Fellow Monkeys, I joined a 1st gen family investment office about two years ago. Initially I thought I would be working under the principal to learn from him to ultimately take over the office. Was led to believe that my role would be 50/50 between CRE and PE/VC. Within about 3 months of the job, I hadn't touched any real estate deals and was asked to cover the PE/VC side of the house. In full transparency, all of my experience at that time had been on the CRE side and I had close to 0 experience in the PE/VC space. Fast forward to present and there hasn't been much training however I am being asked to take full responsibility for the outcomes of the PE/VC investments as well as any new CRE deal. My comp still reflects that of an associate. I am gearing up to make an ask for an appropriate raise but wanted to toss my situation out to the Monkeys to try to get consensus around market for my role.
Here are my responsibilities/day-to-day activities:
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Due Diligence on all acquisitions
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Create Investment Models for all new and existing deals
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Support founders to create Business Plans for all new and existing deals
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Create investors materials to raise capital and response to investor DD questions with ad-hoc analysis
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Use principal's network to raise capital for new deals
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Coordinate with legal, founders and investors to close deals
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Ongoing support for founders/new deals (asset management, connecting to resources, budgeting, spend management, etc...)
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Turnaround underperforming investments by working with founders to execute pivots/new vision
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Oversee and support internal reporting and portfolio analysis (working with controller)
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Ongoing investor communication
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Track and chase outstanding receivables/distributions
We have 85 investments in the portfolio - approx 50% are real estate investments. We typically invest in founders before they have product market fit and come in for 50% of the cap table. In some cases we write angel checks and are passive but for the most part we are pretty active. My principal sources the deal flow and will often mentor the founders in the beginning stages and then turns them over to me for day-to-day support and he gets involved for major decisions.
This is a pretty lengthy post but would be very helpful to get consensus around what comp should be for this role (base + bonus) and what sort of title best describes the position.
What's the AUM? How's the fund structured? Can you get a % of performance or just pay and bonus.
If I had to take a shot and you came to me look for a job with that resume, I'd say about 200-250k all in.
AUM is between $150M-$200M. We're not a fund technically but I think there could be an opportunity to get a share of performance. My principal has not really been open to giving carry but I'm working on making an ask to have that included in my comp.
What's typical for comp structure - how does base pay, bonus and carry typically break out?
I don't know what typical looks like but it all depends on what your plans are long term. If you want to stay and take over, take a haircut now and take the entire pie when it's just you. If you're looking for carry in your current situation I'd take about 150-200k (base and bonus, break it out however you want) and 10-7% carry. 10% if you're on the lower end of the scale and 7% if you're wanting that 200k, with 5-7 year lock in period. With expected IRR of 10-15% as your threshold you should be doing pretty well when it's time to get paid out.
Back when I interviewed with my current employer (also an FO), I was told that I would be focusing on VC. I have worked almost exclusively on PE buyout / turnaround deals since starting and ultimately I've learned that this is what my role will look like long-term. Fortunately my background is much more relevant to PE, so although it's been an adjustment, it's been an easier transition than it otherwise would have been.
I can't comment on the relevance of AUM because I'm at a multi-FO where partners' net worth ranges from $200 mm - several $bn and we simply tap their liquid capital any time we need to get a deal done. There isn't really any specified amount of money set aside/sitting in an account waiting to be deployed.
My list of responsibilities is very similar to yours.
With all that said, I make the base salary of an average IB An1. I also get "carry" (hard to explain how this works given our structure, but suffice it to say I'm receiving regular cash distributions) and equity in every deal we close. My work-life balance is great, so I'm perfectly satisfied with the structure of my comp. This may sound obvious, but I think it's difficult to say how much money you should or shouldn't be making given that family offices' strategy/structure/culture can vary so wildly. Instead, you should probably just determine whether you're personally satisfied with the pay relative to the difficulty of your responsibilities/work-life balance. There are a lot of benefits to working at a FO IMO, and some of these might even warrant taking a haircut (long-term equity upside notwithstanding).
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