Startup PE Shop - Self Funded
I was recently offered a position at a very small PE firm.
For background:
-The firm started 2 years ago. Very small EV and Have since closed 4 deals bringing in roughly 500k in mgt fees.
I understand the major pros and cons of joining such a small firm but it seems as if they are getting some traction in regards to deal flow. My question is - given that my only other offers have come from BO MF PE and F10 Corporate Finance I feel as if this opportunity is the best bet for my career. I am a very risky person and see the vast potential upside if this firm was to escalate quickly. Thoughts? Am i being too optimistic? Feel free to ask additional questions - was trying to keep this post short.
bump
"in-house capital.. wealthy families" - typically thats referred to as a family office.
I would weigh this one against the F10 corp fin, if you're entertaining this option at all you don't sound like the BO type.
I think if you respect and gel with the team, they are offering you a piece of the carry, and you're going to be on the investments side, its a good option for someone with a solid risk appetite. A family office like that run by family members isn't likely to promote outsiders up to the top, but you could get good deal experience. The problem will be the exit.
The F10 will be the conservative route that could set you up for B School and another run at IB -> more institutional PE, but thats a highly competitive and uncertain journey.
Depending on the culture fits, I would lean toward the small shop personally..
I guess you could classify it as a family office - but for the sake of calling a spade a spade the work i would be doing would be PE focused (FO role). I see it with a lot of upside - lots of exposure to every aspect of deal execution, connections to family network,better work life balance, and huge upside with potential carry (he mentioned carry as a point of conversation later down the line).
I guess my bias is attributing their current closed deals as enough “evidence” to prove their legit and not another bust of PE fund. I have worked previously with a couple of the guys, and i know we gel well.
Is there anything i should be concerned about?
Closed deals are obviously a positive. Exits under their belt would be the "evidence" needed to know if this is sustainable.
What's your background? where did you work with the guys before? how was your experience, are they professionals? what is the career trajectory promised? what are your plans in life? all these are important questions to answer if you want inputs.
Well, I'm coming straight out of undergrad. Non target. Internship experience is in VC/PortMgt/PE.
I worked previously with them at an LMM PE shop. I was one of the 4 interns and they were associates. I really enjoyed working with them and could tell that we were on the same wavelength for a majority of the deals we were apart of. From my experiences with them, I would regard them as professionals. No reason to believe otherwise. And like I mentioned, they come from distinguished families and have proven track records.
As far as career trajectory. i would love to work in PE long term - Deal side would be awesome for a while, but I have always had a draw towards ops as well. I couldnt bear the thought of a standard 9-5 F100 job for the sake of security.
And as a side note. In my mind, it seems like they are taking a shot on me (nontarget, no banking, etc). I just dont see this kind of opportunity presenting itself to me EVER again in my life and the potential upside could be great. My rationale for even applying to the F100 role was because of brand name to potentially swing a MBA business schools">M7 program and eventually transition to the stereotypical IB/PE route.
Apologies for the disappearance - had a tough week.
So i read your original post a few times and then your responses below, and my question is what are you waiting for to take that offer?
As far as I understand, this is the situation at hand:
So what are you really thinking about? And why would you want to go to corporate finance role you don't like to try to go to business school only to "transition to a stereotypical IB/PE route" why do you want to be "stereotypical"? You've got a chance to be original and if it doesn't work for a couple of years, you will have experience that is different from 95% from the class who all took the "stereotypical" route.
If I were you I would diligence this differently; I would ask about career progression, potential path to partnership, mentorship and regular time with the principals to develop yourself, etc.
Experience is what you make of it within the limitations of the actual job. Take the gig. Get some reps under your belt, and trade up later if you're not happy.
Seems like a no-brainer. Take the PE gig.
Sounds like you don't have many other options. The gig sounds pretty cool, take it.
Dont listen to the people above you. Its a no-name PE gig, with zero credibility and no one will know what youve done. Ive seen former BB IBD classmates get shunted to lower-MM PE gigs and they struggle even come back into banking. If it works out, great, if it doesn't you have nothing to fall back on e.g. name brand.
PE isnt created equal, and a "fund" without an LP isnt really a fund (obviously ex mega-family offices).
You have no idea what you are talking about.
Don't be mad you guys work at a small shitty fund.
I agree with most of the posts here that depending on your risk appetite, this is an attractive gig. In terms of choice, it is between this and the corp fin gig.
Keep in mind that the biggest factor to weigh here is a) whether you think they have an appetite to get deals done (which seems to be the case and b) if your role in these will be substantial both from the diligence standpoint and also post-close. The post-close work is key, because it will set you up for the operating path if you decide to go that route.
In the LMM, there are many structures (funds, family office, fundless sponsors, fundless sponsors with FO arrangements) so moving to another shop will be possible, but won't be a slam dunk.
If the worst case happens and this doesn't work out, no one will really fault you for taking the risk, given the opportunity.
I work at a similar firm right now. Although in my case it's a single family. Also, I'm much later in my career (left banking at a mid/senior level to join this place).
For me, the biggest thing by far was making sure that the deal flow would continue, i.e. that the family wouldn't decide one day to close up the office and let private wealth managers handle it all.
Once it became clear that is unlikely to happen (family demonstrated their commitment to having an office and staff to source their own deals), it was an easy decision, as it should be for anyone who has a real passion for investing and not a lot of options for getting into an investing role.
Only difference for you is that you're much earlier in your career which means you will have chances down the road to get to the buy side. So at this point, you should do whatever will build your skills. If this MF office is committed to the mission and can pretty much guarantee that you'll have deals to analyze for a few years, that's excellent experience that would put you in position to do a lot of different things down the road.
On the other hand if you get the sense there is materially high risk that the office could close or go stagnant, consider the F10 job because at this stage in your career you want quality skill-building experience more than anything else.
Appreciate your input. Some additional details:
The principals that started this (the guys I know) left their high-paying gigs to pursue this full time. I do not think this is something of a test-run as they were in PE before and left to start a firm on their own. I do not have concern for deal flow/motivation, however, I do have a slight concern in regards to their eventual exit ops (more-so how their investments turn out). While they do have extensive capital, I would hate to see the firm tank after a couple of bad deals approach exit. As of now I am leaning towards the PE gig over the F10 job.
What is the compensation for each?
~75 base for F10 with 10% bonus ~80 base PE but we didn’t talk about bonus
Comp isn’t the deciding factor for me, leaning towards experiences over pay/benefits. The F10 role would have great healthcare/401k match/etc compared to the PE gig.
Certainly understand that. I'd say go for the PE role as it seems like the better experience, pay difference is negligible (also big upside potential on the PE side if things work out), and at the end of the day it wouldn't stop you from pursuing a F100/corp fin role in the future. Just my $0.02.
I would 100% do the PE role. If you scale cleanly then they'll throw more responsibility your way than you know what to do with.
I would find out how existing deals have played out to date before jumping in though. Keep in mind that IRR for a fund doing deals that small should be much much higher than the typical LMM fund so don't benchmark against your typical LMM fund with $500m - $1B under management.
Was it them that brought up the ~$500k in management fees by the way? Seems like an odd thing to bring up when equity is being sourced from family.
So i initially had the same concern. Why would they be paying themselves? lol
However, from my understanding, the equity checks have played out 2 different ways in the deals that they have closed. 1) It seems as if their prospective investments are very lucrative in terms of cash flow. Because of this, they have been able to structure some deals where the lenders are offering equity checks alongside their loans. This enables them to swing mgt fees in those discussions. 2) they do have some deals where equity checks have been sourced externally. But like I said, this is done on a deal by deal basis, and not in a typical fund manner. I know one of their deals was closed 70% with external capital. Bringing in mgt fees because of that.
Makes sense. So basically an IS model and using mom's money as their portion of the equity an IS would contribute.
How is actual performance of the companies they have purchased? That's going to be the only real indicator that will tell you if they are worth working with or not as running your own deals/fund is very different than working at one. Although they aren't using their own cash so I guess the psychological mindfuck isn't bad.
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