Thoughts on middle market lender in a Tier 1 market?

Hey guys thoughts on a middle market lender in a top market? I am a few years out of school looking for my next jump. Considering this role, top brokerages/random developers, or grad school. They've done about $4 billion in transactions and have been around for at least 10 years. That isn't a lot, but a majority of that has been in the last few years. What else is there to look at? They're working with a range of sponsors, interesting and high profile deals for the market. Majority of deals are eight to nine figures and they are probably closing a few deals a month so very active. 

Concerns are they are not super well known, they seem to have smart guys on the team and are lean so you're working on a lot but I really need to make a good jump/get a good next role here. That's why I was considering grad school at well known programs to get the brand name on my resume and make a good jump after that instead of moving to a from a relatively unknown firm to another. I know everyone will say firm name doesn't matter, but it does when you're early on, experience is important and firm name 100% helps in all aspects of seeing many deals, exit ops, perception of skills. Let me know your thoughts on the Lending side, it would be an underwiring/AM role and I have a first round coming up next week.

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On a team like this - what exactly do you want to know? If your only concern is that they're not super well known, then, yes, you do run the risk of not getting to participate in all that many LinkedIn "HUGE DEAL CLOSED" circle jerks, but you're not missing out on much.

Here's my piece - life in the middle market is the goldilocks zone if you want to make good money & have an above-average WLB. Last year on our team of three, the head banker netted ~ $3M, and our associate made ~ $500k in his late twenties. I also have access to a swathe of internal data at my company and can confirm that working on huge deals is more often than not just a dick-sucking contest to see who can work for the least amount of money in exchange for bragging rights & potential future "opportunities" (the greatest intangible carrot on a stick in this industry). For example, a banker here recently brokered a 9-figure bridge loan for a big, flashy portfolio sale. Blasted all over LinkedIn, 9 figure loan in bold font, yada yada huge deals. Under the hood, his fee was 15 basis points. Our team earned a bigger check working on a single $10M Freddie deal while doing 1/10th of the work. 

 

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