Is this a pipe dream?

Made this account for (further) anonymity.

Wanted to run a situation across you guys.

As a background, I just finished sophomore year at a University outside the Top 100 (hold your laughter) and I'm now officially a 'rising' junior. In August of last year, I landed an unpaid internship with a MM PE fund, got hired in January, and I'm now a part-time analyst while still in school. It's been a great place to learn/work and I love it, but I'm having thoughts about BB's and NYC for my junior summer. Before I tell the GP, I want to gauge it first of how realistic it is. I have decent experience I think for a sophomore/junior (maybe not), but of course, I'm at a campus with nothing remotely close to BB OCR, and an okay GPA. I think a true summer analyst role would be an amazing experience, along with going through a BB's training from the sell side vs private equity. Is this so far out reach? I can't really tell if it's something possible/rational, or not.

My understanding for getting into BB summer:

1) OCR
2) Online App (no one really gets in via website, right?)
3) Connection within bank to push you through to Sup Day

Correct my ignorance if wrong.

#3 is where I would be targeting. Our GP has a ton of contacts within various banks. I honestly feel he'd leverage one, and go to bat for me. But he's also in a conflict of interest situation; considering he wants me to stay with fund for awhile and progress through that way.

Or will I be laughed out of the room at BB? When I think about it...why would they choose intern not from an OCR school?

I'm going to leave it at that. Not sure how else to frame it!

What do you think?

 

You should think about the pros and cons of leaving a firm that seems to be grooming you for a future with them just so you can go through a standardized training process and have a "true" SA experience.

 

Love you Stryfe. I feel like I'm catfishing you from dummy account..anyway, that's my dilemma. I'm happy here, making good $ for a college kid (not in your echelon but not bad), I just want to broaden horizon a little if it were possible and not burn any bridges if I did want to come back...

 

There are two scenarios that could play out here:

1) You get an offer at a BB for a SA position next year and decide to accept in favor of staying at your PE firm for your junior summer. You'll go through their training program and get to work, logging insane hours and competing against a talented class for a return offer, but you kick ass so you obviously get a FT offer. Since you left your PE firm, the Partners are now second guessing your loyalty, because they're unsure if they should re-hire the guy who thought the grass was greener on the sell side, and you end up accepting the BB offer. You'll work two years and again compete against a talented class for a PE exit offer, and of course you'll get it since you're you and become a Pre-MBA analyst. Congratulations! You're back where you started.

or

2) You say screw the analyst stint, I'm going to bust my ass this summer and show the Partners I'm capable of taking on PE straight from undergrad. Well, you kick ass at this because you've already had one summer stumbling your way through how things work, and you've worked part-time over the year refining what you've learned and studying the firm's investment strategy, in addition to having Partners looking out for your development. You crush it over the summer and they hire you on FT once you graduate, and you immediately start taking on responsibilities and roles essentially giving your career a 5 year jumpstart.

Catch my drift? I know people who've been in similar situations in the context of HF/IM and passed, and people who've stuck around. The latter were all PMs by 30.

It would be a different situation if you were choosing between a BB SA and an unpaid buyside internship that you have no previous connection with, but thats not the case.

 
Best Response

Stay. And talk to the GP and ask what their intentions are with you and state that you'd like to parlay this into a full time gig when you graduate. If they say no, you gotta log your 2 year stint in banking then ask for the referrals and string pulling. What seems more likely based on your post is that they'll want you to stay. And stay you should.

And to answer one of your questions-it will be difficult to get an internship, let alone an FT offer, at a BB or even a better but not elite boutique if you're coming from a school outside of the 100 with just an ok GPA. And what happens if you get an internship but not an FT offer: do you go crawling back to the PE fund and they see that an IB didn't want you and since most PE funds recruit almost exclusively from IB, they think why do we want this guy now?

Don't think there's some glamour in being an analyst in NYC. It's a horrible life in an expensive ass city: you basically pay a lot in rent and every other expense but you rarely get to take advantage of the city because you work all the time.

 

Nail on the head. I hear you loud and clear and appreciate the feedback. That's my next move; talking to GP and really getting a clear view. I do know the associate position in 2016 post-graduation for me is there and it's great. But, GP has also made it clear that he has interest in his team's development. He sent one to Ivy BS (and paid for it-guy didn't return as VP), and another will most likely be going next year. That's why I feel it's not a matter of loyalty.

 

Wow. Unbelievable feedback guys. Taking everything in stride. Stryfe pegged my scenarios perfectly.

To field a couple Q's:

~$450MM committed from LP's PortCo's are split between consumer, oil/gas, a few tech Deal size varies from 15-90ish, also do smaller mezz -deal team is GP, VP, Associate, Analyst/Intern I'm "FO". Mostly direct DD, investor monitoring, deal analysis (shadowing bus. dev) None of the partners were bankers; all operators (former CEOs, CFOs, law)

Full disclosure: much of my family is still in NY, so to live and be back where I grew up carries value.

Deep down, I feel the right move is to stay. Always B school I guess?

 
EBITDAMN:

Wow. Unbelievable feedback guys. Taking everything in stride. Stryfe pegged my scenarios perfectly.

To field a couple Q's:

~$450MM committed from LP's
PortCo's are split between consumer, oil/gas, a few tech
Deal size varies from 15-90ish, also do smaller mezz
-deal team is GP, VP, Associate, Analyst/Intern
I'm "FO". Mostly direct DD, investor monitoring, deal analysis (shadowing bus. dev)
None of the partners were bankers; all operators (former CEOs, CFOs, law)

Full disclosure: much of my family is still in NY, so to live and be back where I grew up carries value.

Deep down, I feel the right move is to stay. Always B school I guess?

Do you think you are learning or will be learning valuable and marketable skills in this job? That should be one important deciding factor.

 

It sounds like a pretty good gig, and this isn't meant in a demeaning way, but it's exceptional for someone in a school that's out of the top 100 schools and as an undergrad.

I'd be careful on asking if they plan to grow exponentially though, or at least what is meant by that. As a lower MM fund you don't want to raise a massive fund. $450MM is plenty to do sub $100MM deals with leverage and if they're doing well fund raising shouldn't be too difficult in the future. The firm will never be the next BX or KKR raising multi-billion dollar funds and acquiring companies that end up on the front page of the WSJ and it shouldn't be. LP's wouldn't do this anyway, but if you raised a couple billion dollars and still stayed in that lower MM range (which you would because that's the range in which the principals have experience and a track record) you'd have to do too many deals and hire on far more people to do so and the senior guys would be diluted between too many acquisitions and portfolio companies, leading to a much greater chance of messing up and underperforming. In addition, plenty of people have made a good career in sub $1B funds doing smaller deals. There's a good argument out there that even getting much above $500MM is a bad thing for funds doing these sizes of deals because you end up getting stupid and doing deals that aren't really good simply to deploy capital and there's a better chance you'll end up getting into industries that you just don't know that well and doing deals that are heavily marketed be IB's.

You should make sure that there's room for you to grow professionally but it sounds like there is.

 

Didn't want to respond until I talked to GP.

Spoke at lunch today and had a great conversation. I laid out pretty much everything I did here. He basically said do whatever is best for you and your family (future-wise I guess, being 19), don't get complacent etc...and I'll always have home here if I decide I do want to stay yada yada.

Didn't get into his contacts or anything, just wanted to simply feel him out. He's given a green light, and it's something I would want to do.

Best-case: I get BB (or close) IB intern a year from now. Go from there. Worst-case: Strike-out looking, stay here and go from there.

Now, the plausibility of all this I have no idea.

 

Appreciate it, again. Can always count on WSO for purposeful feedback.

Just thinking out loud:

Upon graduation I'd be capped as Pre-MBA Associate/Analyst for maybe a year or two, and then BS. Most of the Assoc's are 25-27; so, I'm thinking for B School I'd have roughly ~5 years in PE...coupled with good GMAT (EC's) I'm hoping I can get in somewhere decent. Two risks being GPA and current undergrad...

I still want that New York fix though ;)

 

I was in your situation but am now a ft analyst. You can do it. But it will involve a lot of networking, skill, and luck.

Because when you're in a room full of smart people, smart suddenly doesn't matter—interesting is what matters.
 

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