Where do the 'bodies' of PE go?
There's lot of discussion here on the difficulties to make it up in PE. It seems like there's 1 MD for every ~3 - 5 VPs and 1VP for every ~4 - 10 associates. Mathematically, it means the majority of people won't make it up. Where do those that do not make it / choose not to continue go?
I'm personally interested in running my own business or in strategy at a startup. However, given I have a banking background, I worry that after PE I'll niche myself to finance / strategic finance at best at a startup
I am somewhat of a body and ended up at an activist hedge fund
I am just a body
I have all the characteristics of a human being on the outside...
I have absolutely no hard data to back this up, but I suspect the proliferation of small / start-up funds means not as many junior people are forced to leave the industry altogether as the train of thought you went down might imply. This is highly anecdotal, but looking at 30-40 of the recent "alumni" of my current and former funds (both upper MM NY-based funds), the lion's share of them are still in PE or in some other principal investing role (e.g. family office). Given the availability of dry powder over the past ~10 years, there are a ton of relatively new middle-market and lower middle-market funds all across the U.S. that seem to love to hire former associates and VPs from larger funds. Unless you totally suck at the job, are actively looking to leave the industry, or started at a small fund to begin with, it seems like the overall growth of the industry has allowed those who want to stay in the industry to do so (even if not at the fund they originally started at).