Moving from small private equity fund to a larger fund
Hi Everyone!
I am currently very close at getting an Associate job at a European private equity fund. The fund focus on making SME investments in Central Europe and Scandinavia. The current AUM is about 200m euro. The team is world class and have an extremely good performance.
However, I am an ambitious person and would like to work at an even bigger PE fund. What are my options of moving to a large fund over time? not Blackstone but something larger like 500-1.000m euro or more :-)
easy cowboy .. its not about the size of the boat, but the flow of the ocean
You didn't mention how old the firm is, but just because they are managing 200mm now, doesn't mean they can't grow to 500mm or 1bn.
What does size of fund have to do with "ambition"? In general, it's much more difficult to move up-market than down-market. If your fund is doing so well and has a world-class team, why wouldn't you want to grow with them and eventually get in on the upside?
I am just curious.
That's why I am asking.
First, you don’t have a PE job. You are “very close”. Get a job first.
Second, the size of a fund has nothing to do with your ambition. Everyone (even me when I was a first year IB analyst) is so enamored with size. I would encourage you to drop that approach and shift your focus to the experience and long-term career prospects you will receive when evaluating buy-side opportunities. I couldn’t be more happy professionally. I’m U.S. MM PE (although much larger relative to your $200mm opportunity), learning a ton, getting more responsibility, on a partner track, about to receive an office soon, excellent work-life balance and I get paid more than most of the people country-wide in my age group. If I had an offer from a mega-firm (e.g. Carlyle, Apollo, KKR, etc.) come across my desk today it would be extremely tough to convince me to accept it. In other words, please don’t let the size of a fund drive your thought process about the value of the opportunity. Do not misinterpret my message. I’m not saying you shouldn’t aim for a big fund. I’m just saying your thought process right now is a bit kiddy.
Third, assuming you do get this $200mm PE role, it will be hard to move to a big shop. Not impossible, but improbable. I personally haven’t seen a case, but I’m sure there are outliers. Most people I know that have worked at mega-funds usually all end up at smaller shops for various reasons. You also might hate this PE job when you get it.
Good point! Thank you for the input.
Applying to larger PE firms as 2nd job: PE background vs. IB background (Originally Posted: 04/21/2014)
Hey guys,
I'm a current first-year analyst at a relatively small growth equity fund. I went to a target school and started this job immediately of graduation -- no finance/business major, but had industry experience/internships and landed a PE job right away. I want to stay in PE, and my goal is to move up to a larger fund. It doesn't need to be growth equity specifically, but I'd ideally want to stay away from the VC side and move upstream.
Obviously, the common career path is two years IB, then moving buy-side to PE.
Given that my background is more rare, does anyone have any advice on how to make this PE-to-PE jump? Has anyone followed a similar path, or does anyone currently work at a firm who hired someone like me? I want to know what the big guys like Blackstone, KKR, etc. look for & how I'll stack up against my fellow IB-background competition when applying -- whether I'll be working at a disadvantage, advantage, or pretty much on par.
Your advice is much appreciated.
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Leveraging MBA to move into larger PE firm (Originally Posted: 05/05/2014)
Currently working at a small PE firm as a pre-MBA Associate. Planning on matriculating fall 2015, graduating 2017 with my MBA, hopefully from a top school. What kind of opps would I have with regards to getting a role at a larger private equity firm upon graduation? Would I go in as a post-MBA Associate or VP? I feel like I wouldn't be experienced enough for a VP role but already have an Associate title, so not sure where I would fall. Also not sure about how legitimate prior PE experience is in this regard.
What kinds of things can I get into at my current role that would improve my resume?
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Titles are overrated/insignificant. If you've completed your MBA and your experience warrants, you should be going into a post-MBA position regardless of title. Sometimes the post-MBA associate is called a "senior associate" but once again, titles don't mean as much as your comp.
The definition of a larger PE firm is very grey. How large is large? Or how much larger than your current pre-MBA firm?
There seems to be a ton of competition for quality/decent post-MBA positions. My previous firm located in Asia never really had a requirement for a top (M7, Insead, etc) MBA. However due to the overspill from the US, we saw a significant number of bschool applicants from H/S/W and so now the bar had been raised.
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