or anyone else says shouldn’t be taken as fact. Go with where you vibe the best, make a positive contribution, and one day when you’re calling the shots, make smart decisions to boost your carry check. None of this matters and if you end up at Vista, TB, SL, or H&F, you’re the cream of the crop. As a banker who’s too old to make the pivot over to the promised land, I am jealous of you. Enjoy that truth, find a hobby and go live your actual life.
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