Why did you choose PE over VC?

I am currently in IB, but I did a long-term internship in UMM PE and a summer internship at a $200m VC fund. In my very limited experience, here are some of the main differences I noticed. 

- VC firms often make investments in firms that are in a very early stage. As a consequence of that, there are not a lot of historical financials to analyze. Forecasting also becomes a lot more difficult / unreliable when you don't really have any historical growth / margin trends to consider. With that said, in my experience PE is much more heavy on the financial modeling side. 

- VC is very much a people-based business. An investment decision often comes down to whether you trust the entrepreneur and his/her ability to execute. You often source deals based on connections. There's very limited public information on companies so you are also dependent on connections to get information. Compare this to PE where the companies are often mature enough to not be dependent on the founder / CEO. In PE, you can often just replace management if you are not happy with them. Moreover, you get a ton of inbounds from investment banks, so you are not as dependent on relationships to generate deals. 

- In PE, you own a majority stake in the firms you invest in. As a result, you can tell management to do whatever you want them do. If they don't do it, you can just replace them. In VC, you most often do not own a majority stake and in the really "hot" companies that attract a lot of investors, you will often own a very small stake. As you do not have enough votes, situations will often occur where you can not force your will through. Getting your will through will require you to build trust with management and be very skilled with people. Once again, I think that VC is a very people-based business. 

- There is a more diverse and laid-back culture in VC. I think that cultures at a firm are very dependent upon what type of people you hire. In PE, you will have a very large portion of ex-bankers and some ex-MBB consultants. Bankers are used to extreme hours and most banks have a pretty hard and cold culture. As a result of that, the hours in PE are long and the culture is rarely amazing. VC recruits people from all kind of backgrounds. You will have entrepreneurs, people with industry backgrounds, bankers, consultants etc. As such, the culture and hours are often better.

- VC requires you to understand products and markets to a much greater extent than PE. In PE, you deal with companies that have a proven product and business model. That is not the case within VC. In my experience, a great deal of time is spent on understanding the product, testing the product, and understanding the market of that product.