How many deals do you work on per year?
Inspired by the thread "How many hours do you work per week, honestly" and recognizing that PE shops (particularly buyout) infrequently close new deals, I want to develop a yardstick to determine if I'm getting a good experience. Hopefully this will also serve you guys well.
For example, I'm almost ending my first year at a LMM. I will have been heavily involved in 4 deals (2 LOIs for tuck-unders, 1 LOI for a platform, 1 that didn't go anywhere with an actual proposal but was heavily involved from sourcing to management meetings, pre-IC deck, etc.).
Curious to hear how everyone's experience has been!
Good question - hopefully this will turn into another useful thread.
I'm at a MM. Been here ~4 months and haven't closed anything yet. I've been heavily involved in 1 platform deal, have done a decent amount of work on another one, and then a number of deals we spent a bit of time on. If you extrapolate my 4 months to your year it's probably ~similar experience.
In 2 years, goal would be to complete 1 platform deal. This is ideal and should be reasonably do-able, but there's a huge luck component and not rare at all to see associates (typically at larger funds) that didn't close a deal in 2-years. It really depends - ideally you should have completed anywhere from ~3-4+ "final round" bids in your two years to get a good number of reps that will prepare you for a post-associate career - otherwise, it's just hard to learn what you need to quarterback as a VP if you haven't done it that many times before as an associate.
4 months
I don't understand the numbers I'm reading in this thread.
1 platform every 3-5 years.
15-20 bolt-ons per year until exit.
You get two exits during every credit cycle.
If someone in my general vicinity called LOIs "deals," my trust in their credibility would go negative, just like their career trajectory.
An LOI is an unenforceable piece of paper that says "I'm not going to fuck you, so don't fuck me." One step above a handshake deal.
I currently work at a large private equity fund of funds group that does primaries, secondaries and co-investments. My group focuses solely on co-sponsorships and GP-led secondary deals. We closed on 12 deals so far this year, heavily weighted towards GP-led secodaries. We saw more deal flow in GP-leds this year than at any other point in history. I was invovled in 6 of those deals.
I’ve been at a MM firm for 2+ years. Here’s a look at my funnel of platform deals over that time period. I’ve probably been on the high side of activity at my firm.
Opportunities reviewed: ~125
IOIs submitted: ~40
LOIs submitted: ~10
Granted exclusivity: 4
Closed: 2
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