39 Comments
 

Congrats beast. Do you feel you have strong room to grow with the firm / reach Partner level? Are your firms' carry marks realistic / are they distributing back well & are LPs satisfied, or are you not factoring that into your wealth equation right now

 
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Have been in PE for ~6 years now. I think it’s a really interesting job and I glad I chose this path. Comp is good and hours, while not a walk in the park, have generally lowered over time. Don’t have any plans to leave anytime soon, just signed up a new gig actually. Love NYC, money helps me be able to enjoy the city to its fullest.

 

Assume you were replying to me (didn’t get the notification but may be a glitch). Generally would say that’s right that my hours went down after my associate years. I did most of my associate stint through COVID and got worked like crazy my first 18 months or so. My average hours worked have gone down and I have more line of sight / control over my schedule but the VP job comes with a bit more pressure and you feel more plugged in. Both funds I’ve worked at have been in the $3-7B range, second one is a bit smaller (not by much) but there’s a more pronounced talent gap at the junior level (lower comp, less established business school pipeline, etc.). Current firm is also leaner – that combined with the lower quality junior talent has made deal sprints actually worse. Heading to a $10B+ fund where team is relatively lean but talent appears to be pretty strong. We will see how it ends up.

 

Who pissed in your Cheerios this morning? First off, your title says you’re in PE so I’m not sure where you get off saying this. Second, you have absolutely no clue who I am. I have worked with 8 portfolio companies over the last several years and not a single one has seen headcount decline from start to exit. Yes people have gotten fired but that’s the exception not the norm (we had a C-Suite guy basically semi-retire on the job itself, open up a restaurant, buy a ranch, etc. and we still kept him on payroll, gave him his health insurance, and vested the bulk of his options). For the 6 that have sold or are 4-5 years into the hold, 3 of them are 2.5x+ MOIC outcomes. Just because your PE firm isn’t doing well / you are unnecessarily jaded doesn’t mean you have to sour every single post in this forum. Sure PE isn’t what it was in the 1980s but to write-it off as an industry devoid of any value? Keep me posted on your humanitarian exploits.

 
Controversial

I was at an independent sponsor and won 2023 North America Energy Deal of the Year for my work with my former group at Citadel creating PureWest Energy, now the leading natural gas producer in the Rockies. It originally involved Blackstone PE and sold for $1.8B. 350% ROIC and infinite ROE. Evercore advised and Vinson & Elkins was outside counsel. I now work with the former CEO of GS Blankfein, Hank Paulson, et al. on a venture you will soon enough hear about in the news. My former boss made over $200 million personally off the transaction. 

I left the industry because it no longer makes any financial sense and went back into natural gas trading where I began my career. I'm now indexed to volatility instead of interest rates. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday that longer-term interest rates are likely to be higher as the economy changes and policy is in flux. I do like the work Peter Stavros is doing at KKR with employee ownership, but on the whole PE was always just levered beta and an outsized shareholder / management remuneration scheme attached to a basket of small cap stocks, which no longer works in a rising rate, low growth, inflationary, and more volatile economy. 

 

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