How difficult is it to land at a single manager HF after IB?

Know a lot of people that end up at MM shops like Citadel but know few that make it into $1B+ AUM SM funds. Is it hard? Had a friend recently join a SM fund out of undergrad, and it seems like these spots are rare, even after 2 yrs IB, 2 + 2 PE, or after HBS/GSB.

 
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Made me lol. 
 

SM - Single Manager fund. So like, one head honcho/portfolio manager (PM), or perhaps as much as a trio of founding head honchos who call themselves co-CIOs (chief investment officers) calling all the shots that has the final say. Think Bobby Axelrod. Everyone answers to the PM/CIO, and he/she should be fully aware and involved with every investment decision in the portfolio. 
 

MM = multi manager fund. This is more common for macro/quant funds. Essentially you have at least a dozen (or often many more) portfolio managers who are running their own little specialized funds and are in charge of their own trading teams and investment decisions. The partners/head honchos of these firms don’t really care what their PM’s are investing in, as long as they are meeting their risk/return targets. 

 

Oops my bad - thought the acronyms were common place since they were thrown around so much in my adjacent circle.

Think it’s already explained well above, but multi-manager are effectively your pod shops - bunch of PMs running their own books and profits/losses (P&L). Think Point72, Citadel, Millenium, etc. Your single manager funds are more concentrated - typically it’s just 1 or 2 PMs, and they’re typically known to be more long-term focused versus the MM funds. Tiger cubs like Maverick are a decent example of a single manager.

From what I’ve heard, the ideal single manager fund maximizes AUM per head, which is saying they want to manage $5B with as small an investment team as possible to minimize the mouths you need to feed. Going off that logic, it seems there aren’t that many “ideal” single manager funds - there’s the Vikings and Coatues of the world, but those seats are also quite volatile relative to other SM funds. So, I was curious just how difficult or common it is to land at one of those “ideal” places since there’s not necessarily an incentive to hire. Tons of people go into banking, but only a fraction end up at your megafunds, and I imagine a fraction of those land at a fund charging 2/20 with low analyst churn and lean team of IPs.

 

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