Hello monkeys—
Thought I might give back to the community that’s helped me get to where I am and taught me about the world of finance. Here’s a little about me:
Educational Background:
- T-5 Magnet Public STEM High School (feeder into Ivy; 50% of graduating class of 69 went to an Ivy or quasi-Ivy)
- SAT: 1600/1600 Composite; 2290/2400
- HS GPA: 3.8 (92/100)
- Applied to only NEC BSchools and HPY; accepted at my state school (full ride) and T-5 BSchool. Rejected from all Ivy League schools.
- Went with T-5 Business School (Non-Ivy), half ride with three other scholarships. Still graduated with $150K in student loans.
- Freshman & Sophomore year downward trajectory GPA from 3.2 to 0.8.
- Decided to drop out and study compsci and try to land a job without a college degree so took a gap semester to study. Realized I didn’t want to pursue compsci so returned to BSchool.
- Junior & Senior year upward trajectory from 3.2 to 4.0. GPA Major was a 3.97.
- Graduated in 4.5 years with a sub-3.0 cumulative GPA and a dream.
Professional Experience:
- Sophomore summer sent in 150 applications and heard back from one—a data science yearlong feeder program into full-time. Did that for 3 months in the spring and decided I didn’t want to work there long term
- Applied to ~50 or so more internships hoping for a VC role, but instead landed at a tiny boutique REPE/Investment Firm (<$100M AUM) as a Research Analyst (“Firm 1”)
- First month had no idea what was going on, second month figured out what the important bits were and what to aspire to contribute so bought a bunch of self-learning courses on real estate financial modeling
- Modeled a live deal at Firm 1 and came within bps of return metrics. Principals were impressed and decided to keep me on for a full year (part time during the school year) as an Acquisitions Analyst. Also took lead on various consulting engagement as my modeling skills were slowly developing. Received FT offer at $70K all-in, which was more like a courtesy (they didn’t expect me to accept it)
- Applied to 300 Junior Summer internships and heard back from two. Leveraged Firm 1 experience and above-average technical skills in financial modeling into a Summer Analyst position at a T-3 REPE firm (BX, Brookfield, Starwood) but under the AM group. Received the return offer and accepted (“Firm 2”). Pro-rated 85k over the summer with a 15k signing bonus for FT offer.
- Upon graduation, I had 4 months of free time before my FT at Firm 2. So reached out to professor at my school that ran his own development shop.
- Worked there for 4 months; last day there, professor said, “Why don’t you work at Firm 2 for a year or two and come back and work for me? You’ll make a lot more money.” I agreed.
- Worked at Firm 2 for a year averaging 80 hrs a week with 4-6 week sprints of 100 hrs back to back. Hated my manager and couldn’t wait to leave. Bonus hit my account and within 10 minutes I sent my resignation letter. TC: $170K
- Went back to work for professor’s firm (AUM ~$250M). Within a couple months we conceived of a brand new strategy/niche to invest in.
- Was part of the founding team of the firm today (Firm 3) and participated in capital raising process, diligence calls, preparing materials (deal summaries and models). Institutionalized all our UW and decks leveraging prior experience at Firm 2. TC: $125K
- Currently a Senior Associate in Acquisitions at Firm 3, a multi-billion dollar JV with a top BB as our partner. Expected TC: $175-200K
- Recently was just testing the waters in terms of what the market prices me at for comp and with ~3 years of experience I’m seeing roughly $250-350K all-in comp packages.
Happy to answer any and all questions—everything is fair game and I’ll try my best to respond to all.
P.S. I run a Discord for RE professionals—Real Estate Professionals Network (REPN)—DM me for an invite or ask about it here and I’ll post a link!
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Thanks for the willingness to help and share your story. Sorry if my questions are a bit long winded!
(1) Please share the link for the Discord you mentioned. (2) How did you convince your professor to work with you - how did you pitch yourself? (3) For your experience at firm #2, why did you hate your manager? I ask so that I'm aware of potential yellow and red flags when recruiting in the future. Even if it's a dream role, having a bad manager, I think, would kill your experience (and professional growth) (4) It seems that you "fell into" REPE. From your perspective, how would a candidate successfully pitch their passion for doing a certain type of work (let's take REPE in this case) without direct prior experience i.e. real estate investment banking? Continuing on the REPE example, I'd think logically articulating how your story feeds into the industry's current (and future) narrative would give you a shot at breaking in. What do you think?
No problem--I'll try to answer as best I can!
1) https://discord.gg/xxWQ2nC
2) I was the top student in his class, and just shot him an email asking if he knew any developers looking for help for 4 months. I told him I was interested in gaining experience in development as I only worked in REPE before.
3) Honestly, it started off as an amicable relationship where they were teaching me the ropes and I was ramping up very quickly due to my prior self-learning endeavors. But I noticed a couple months in they were really just teaching me all the BS grindy work so they could get it off their plate--which is ultimately fair in the grand scheme of things (as you progress in your career, your juniors start doing the work you don't want to do anymore). But it got to the point where they would be in a live file, for example, and literally insert a comment saying, "change this word to XYZ"--when it was their own edit to begin with. Another red flag was having me pre-emptively package a full report multiple times to incorporate minor changes due to lack of thinking of ahead. Time management also became an issue as they would enforce pushed-up deadlines to instill a sense of false urgency--one particularly nasty example was when I needed to drop my cat off to the vet 5 minutes down the block, but they refused to let me go, saying a report was due immediately within the next 30 minutes. I finished the report and found out it was really due tomorrow--to this day I still cannot comprehend their reasoning behind that except for malicious intent (I ended up having to give my cat away to an owner who could better take care of her due to multiple events like this happening). Another red flag was facetime--but not your typical facetime of needing to be in the office until they left, but having to stay and complete something even AFTER they left despite it not being due that night. This resulted in many nights where I was the only one left in the office late into the night while they went home 3 - 4 hours earlier. One final red flag since this is getting long-winded; not being allowed to work with another senior despite being assigned to them. What I mean by this is, each senior had their own responsibilities and parts of the business they operated in, and I asked for more exposure in a certain area. I was granted permission by the MD to work under both my original senior and the new senior, but every time I tried to get some time to work with the new senior, my original senior would magically come up with a new urgent task to be completed. I never got to work with the second senior nor did I receive the exposure I seeked.
4) I've done quite a few interviews and honestly have not heard any good answers. If I were in their shoes without any prior experience, I would express my desire to work in the real estate industry as a way to impact people and communities positively while presenting an example of such a way to do so--for example if I were interviewing for an industrial/logistics role, I'd speak about wanting to be a part of the solution to improve truckers' experiences via investing in/developing better logistics facilities in places that need it, which would coincide with where demand is the greatest and therefore also profit. I'd also contrast it with an example of how real estate can harm people, such as bringing up the story of Invitation Homes and how they displaced tens if not hundreds or millions of people during the subprime mortgage crisis and expressing a desire to avoid that or even be part of the solution (if applying to an affordable housing developer for example).
My personal answer to "Why RE?" is that during my first internship in REPE at Firm 1, my Principal was developing a condominium complex atop of four parcels, one of which had a grocery store on it. The development required the demolishing of said grocery store, which also meant displacing the workers who depended on their jobs there for their livelihoods. But instead of stepping on them to get to where he wanted and telling them to fuck off, he spent a full year ahead of time helping them find new jobs and even offering them future positions at the new complex. During construction, he was the kind of man that would treat the contractors and workers as equals, buying and having lunch with them, taking a genuine interest in their day-to-days, and overall being a good guy at heart. He taught me through his actions how to succeed in this business without having to be cutthroat and stepping on others, and all the while improving the communities he invested in while balancing gentrification with a little extra effort to help those affected by it. To this day, we still stay in touch, and I consider him my mentor and role model for life.
Hope these long-winded answers helped--apologies for getting carried away here--