Growth Equity at MF Arm (KKR / TPG / Blackstone) to LBO PE?
Curious if anyone has done this and if experienced professionals can chime in on how doable this is. I've been working in growth equity at one of the 3 shops above for 2.5 years now, and starting to think about the next steps. Did a standard 2-3 year IB stint before this role. My deal experience consists of mostly $50M - $500M equity checks on growth deals + consortium-led LBO buyouts that most people would have heard of - focusing mainly on enterprise software and general tech.
I spend most of my time on modeling and diligence with very little sourcing (to my surprise large cap growth names have extremely complicated models and I've gotten really solid exposure there) so feel comfortable on modeling, but can definitely see an LBO fund ding me for not having enough PortCo experience (we are definitely less involved given a sizable portion of our deals are minority). We still get involved in our portcos, but just wouldn't be as active as an LBO guy would is my guess.
What are some tips for me? Would the traditional HHs be helpful? Any help would be much appreciated. Would ideally like to avoid Bschool and take a 2nd year or senior associate role at an MM/UMM LBO fund after this and build a career there.
Just curious why are you interested in switching?
I don’t know anyone who’s made this transition but imagine it wouldn’t be tough to go to a place like Vista, Francisco, Silver Lake, etc that’s still in the broader tech investing world but is majority focused. There are also shops like Warburg and General Atlantic where the same professionals are doing both growth deals and LBOs that could be reasonable targets. Also do you have a sense if it’s possible to move within your current firm?
There are a couple reasons - (1) This is a strict 2+1 program where direct promotion to VP is difficult, if not unheard of - floating the move to the buyout side is highly unlikely to be met with positive reception, given the highly structured nature of MFPE recruiting itself and the associate program there (2) Not as interested in growth investing as I thought I would be - would personally like to get my hands dirty with more portco work and eventually transition to starting my own business (hence I'm okay with more MM type buyout funds as well)
Will definitely explore hybrid roles - didn't know Warburg had a team like that - thanks!
Just for clarity, I think the point on Warburg is that even though they are normally categorized as MF PE, in reality they do a ton of minority / growth equity deals. As far as I’m aware, they do this from their main buyout fund, not a separate vehicle / team
Thanks that's helpful - do you know if Francisco also does growth out of their flagship? Probably the only names I can think of other than your traditional crossover guys like TCV.
As far as I know, Francisco only has their main buyout fund, so all deals would come from that. Believe they do skew more toward the buyout / control stake transactions though than Warburg / GA / TCV
Not sure, but interested to see what others say.
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