Anyone have info on Insight Partners?

also interested

It's basically a sourcing sweatshop. Not saying thats a bad thing, but I know a few former analysts that all exited from there to top notch growth equity / VC firms, not sure how they do for more traditional PE exits though.

The three people I know from there all went Insight (2 years) -> other VC/growth equity (2 years) -> top Bschool, so definitely seems like a respected firm, but not sure how PE exits would compare to top IB jobs.

Interested

A lot of sourcing work, prepare to do a lot of cold calls. Check out their people page—they take a lot of people from Harvard, Stanford and other top targets. Pretty high quality of analysts in general (e.g. ken moelis’s daughter and robert pruzan’s son both work there)

On culture (Note: don't know anyone still there, so info is a little bit dated) it seems relatively collegial among junior folks, with lots of informal work events, and a relatively social environment. Sourcing roles tend to favor people with a warm and outgoing personality, so you see that a lot among their people.

That said I understand that the culture among senior folks is extremely aggressive and competitive. I heard reports that if you had a company on your CRM dashboard, didn't get them on the phone, and they raised a round in Insight's box... you were in big trouble. Known for having quotas for calls made per week among interns / analysts, which is a good accountability metric but does mean it's tougher to BS if you aren't performing.

There's plenty of room to climb the ranks in the org, but people who do exit tend to do so laterally / downmarket to VC with fewer folks going to buyout shops (though that may change as Insight starts to do more big deals). They are generally seen as among the top players (if not #1) in their segment, so the caliber of firms / companies moved to is also high.

As others have mentioned, sourcing is very important at the Analyst level for Insight. However, it should not be a deterrent if you are truly interested in software/growth investing. Most, if not all, growth shops will have sourcing at the Analyst level to some extent.

They mainly hire from a few target schools every year and the class size is big compared to other top growth equity shops that have a dedicated and formal new grad program. Many of the Analysts treat the program as a two and out like you would see at investment banks and they usually end up finding another strong venture/growth fund to join after two years. I don't think Insight's reputation within the industry is lacking by any means.

If you know for sure that you want to do growth equity / venture capital long term, then I wouldn't hesitate to join their team if given the chance.

I went through their process. I applied without networking. Am a non diversity and non-target but my school is a target for this firm. Interviews were very laid back and focused on what I knew about the tech and software space and what differentiates a firm that makes it grow. Did not accept offer as I got a very weird vibe from the people who interviewed me.

Does anyone have intel on their buyouts team?

Insight have just updated their careers page (https://www.insightpartners.com/about-us/join-our-team/) with a FAQ on both their 2021 FT processes (Investment and Onsite) and they mention that they use SmartRecruiters, but there are no links to the actual job postings. I'm guessing they've emailed the links to target schools. Can anyone verify?

Insight Associate recruiter?

interested.

is it possible to recruit for summer if you're not at a target school for them? (i.e. not harvard, penn, princeton, etc)

Anybody have insight into the Onsite case interviews?

Has anyone heard any recent news?

superday offers came out last wednesday confirmed

Has anyone gotten an interview for FT recruitment?

Did anyone hear back getting a virtual cover letter for 2021 FT process? Any advice on what I should to do to prepare and what typically is asked in these virtual cover letters?

Is this a good company to work for? Will you actually learn or is it just glorified cold calling? any insights would be great

What is comp like? For both FT analyst and SA?

rejections are out

Following

interested in Comp as well

Got an invite for an interview after submitting video cover letter, transcript, resume. Had a coffee chat back in April. Recruiter agreed to delay interview until after my current internship is done.

Does anyone have information on the General Atlantic SA or FT analyst process?

does anyone have info about the day to day of working at insight? solid exit opp info? comp info?

In my opinion its one of the best growth investors out there in tech. People on this site make sourcing out to be something negative which I don't understand. I much rather meet companies and try to find deals then to model out IMs i.e. look at things that the entire industry is looking at esp. if we talk about winners of tomorrow and fundamental shifts in industries. If you want to invest in companies in the growth stage and not just do momentum deals, then you need to know all companies in certain fields as well as deals out there. In my (limited) interactions with Insight, they always appeared as a high conviction and aggressive investors but on the back of very deep sector knowledge. I have seen them try to preempt a couple of times for example in quite aggressive fashion. The enterprise software people I interacted with are top notch esp. in infrastructure. I don't know about their later stage funds and business outside the enterprise software field. The more junior people (mostly senior assoc / VP) I interacted with have also always been quite impressive and stood out compared to some other funds when it comes to knowing sectors and the companies within e.g. although they are not based in Europe I have seen them many times being more precise in tracking companies and their KPIs in Europe than their European counterparts. This is exactly what you will be doing as an analyst/ associate. Someone will have a view what field is interesting and what shift is taking place to create the winners of tomorrow and you will map out all companies in this space and try to meet them to track the KPIs (whatever is relevant in this market / thesis) and try to find / create deals (ideally with the best company in the space). This obviously often translates into a #s game but that's just normal. As long as you call in sector because someone has a view vs. just finding companies needing a ticket and then learning about the space, you should be ok. Compared to some other tech investors, I have found Insight and some of their peers to be more market trend first and #s second oriented vs. some of the growth investors that are moving down from the pure LBO world and go #s first (which makes sense given they mostly just do SaaS and don't need real shift in the thesis). This also means sometimes the cheque is larger than one would expect or the company younger or the valuation higher (whatever the specifics of the sectors and your thesis are) etc. i.e. the tech thesis comes first and structure later. This point is purely my perception based on a very limited number of datapoints. Their office view is a perk, too. Cant speak on hours but I imagine its best comparable to Summit, TA, Summeru, TCV and all the other tech growth guys.

I've worked both in sourcing and on sell-side (albeit doing CDDs at a consulting firm, but nonetheless on timelines of deals with processes run by bankers).

The lifestyle is so overwhelmingly between investing in a company with a process run by a bank and investing in a company where the process is not run by a bank. It's hard to put in words but the former is more structured akin to a semester at school; ease into exam (first bid) have a brief rest then hit the ground running preparing for next exam (second bid) then go all out until finals (final bid) then get a week off for Christmas break; as opposed to; source, work on a deal that's getting a little farther a long but less "pants on fire", more sourcing, more control over your calendar because it's less structured, etc. The latter is definitely way less stressful but the former does create an environment where you can get a lot of good work done in such a structured environment.

how good is the rep of insight? will it open doors??

has anyone gotten a final round yet (after the video cover letter)?

When did you do your virtual interview for SA?