A Good vs. Bad Day in the Life of a Private Equity Associate

since you clicked on this video you probably know that private Equity investors make a lot of money but what exactly do they do all day today we're going to be going through a day in the life of a private Equity investor and we're going to divide the video into two parts the first is a good day where you're not working on an active or live deal and things are a bit chill and then a bad or tough day where you are working on a live deal where you're potentially passing a field through investment committee also known as IC now if you're new here my name is Ben welcome to rare liquid and I used to work at JPMorgan as an investment banking analyst but to be fully transparent I never worked in private Equity but I have a lot of friends who worked in PE I also worked with a Wharton MBA classmate who worked in private Equity to write this script and I'm going to say everything in first person in order to just make the video easier to follow alright with that said let's get started with the good day the day starts at around 8 A.M and I'll wake up and immediately check my phone and all the Habit that I got since Investment Banking and also because if you're working at a global firm there might be emails that are sent overnight because there are a lot of people working across different time zones one thing to note about your schedule is that your day starts a little bit earlier in private Equity versus Investment Banking because the funds are smaller so you can't just easily slip in at 10 or 11 A.M like you can when you're in a bullpen in Investment Banking where you have a ton of analysts and Associates there at around 9am I'll get into the office and for the next 30 minutes or so just catch up on financial news reading things like term sheet the financial times and the Wall Street Journal then for the next hour and a half or so I'll have a meeting with the broader team and on most Mondays at most firms they'll have a weekly kind of catch-up call in order to get everyone up to speed the goals of these meetings include first evaluating the existing pipeline which is where Junior investors typically have the opportunity to speak up as compared to investment Community which is more so led by senior investors second updating the team on portfolio company operations including things like successful refinancings management changes and turnaround initiatives and third sharing general knowledge because there's a lot of sub-sector overlap and a lot of people who are just experts at various different topics after the meeting ends I'll head back to my desk and it's now 11AM or so and I'll just spend some time clearing out my inbox I'll reply to a lawyer that I've been working with and I sent them some comments for a legal document and they've just reviewed it and came back with some comments I need to review and then I'll also reply to the bank that just gave us new financing terms and then I'll respond to an email from a CEO of a portfolio company who wants to give us a progress report and I just need to kind of review how how things have been going then for the next hour or so starting from 12 P.M to 1 pm I'll grab a lunch with some colleagues and because it's a chill day I can spend a little bit more time outside after this morning I'll spend the rest of the afternoon on some ongoing work including evaluating new deals by looking through Sims from investment bankers running preliminary diligence on early to mid-stage Deals helping with portfolio company work and or administrative work which could include entering new deals into the CRM system putting together a Flash update LP reports or scheduling and taking meetings it's now around 7pm or so and because it's a chill day the rest of the evening is mine I could spend a little bit more time in the office just reading reports about Industries or specific companies or I could just head to the gym grab a quick dinner but pretty much the rest of the evening is free for me to enjoy now if you're interested in breaking into private Equity you're definitely going to want to check out this newly announced PE investing certificate program offered by Wall Street prep and Wharton which is where I'm currently getting my MBA this program is sponsored by top firms like Carlisle KKR and Tom Bravo and is one of the first of its kind in which a leading business institution Wharton is partnering with the top Financial modeling trainer Wall Street prep to create a theory meets practice program over eight weeks and at a recommended eight hours per week you can learn at your own pace through this online course that's taught by Wharton professors Wall Street preps PE program director and real PE investors including Martin brand the head of North America PE at Blackstone and David Rubinstein the founder of Carlisle and they'll all cover topics like the PE deal process valuation how to think like a private Equity professional and more this course will run two times a year with the first run running from May 1st to June 25th and if you're interested be sure to use my code rare liquid to get a huge discount on the course and I'll leave a link to all of this down in my description below alright now with that said let's move on to a tough day in private Equity as a reminder for some context this day will involve working on a deliverable for the investment committee which is when your firm is deciding on whether or not to go through with a deal so I'll start the day at around 7am because it's a little bit more busy when you're trying to get through IC and I'll spend the next 45 minutes or so just looking over email getting ready and then head to the office and try to get in by around 8 am then for the next four hours until lunch I'll dive straight into working on the following one writing the IC memo or drafting slides to creating exhibits and outputs for the memo three updating the lbo model for any assumption changes and sensitivities and four putting together findings from diligence it's now 12 p.m and so for the next 30 minutes I just grab a really really quick bite something like a salad and then head back back to my desk to get back to work for the next six hours or so all I'll be doing is just madly working on the memo and trying to finish it as quickly as I can I'll be making some final updates to the lbo model jump on some calls with some advisors like lawyers and just do some final due diligence before putting everything together once I'm done I'll send it to my VP and principal for them to review and now I have a little bit of breathing room of course I'll be monitoring my email the whole time but now I have about an hour or so to just take a dinner and because I'm just waiting for comments there's not much more else I can do and so I have a nice dinner outside and then come back into the office my VPN principal give me back comments and some questions by around 8 pm and then until 3am all I'm doing is just making revisions to everything and once I finalize the memo with all the comments turned I'll send it out to the broader team which includes the partners at the firm at 3am I'll Uber home and usually what's really tough about a hard day is that you have a lot of hard days in a row because if you're going through investment committee there's a lot of work that needs to be done in a short period of time and so I'm might have this kind of tough day where I end at 3am and I have to wake up again at 7am so just get a few hours of sleep of course everything I discussed today including the processes the lifestyle and the work will vary a lot from fun to fun but across the industry and PE in general it's very common to have a stretch of really good days where you're not really working too much and then a stretch of really really bad days when you're going through investment committee so that concludes the video but before I let you go if you're interested in breaking into Investment Banking I'm selling the resume and cover letter that got me into JPMorgan at rareliquidcareers.com which I'll link to down below also don't forget to check out Wall Street prep and their new certificate program if you're trying to break into private equity and in the next screen you're gonna see a video of what private Equity is all about kind of an overview of the industry in case you haven't seen that with that said thank you all so much for watching hope to catch you all in the next video thanks so much and peace out [Music] thank you

Channel: rareliquid

Views: 76,723

Keywords: private equity investing, private equity interview, private equity fund, working in a private equity firm, working in private equity, wall street, private equity salary, private equity firm, private equity and venture capital, private equity, private equity career, private equity guy, wall street journal, private equity due diligence, working at a private equity firm, working in a private equity

Id: vfcL0aAPfa4

Length: 7min 1sec (421 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2023