Turned down a return offer from elite boutique investment bank in NYC for a lower middle market private equity gig. Here’s why
HOT TAKE - doing 2yr of investment banking to “keep options open” = an excuse used to hide the fact that they’re lazy & haven’t spent time digging into what path fits their personality best.
Banking analysts think they are going to come to this ”magical epiphany” where one day they wake up & realize what they want to go into after IB.
Buyside recruiters snatch you up before week 1 of IB training, so might as well put the time in up front, start talking to people 2yr ahead of you, ask them a crap ton of questions to see if what they do would get you fired up in the morning & just make a decision.
Luckily, I figured it out quick after doing some self-reflection on the weekends during my summer banking internship. Here’s a few reasons why LMM PE was my best fit:
1. Emotionally Invested in Companies
In IB, you do a deal → close it → wipe hands clean & on to the next one.
In PE, you get to wear your creative thinking cap & see your investment play out over the long term.
From being on calls with founders & management teams every week, you begin to form relationships with them. In a weird way, they kind of become your friends. You learn more about their family, interests, hobbies, whatever.
2. Satisfaction of Seeing Impact
My summer in IB, I worked only with huge public companies that had their own internal superstar finance teams. It made me feel like them hiring us was almost just a check the box so they could show their shareholders they were getting a second opinion.
With smaller companies, it is easier to tangibly see the impact that you are making on that business since they have so much room to grow. Public companies have to jump through so many more hoops whereas you can pour fuel on these little guys and make them take off quick.
Plus - you get so much more responsibility on all parts of the deal, from the initial conversation asking them questions at the management presentation to drafting the LOI. At a larger firm you might just be responsible for one aspect of each deal since each one will require a higher level of specialization and manpower.
Who are you trying to convince? Us or yourself?
I know a kid who backed out of his eb offer for this summer to pursue his startup . You’re not special lol
Now OP will be stuck in his LMM PE shop while his summer analyst counterparts get paid more for those 2 years at the EB and will then exit to wherever they want, and will likely get paid even more than OP afterwards. But these 22 year olds are lazy for going to Evercore and not being a man and going to whistling everglades mountainrock capital with $600mm AUM.
Not to mention 2 years in he will have significantly worse technical skills due to lower reps / lower deal velocity and a much smaller network.
LMM PE is a bad deal out of UG - obviously still better than 99% of jobs, but I would take most IB roles any day.
as someone who went to buy side (not PE) directly after EB internship, I’ve noticed that IB “reps” are pretty overrated, and most smart people can pick up necessary technical skills by studying properly/really thinking about their own few deals
I read this and as much as I grew up in (and love) LMM have to ask, did you not get a return offer? Or just hate your summer?
What is most important here is that you will not learn how to model or use Excel at a level even close to your peers who started in IB
People figure out career tracks, passions, interests at different parts of life. I'd go as far as saying many of us (including me, as a VP), still don't know what we want to do in life. So, you saying people are lazy for not having it figured out at 20 is both arrogant and ignorant.
Cope
Quite interesting to see people disparaging OP's decision. Give the guy some credit for having the gumption to tread a less conventional path and post about it on a forum where prestige is numero uno.
Controversial opinion maybe, but I don't think taking a private equity job is "less conventional" or requiring "gumption" in any way...
They're disparaging him because he's clearly at risk of breaking his wrist from jerking himself off too hard, not purely because of the decision he made.
Mostly because it’s yet another dude with zero experience preaching as if he has a wealth of experience and something deep to share from his 8 weeks of getting coffee in midtown
Putting aside optionality (because careers are long and who really knows what they want at age 22 anyway), main reason to do IB is for the structured training. Yes you learn technical skills but more importantly, you learn how to operate at a high velocity, attention to detail, deal with bs, stay organized, manage up, and just generally how to be an adult in the corporate world, which like all things takes practice - all in an environment that has trained new grads over and over again
Not trying to convince OP but making the point for others on the forum who are weighing pros and cons of IB vs other roles out of college
Self reflection? I think you spelt autofellation wrong.
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