Silver Lake Culture
Know there have been some posts about this on the forum but was wondering if anyone had more specific examples or anecdotes. Also would like to understand the differences between NYC & Menlo offices.
Thanks in advance!
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Definitely avoid if you're a vampire.
Most "elite / prestigious" PE firm cultures fall within a spectrum of:
People have soulless, dead eyes and flog you to death on projects ---> People are really kind, nice, and take a personal interest in you...before also flogging you to death on projects
The Menlo office is closer to the first. The culture has historically been quite bad, with most people trying to avoid talking to each other, so much so that the office tried to introduce some culture initiatives to have people eat lunch together. Of course, such a practice will never stop people from picking up food and retreating to their desks to "finish up some things."
There are some weird aspects to the office, such as the head of the office (a gentleman by the name of Egon Durban, who has been profiled a couple times - google him for a not so flattering story about his path to power) setting up a private indoor golf simulator in a locked part of the building that only senior-ish folks can access. As you might guess, there's a bit of a cult of personality around this dude (but name a PE firm without a cult of personality around the person/people who run the IC?)
But they pay well, let the junior people share in the economics of the deals, and have good exit opps...which is a win, all things considered.
Most of the sausage-making runs out of the Menlo office (a function of the leaders who sit in MP), with the NYC office (let alone the international offices) having much less action / sway in the direction of the firm.
When you say they let juniors share in the economics, are you saying associates get carry or that they just have the opportunity for co-invest on deals?
I always cringe when I see people ask if associates get carry. Carry takes 5 - 7+ years to pay out and associates are 2/3-year meat shields at most funds. That timeline doesn't match up. Think of how much of a headache it would be to administer carry documents and get a fresh batch of associates into the legalese / tax obligations of paying out carry every year. In what world would a GP do that every year, especially when 90% of the associates will be gone before the carry starts paying out? Also, if the market for a lower/upper middle market/megafund associate is x in cash comp, what makes you think any fund would pay you substantially more than x cash comp, especially in a precious tax-advantaged currency important for retaining the people who actually source the deals and have relationships in the industry and the portfolio companies? What's their incentive? There's a huge market of bright and hungry banking analysts / consultants who can do the job.
If someone tells you they have carry at an established private equity fund as an associate, you should check if their last name matches up to someone higher up on the food chain.
It is almost always co-invest, UNLESS you are joining a startup / first time fund, in which case you might have a bite at some carry if you're going to be "building the firm together", but GPs have been known to be shifty on those promises a couple years afterwards...
I appreciate the insight here! I understand you can’t really optimize for culture in MF PE, but it’s helpful to know on what part of the spectrum these funds are at.
Egon gets a bad rap, fuck the haters. The man's a genius.
How do
A good fund to work with and treats their advisors nicely compared to some of the other funds.
Following
The culture is better than most others I have seen
Could you elaborate?
I worked on the LP side and during my time I sat in on many PE LP meetings and have done diligence on Silver Lake and many of its competitors. When you get exposed to a lot of PE firms pitching you start to see patterns and build an intuition on whats BS and whats not (usually it comes down to whether the data backs what they are saying). Based on how they pitch their team and experience you also start to see the places where the juniors are miserable. A good indication is when the GP is trying to hard to please LPs, that's when you know that the juniors are pressured to do a bunch of BS work on artificial deadlines along with keeping up the investment pace. Places like Silver Lake don't need to please LPs, they have enough demand so in general less BS work. Also, I have noticed that their DD has less BS in general and they do TRY to support the junior talent. But I could be wrong and it would be best to talk to someone there.
Following :)
followingg
Onewire did an interview of Glenn Hutchins which touches history, business model, recruiting, etc.
Is SL a generalist program? Also hows WLB balance versus other MF shops?
Yes, it's a generalist program in tech PE
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