Other than FP&A or corp dev, which would be quite aligned with banking/PE skills, am curious to know what other roles one could leverage their PE skillset in without feeling like it's too much of a challenging stretch (where you'd feel like a newbie in the function)? Biz Ops? Biz Dev? Strategy (which most startups don't have anyway as a standalone function)... anything else?
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I would say definitely in strategic finance. From PE, that could be a great role to jump ship to. I currently work in strategic finance, and I definitely think someone from PE would be a machine lol I think (as someone with no PE experience) that there is unique value in being able to understand the perspective of an operator. An example of this that was a first exposure to me was a lot of the modeling we do is at the unit economic level and gets sooo much more granular than I was accustomed to. So I think being incredibly insightful in such a role would be a great opportunity for someone with PE experience. Especially getting in ~Series B or C that could definitely be fun.
Cool, thanks. What's the promotion path would you say for a role like that - is it common to eventually make it to CFO or do the FP&A folks have an advantage there? Also, on the topic of FP&A, what would you say are the key differences b/w SF and FP&A?
Yeah something like associate --> Sr Associate --> Manager --> Sr Manager --> (Director?) --> VP of Finance --> CFO is the path. I actually don't know for sure about that director v senior manager, I'd assume director is higher though?
Yeah I mean FP&A at larger companies is just going to be like refresh a data source and voila here are results (to my understanding). I think the big part is that we do handle like quarterly performances, variance work, but we also do a lot more of the "A" in FP&A. We are often the ones running long term and short term growth initiatives for the company. This means working very closely with C-Suite and different business units to be able to drive forward organic growth. We also handle things like: capital raises, board deck materials prep, and M&A. Note, we haven't transacted (mainly due to our size) but if we did that would flow through us. Definitely a pretty taxing role because of how much flows through our team. Great WLB and culture for sure but hours can crank up (doubt you have any aversion to that). I'd say compared to colleagues in banking or consulting they may be online more total hours but I feel like every hour I'm online I have to work. I feel like that's a detail to throw in there too because it seems like the next order question you may have after the differences in SF and FP&A. Let me know if you have anything else!
Thanks for all of that. Actually what I was going to ask next (haha) was about working with heads of other departments - the whole "partnering" (whatever that means) with these other heads to help them improve their metrics and whatnot. Does it feel at all like they're your clients and you're kinda a service provider to them? And also, how much would you say you are in the foreground of the company (ie interfacing with external touchpoints) vs internal interactions? To me it never made sense why say a head of marketing or head of sales should need someone outsider their department to help them analyze and optimize their metrics - I mean if they can't do that themselves, it begs the question of whether they're qualified to be in their positions in the first place. But maybe I'm misunderstanding the type of help these guys actually need....
Definitely there are times where they feel like clients and we are providing them a service. An example of that may be a request to leverage data visualization tools to assist a specific business unit to learn about trends by geography for example. From this, yes we'll distill insights and help structure how they should look at and digest this information but beyond that it becomes hands off more or less. We are pretty much trusted to define the metrics which is a really challenging process I would say.
With regards to external touchpoints, I'm only an associate (lowest on our team of 3 ; me, sr manager, CFO) so I don't get exposure BUT I am always assisting in the analyses / prep of materials that becomes external facing. Of course if I were to stay the course and grow within, that opportunity would organically rise.
Yeah I mean I don't think they NEED us to do their job for them or anything but we'll also work closely because our models are typically built at the unit economic level up. This requires cross functional collaboration to be able to understand, for example, what does Sales pipeline look like and what initiatives do they have in place moving forward so that we can model in the impacts to revenue.
It's a great opportunity to realllllly just learn about a business - which is why I think a PE background is amazing given the operating perspective (just to repeat myself). I will say though, it's brutal. Like I said, the team is so small. I'm the only Junior which means a lot flows through us. For context, we are probably 2 or so years from an IPO and recently 5x'd our valuation so its an exciting time and yatta yatta. Personally, I actually want to make the move into banking (may sound crazy lol). Hours have been brutal and tbh my comp is definitely not as high as the hours may suggest which has started to not make sense to me lol so just also be aware that sometimes these roles have a lot flowing through them and if you're in love with the business then that's a matchmade in heaven. Me, personally, I like our business and what we are doing, but it's not my end all be all and I think that that makes it hard to get really into the absolute nittiest and grittiest details.
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