Inside the Life at a $24 Billion Software PE Fund! (Thoma Bravo)

[Music] hey everyone and welcome to the ra liquid podcast today I'm going to be speaking with Ashley woo a fellow Wharton NBA classmate who went from being an athlete at Yale to working at ubs's TMT group in New York and then to private Equity at Tomo Bravo which is one of the best if not the best software PE shops in the world and there's not a ton known about the company and fund and so I hope you learn a lot and enjoy this episode now before we get started with this episode if you're interested in breaking into private Equity you're definitely going to want to check out the PE investing certificate program being offered by Wall Street prep and Wharton this program is sponsored by top firms like Blackstone carel and KKR and over eight weeks you can learn at your own pace through this online course that's taught by Wharton professors Wall Street prep's PE program director and real PE investors including David Rubenstein the founder of carile and Martin bran the head of North America PE at Blackstone who will cover topics like the PE deal process valuation how to think like a private Equity professional and more by completing the program you also unlock access to the alumni member database fireside chats with PE investors and exclusive networking events with the world's top private Equity recruiters this program runs three times a year and be sure to sign up by the early registration deadline to get $200 off and also use my code rare liquid to get an additional $300 off and I'll leave a link and information to all of this in the description of this episode Ashley weet thanks so much for making the time can you start off by just giving us an overview of your background yeah for sure thanks for having me um I would say just to start like I think my background on paper looked super traditional in many ways but I feel like my own personal path to like where I've gotten today and how I landed in finance actually feels a little more C circuitous than that um so I'm originally from Los Angeles I grew up in a family where like no one did Finance didn't even know it was an indust to consider um in very classic like daughter of immigrant fashion thought I was like Premed for a semester but my first love was actually Sports and sports analytics um I feel like I grew up in the Moneyball era I played Varsity softball in high school and that's what I thought I wanted to do so when I got to Yale my first internship was actually as a video Scout doing like Baseball scoring baseball data um for the small company that supplies data to basically every major league team and I remember going back to school mean like I love baseball I love sports like I can't wait to work for a team one day and at that time I made a few phone calls to different Executives within the league and a lot of them were like hey um you know like you're at Yale which is like a great school are you sure you want to like work your way up through the ranks like have you considered working in finance like so so many people these days have spent time in finance before working in baseball um and I really think that's a path you should consider because so many banks have like this name brand anyone will recognize and so that was the first time someone suggested Finance as a career to me um and I was also an athlete at Yale um I had teammates who had landed on this like Finance route and so that was like the guidance I needed and I landed an internship at bny melon doing like credit analysis my sophomore summer after turning down an internship with trackman which is another baseball related company um and then got an internship in banking and it kind of just followed from there where I was now on this like banking to PE type of path um so I landed at UBS my junior summer I was actually in the chemicals group when I first started um and part of that was I loved the people in the group there was Yale grad just people who were there to support you and kind of like lend a hand be mentors and people who really cared about you know the analysts working there you weren't just maybe a cog and machine I think that's always been really important to me is like find the people who'll be supportive and they actually supported my move when I eventually asked to switch to TMT um coming back fulltime and I did that for a number of reasons on I just never imagined myself in the chemical space and I knew even then that like banking wasn't for me longer term um I still thought I was going to maybe go back into sports and the TMT group especially media worked with like keyo companies or the rsns and things like that um so Regional Sports networks uh and so I thought that was like the reason for me to be in TMT um at the end of the day I spent most of my time in Telecom which was not uh Tech or media but I think it just introduced me to this world of like what could a t company potentially look like or different ways of thinking about revenue and that was just where our deal flow was at the time um and then I decided to leave banking for private equity for a couple of reasons one I just wanted a different challenge um I wanted to kind of like be in it with the companies have you know skin in the game I think it's very common for people people to say um but that was something that I really felt and then I was I guess going back to college and applied math major and so for me just thinking through the models I wanted to be a more in that World um really thinking through the assumptions in the models as opposed to just taking what's given and like plugging to a number and having to put you know your own thought behind it and your own like backing and being able to support that to more senior folks um and so that was like kind of the push for me and I got really lucky um and ended up at tomor Bravo uh which I didn't expect necessarily I wasn't didn't think I was moving to San Francisco so soon um it's obviously closer to home and loved that opportunity but again it just came down to like the people we clicked kind of almost immediately meeting various people at the firm uh loved their model loved their their focus on Tech and I had a couple things I knew I wanted out of my private Equity experience I realized that I love growing firms um I knew that I did not want to do distressed investing or uh anything like that which is funny cuz I ended up working with like a distrusted company within the portfolio but like to me I'm like I view myself as a very optim optimistic person and so for me I love seeing like the best in a business and like thinking through where it might go um and Tech was kind of like the right Landing place for me and so I got really lucky loved the people and then joined H bravoo spent three years there um and then decided to come back to school for a different look got it wow and there's so much to unpack there and we'll definitely go through each piece but I want to start off going back to your time at Yale and you mentioned that people spoke to you and you realized okay I'm going to shift from Sports and sports analytics to finance and I think a lot of times what's most important when deciding whether or not to go into Finance people can glamorize the industry when they watch something like Wolf of Wall Street or they see compensation figures but it's so important to actually be interested in the industry to be able to work in an industry like banking or private equity and have success in those Industries so what is it that you found back I don't know how many years ago maybe like five plus years ago at least what was it that you found when you at Yale it sounds like you were maybe even maybe a freshman or sophomore when you were looking into finance and you you it made you think oh I want to go into Finance instead of sports like what was it about finance that really piqu your interest yeah I actually think there are a lot of similarities between what I was interested in in the Sports World and finance and I think it kind of came down to like storytelling with numbers is what I called it and that's been something that I've like really held on to maybe throughout my time as like a working professional and the way I thought about it was like what industry do you get to like play with numbers use numbers to like tell a story um I was actually like a reporter for the Y Daily News when I was in college um reporting on Sports stories and it was just so fun to Think Through like the various lens you could take you can obviously take a very personal lens to how you're reporting on a story and that's just as important as you know the numbers and being data driven and having something to put on the page and so I think Sports analytics is a combination of that because you're telling a story with numbers but also banking is that is what banking is right like when you're going to a client and pitching them you know a deck what is their reason to believe you like you have to have some numbers in there to back it up and be able to tell a story with those numbers in addition to having the storytelling itself but your stories and the way you talk to companies becomes more compelling when you have something to back it up even if it's like around the market or about the business themselves and like that's where insights can come from and so I think like that for me was what I was drawn to as someone who like loved numbers you know I did applied math I concentrated in statistics um and I always found that really interesting and I think that became even more true when I was in private Equity because the way you make decisions is like does do the numbers foot do the numbers work like obviously you can have like this grandio idea of what this company should be and become but if there's no support for that then it's just an idea and it's not something that you can even execute on so numbers can kind of help you to execution and give you that path to execution that lens um and I think that's kind of like what's always inspired me about story like you know sports or Finance it's like a combination of the two and I also want to ask a little bit about when you were deciding okay so you looked into Banking and you decide to kind of go into the industry I honestly have not seen personally maybe I just know not a lot of people at Yale or who came from Yale but I haven't seen a ton of people um from Yale who go into Finance but definitely correct me if I'm wrong and I'm just I wanted to ask about what are the kind of like resources that you were able to use and were there a lot of people within your class that was interested in the traditional like banking Consulting um or you know how how were yeah how was were people like interested in those fields at Yale yeah it's actually a really biger I yeah was like a Target school for all like the Consulting fs and the banks and things like that I remember when we did recruiting at UBS yeah it was like just a Target school and had its own recruiting team um but I think that it's probably not as you know uh like public maybe as like a place like being an undergrad at Wharton for example I think it kind of simmers underneath the surface but you know lots of people still are going to informational sessions and there's still a large population kind of in those groups um and I would they say like the resources around banking recruiting Consulting recruiting tend to be a little different just because they're so like there's Yale specific recruiting teams I think there's a lot more networking that goes into this process like where you really need to follow up with the people you spoke with at these information sessions find things to connect on like I talked to a lot of former athletes who then later on became investment bankers I that was something that was really easy for me to index on as someone you know we had that shared experience at Yale um there's also like the Yale experience and talking about that and so you're really trying to find those like common things between you and the people who are at the firms and they do a lot of like the interviewing and recruiting um for banking in particular down the line got it and you mentioned networking and I think that's something that a lot of people are always curious about and I think I it's really tough when you are starting off with recruiting because you don't really know what to do um but can you now that you are at you know many years through uh have been working in banking and PE and all of that what are some of the tips you can provide for networking when you're working kind of in the finance or recruiting for finance jobs yeah I think step one is really just to reach out like don't be afraid to reach out to someone via email if you have their email or even on LinkedIn sometimes like I think for me like I've never not responded to people who've reached out to me I just think it's so important to pay it forward like I think your link is going to be flooded after after this interview right or like may my email if you can get a hold of that is like I always respond to email LinkedIn maybe less so but um I just think it's so important to pay it forward like I think of all the people who helped me and took phone calls and could just break down the basics for me like I truly like never took a finance class until I came to Wharton um don't know a s didn't know a single thing about like accounting or corporate finance when I was in undergrad and I don't think those are like table Stakes necessarily like it's okay to not know um as long as you can think through a question and answer them but obviously there are some table Stakes I think you know Yale provided like a vault guide for finance and you should have at least read it I don't think I fully did but I now regret not fully reading it I think you know maybe would have had a different outcome or whatever um but I think that networking like step one is really just to reach out and you know try to find people that you might have something in common with you know people you went to school with I think that's really the value of going to like certain educational institutions right is like the network and why do people go to those schools but those people are everywhere and they're so willing to help if you just reach out I think usually you know I've found I've never had people like not reach like respond really um or at least you're getting like a really high hit rate and then also just like following up with a thank you um I just am so like I'm so thankful I have so much gratitude for the people who helped me out and I think that expressing that um is really kind and just like helps leave a good taste in people's mouth because I think if you don't people will also remember if you forget to thank them so I mean I think it's really simple in that sense um just like really those two things yeah I mean the thank you email is actually common practice but I mean when I was a freshman I had no idea and so I think a lot of people just don't know even simple things like that and what's your opinion on this is a little bit more detailed and T tactical but do you think it's better to send a thank you email let's say like later that day or later the following morning do you do like a within 24 hours do you have anything like that or yeah I mean I get people are busy so for me it's always kind of been like within 24 hours and even if you forget as long as you send it even within a week like I just think people will appreciate being thanked regardless of like when it comes and what I try to do is just like pull out one or two things that you know I remember from the conversation that I found really helpful just to make it a little personal like I think obviously something generic is still really nice to get but I think when you can pull out just to you know I remembered you mention mentioning X Y and Z that was super helpful and resonated with me like just a little something is really nice and they can be so sure you know thank you emails me like two sentences three sentences um and I'm not saying like I make mine very long or anything I just think it's nice a nice touch God I got it and then when you were recruiting like you mentioned that you didn't take finance courses at Yale so then when you were recruiting for UBS or banking in general what resources did you use and I guess like how did how did you get your job if you I guess well you don't need to take finance courses but I'm guessing maybe then did you just really study the the uh guides really hard yeah I asked myself the same thing all the time cuz I really didn't study the guides all that hard and I think I got really lucky in some ways but I think that's where like networking really helped me out because I think that like being an athlete for me in this instance like really carried me people like knew oh she's someone who's going to like work really hard she's someone who is really committed and can do the long hours and all these things so there were some assumptions already working in my favor that again I'm like very thankful for in addition to some of like the leg work I had put in with recruiting and reaching out to certain people having had certain conversations and following up with them and being remembered um so I think those two things helped and then I definitely got like you know a few Finance related questions and they really just came out of like the VA guide um they were very basic I think people recognize at the time time and especially if you have Yale folks recruiting Yale students I think there's this like implicit understanding of like you got like one or two technical questions but it's not really going to get much harder than like you know what is a DCF or like talk me through depreciation I think was the hardest question I got got it got it through the three statements so very lucky in that regard as someone who like didn't study the Vault guide all that much but at the same time like when I was you know a junior or Junior fall which is when recruiting used to be um like I didn't know like people were like yeah there's like a Vulcan and I was like okay well how much of this am I supposed to prepare like I had no idea yeah there wasn't like you know an investment banking Club That Was preparing me to like do these things and so a lot of it was like on your own time like did you have friends also going through the process what was their process like um and just like checking with people got it and I am curious then for your first like six months at UBS I I think and to kind of explain my own situation as well so I was very interested in Consulting first so I did an internship at deoe and then when I did full-time I went into full-time not really knowing much well so I I knew the guides and the materials but then I didn't practice like Financial modeling and I had a classmate who joined the same time as me he was from Wharton he had been modeling for like at least two years like on his own a little bit here and there and um so how were the first six months for you when you I guess you did a summer internship which helps yeah but after that your first six months on the job what was the ramp up like yeah really hard um I mean I will make a plug for like liberal arts institutions like I am such a fan and I don't think banking or private Equity is rocket science and I think like the more senior you get the more important it is to have like critical thinking skills and be able to outside the box think creatively pull in different experiences from different places and so I think that's where my liberal arts background really set me apart like down the line especially my ability to communicate information in slides um but like initially it was really really hard I think I took training more seriously than like anyone in my class and like got there early stayed late just and like didn't go out that much truthfully cuz I didn't know accounting I'd never taken accounting class in my life and I remember like you show up to training we were in we hawk in New Jersey which we had to take the ferry to get there like all this stuff and I would just like sit there and like read the accounting work that you know training the street had given us and I would like do every problem and like take it really seriously cuz I had just no idea what was going on um but at the same time like it set me up pretty well for Success like I did really well and training I like got really high marks and I think again it kind of flows into that reputation that you're building for yourself um and I wasn't afraid to be a try hard in my first job I don't really Define myself as a try hard like in school or in other places in my life necessarily but like for my job that was something that was like really important to me is like I knew I wanted to be a top bucket analyst I wanted to be paid at the top of like where people were getting paid yeah um and I wanted to be really good at my job and build that reputation and have like my options open to me so I just took training really seriously yeah and I think um taking training super super seriously is I guess um not everyone does that but I do think that going into your first like six to 12 months and wanting to just perform Super well a lot of analysts are kind of like that in banking and you brought up like um compensation and I was curious actually at UBS do you guys have like at JPM we had like n is needs Improvement M minus M M plus which is like meets expectations and then e is like exceeds expect and then your bonuses based on like what you get ranked at was UBS like kind of similar yeah it was a different ranking system but you um when I was there and I know it's changed since when I joined UBS every first year got the same bonus and it was a stub bonus because we were on a December Year End Cycle so you get paid out in February and because you join in the summer they just assume everyone gets the same rating your first year which is not really your first full year it's like your first three months essentially interesting um and then you would get one full cycle bonus and then people who had PE jobs would quit as soon as you got paid out so then you would have like the first years have a really tough like March through until the intern showed up because a lot of people left in that time frame um but it gave me a lot of experience cuz like as people left like there was just more work to be taken on by everyone else um but yeah like what your ranking was or rating was I think we were at one through five I believe um and like the max you get was a 5'5 I don't think I knew anyone who got a 55 it was like 54 4 five or like that was kind of where people landed if you were at the really top and then that determined like what bucket or range you were allowed to get paid and then within that range um like teams and there was like a comp committee would decide like what people were actually getting paid and you needed to have someone like push for you get paid more than everyone else cuz I think it was eventually like stack ranked payment like no one was paid the same even if they were the same rating oh interesting okay I don't really know how that works but my process at JP Morgan was also kind of similar where you really needed to have an MD SL like usually maybe it could start off with like an associate who kind of like convincing the MD but you need as much senior support as you get the easier it is for you to like get ranked for sure well yeah and it's really hard to get senior support when you're like such a junior person I think and that's like what's tough but because we were on this like stub than full year cycle it really gave you more time to like build credibility and for us it was important not just to get senior support on your team but you needed senior support from other teams oh okay um to like vouch for you and there were a couple ways to do that we had like the junior Banker development committee which I was on and that's how I met people from different teams who then like later vouch for me in the compensation committee process and you were working in TMT did you work with other groups as well did you guys have like Equity Capital markets m&a and you when you guys were working on different types of deals like work with them as well yeah it really depended actually um so we had an m&a team that was separate but a lot of TMT the reason why I wanted to be in TMT they did most of their m&a in house like kind of just on our own but I think when you're like short staffed and you need all the help you can get like obviously teams come in and help um we also had ECM and DCM leverage Finance pretty similar to most so yeah pretty similar in that regard so that like those were the opportunities to work with different teams for before your reviews and get like we did 360 review processes I don't know if that was what you guys did but um you needed to have people review you from not your team and also Senior People okay and was your end of the year review um kind of I I wonder if it feels similar to my experience like for me our staffer who's usually like VP level or so calls us a resource manager staffer come calls us one by one everyone knows it's like bonus day so like each person kind of goes in and then the guy the staff or whatever just says like here's how you did this year blah blah blah here's your ranking here's how much your bonus is going to be and then you walk out and if it's not your turn you're just watching each person go in one by one then you're kind of just like it's it's a little nerve-wracking slash very like just weirdish uh Vibe during that day um but yeah what what was it like for you a little different but very similar we also had our staff communicate like reviews um so again like VP level would tell you like how you did over the past year and you're ranking number like not numbers but like you know the four one through fives that you were getting and it was in two categories so they would tell you like what numbers you got but they would not tell you your bonus number and that was communicated by the head of the group wow interesting so the head of the group would separately and I remember it being like maybe a week or two later sometimes around the same time depended on the group um would communicate your number to you separately okay and via phone call or mine was in person see um I think usually they try to do it in person but my head of group sat in San Francisco when I was still in New York and so he it was just like whenever he came into New York and then everyone got their number one by one if you're enjoying this discussion with Ashley and one day want to work in private Equity you're likely first going to have to break into Investment Banking just like she did and on that note I've been working on my own how to get into into Investment Banking course where I'm bringing my experience from being the JP Morgan UC Berkeley recruiting Captain for 2 years when I was at the firm and also by working with my fellow Wharton MBA classmates who worked at Goldman Sachs evercore and another at JP Morgan m&a and so if you're interested in learning how to build a stellar resume and cover letter learn about how to network in the industry and of course all the technicals you need we're focusing not just on the conceptual theoretical parts of technicals that you need to learn but also Alo teaching you how to build highlevel models and working with numbers in Excel so you can really soak in what you're learning at the same time there's really going to be no other banking course like this and so if you're interested you can sign up early to get a 50% discount which we're giving away for early bird signups I'll leave a link to all of this down in my description in this episode on the note of compensation I guess um kind of on the note I wanted to ask you about your favorite part of banking and your least favorite part okay I'll start with my favorite part I think my favorite part was just like feeling like I was always learning something or doing something different um and I didn't really have expectations for my first job I'm kind of who just like someone who just walked in the door didn't really know what was happening and like just took it for what it was um and I think that's kind of my approach to a lot of things is just take things that you know what your experience is and figure it out from there and so when I got to banking everyone's like oh the long long hours me like so tough but like I didn't know any different right like it's your first real job at of school and so you have nothing to really compare it to um and I think because of that I was just like so excited to work on interesting deals or cool deals and like things that maybe might hit the news or wouldn't hit the news or just like have some ownership over these things and make them feel like they're yours um so that was like really fun for me like I just feel like in the TMT space obviously maybe less so in the Telo space but in like the tech and the media space you just are around names that you've heard of and that's just like kind of fun to imagine like what if um and I also just think like the people are fantastic um one of my friends in New York who I still like catch up with like was someone I met through my banking group for example um and he actually now works in sports which is really funny and he works for the Mets so uh you know just you have friendships that you hold on to and you know you're booed by like the bullpen and that camaraderie and having dinner together and things like that so I would say that was like my favorite part my least favorite part was definitely like the randomness of the hour sometimes um and also how lonely can feel I think like there were times when my group overall was not that busy but I was really busy um it sucks to be in the office late when it's just you and maybe like one other person um I think like those times were really brutal or just like feeling like you just never knew when you could plan things or not plan things anything that was like really hard on my relationship at the time um someone who I'm no longer with but um I think it was just like really tough cuz you're like can we get dinner together or not and things could just change on a whim um and you just didn't know when it was going to change like it could be 700 p.m. you might think that like you're good for the night make dinner plans and like 7:30 hits or like 7:15 hits and all of a sudden your entire weekend is gone MH um and I think that was like really really tough on like friendships and you know talking to people and and things like that yeah I mean I think definitely I'm thinking back to the times when I was also in banking and one funny thing was during our weekends um our AC would have to be like turned on and I think the worst times that I kind of felt remember like some Summers like the AC wouldn't turn on properly or it would take a while for like everything to get warmed uh to get uh turned on and so sometimes during the weekends on Saturday or Sunday I'd be there and it's like super hot by myself and that would just be like so miserable yeah I don't know if you guys had protected weekends or Saturdays we did not at the time so was the other thing we didn't have any protected days um or weekends so it was like truly what years were you in banking um 2017 through 2019 oh okay that's that's surprising then because I I was in at JPM from 2015 to 2018 and 2015 was the first year that I think we started introducing using protected weekends so for those who don't know at least at the time it was you get one weekend off per month for us and then also we had pencils down which was like after 600 p.m. Friday then there's no work until 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. Saturday which didn't always happen but at least like it generally was kind of we did not have any of that um I was part of a committee when I was on the junior Banker development committee that tried to Institute something along the lines of like protected weekends or protected time off or maybe like Saturdays every weekend or something like that um and I obviously did not stay long enough to see like how it shook out in practice um but it was something that L was definitely talked about but also got a lot of push back yeah interesting I I remember some a lot of the senior bankers and even some of the associates would just be like oh they didn't they don't make Bankers like they used to because like we had right protective weekends and all this stuff it was actually a very confusing time because a lot of times I would want to take this protected weekend but then my associate would be like okay but you it it I understand you need this weekend off but then you also have like this live deal so I remember for three months like I had a protected weekend quote unquote but I was still working um and so yeah I think now though most banks I do re I do think that they have implemented something for work life balance um but anyway one last question I have for you about banking is what do you think make for a good investment banking analyst okay really tough because I do think that like being a good analyst is obviously very different from being a good associate but I do think they are Blended in some ways together um because I think part of being an analyst is like being able to put your head down and just crank it's really unfortunate but part of being good is like you can just take on the work and it's going to happen and people trust that it's going to happen and be done well um and you're going to do it like pretty quickly I think speed is kind of of the essence when you're an analyst cuz it just helps out everyone and saves everyone's life but I think what also separates really good analyst who like have that down from really great analyst is like can you think ahead and can you anticipate what an associate wants like I remember when I was like a second year like writing my own pages and putting that together and just anticipating what an associate or VP or an ed or an MD would want to see um and I got enough like responsibility to just like create my own deck sometimes and then run it by like a VP or Ed who'd be like oh yeah maybe also include this or this but they would just throw out ideas and like the pages would just be up to you um and I was really lucky that I was given the opportunity to do that and think like an associate and think like an investor and like put pages together in that kind of way but I think that's kind of what separates the really really good analyst from you know analysts who are able to do work you're a very positive thinker because a lot of times I think when Associates and analysts are told by at least from my experience in MD or Ed like oh I roughly want this you guys figure it out like we all hated that because we would have to I mean it as you're saying like it is nice to be able to think critically and come up with things but at the same time you might do that work on a something for a long time give it to them and they're like oh actually I want something else you know and that's happened to us um it happened to us particularly with like one or do EDS MDS yeah you're definitely like I'm definitely like taking the good parts out of it than like the bad and I remember being like wow this is not what they wanted and this sucks but I think part of is also just like not being scared to ask questions and I know people are busy and you know it can be scary to ask like a VP or an ed like what do you really want but like having just a sketch and being like is this directionally what you want is this the information you want to convey and you know not being scared to do that and I think again I got really really lucky and have always made it a point to work with really good people and people who cared about my development and I knew this was important to my development cuz I knew I didn't want to stay in banking forever so if I didn't want to do you know the role of an analyst forever I had to play up and like do something else um and I think I also kind of hate being told what to do and so you're never meant to be an analyst forever so like if you don't want someone to constantly tell you what to do then you have to like step up and like put that work together um or those pages together so you have a say in like what you're presenting and I think it also gives you a sense of ownership um it makes you care more and it makes it feel more real as opposed to just like something you were forced to put together yeah um I make that comment because a lot of times I do think analysts they are just you just have to be really good at getting instruction and then just executing but so obviously you left banking you kind of mentioned that you didn't feel like you wanted to do it forever was is there anything in particular that made you realize this and made you feel like I want to become an investor I know you kind of mentioned this a bit in your background but was there any kind of specific conversation or was it that a lot of your peers are going into PE or the buy side what was it that made you decide to want to go into private Equity frankly I was like a little bored at some point like when you're only executing it's like just not that fun anymore um and I this is I you think like when you look up and you realiz like people are just selling like this your job is to be a salesperson when you're in banking and at the time I was like I don't really view myself as a salesperson I mean at the end of the day relationships are fundamental to any job right it's fundamental to banking it's fundamental to private Equity when you're sourcing and looking for deals and companies and things like that but I didn't know how fundamental relationships and like selling was going to be to private Equity as well and so for me when I looked up and I saw MDS like constantly going out to clients and just trying to sell Services I think for me I just didn't think I wanted to do that um and it wasn't like the work life balance at that point in time that scared me or um the commitment to finance I just I knew I liked Finance or at least parts of it enough to do private Equity like I love looking at companies I think companies are so interesting think they have personality to them to them and they're so in like fun to look at so I knew I liked that and I liked modeling um but I just didn't want to be a salesperson and I didn't want to always be putting decks together for other people and it kind of came back to like you don't always want to be in client services um where someone else is telling you on what timeline and you're like at someone else's whim I just wanted a little more control and I wanted to be on the other side got it and did I catch that right where you said that you all you realize later also that in PE you're also doing a lot of sales okay can you elaborate because that I I don't think that's a commonly known fact because in banking clearly I agree you like selling a lot but people think when you're going investing like you're the client now and you're the customer in a sense and you're like making investments in companies um so can you kind of elaborate on what you mean by that yeah for sure I mean I yeah relationships I think are just so Paramount um I think in private Equity you know companies have a choice as well like do they want to work with you do they believe your advice do they want your support and often companies have a choice between you know the companies at least that are in an auction process or companies that you know you're reaching out to and trying to meet like they have options like you know any company that's public for example can stay public they can go with any other Consortium of private Equity firms um they can find Capital and other ways like they don't need to take your money and so you have to sell yourself to them you have to create a reputation for your firm and and give people a reason to want to work with you and I think we were also at Tomo Bravo especially big Believers in Partnerships um you know we're not there to tell you like most people who are investors have never been operators before and obviously we had operating Partners who we brought in to help work with these companies but you still have to build expertise and you have to make yourself a trusted adviser um who has an ability to come in and provide thoughts and advice on like what you think a company should do um and if they don't want to work with you then it doesn't matter it's not a partnership anymore um so I think it's really important to sell like who is Tomo Bravo and what do we bring to table that's different from everyone else um and why should they choose to work with us when they could go with any of our competitors so then how did Toma Bravo sell itself and to preface this also and provide more context to people listening I think a lot of times people look at private Equity firms and if you look at their website or whatever they seem like they all do the same thing but every firm is different and so how did Tomo Bravo sell itself yeah um Tom Bravo is like a I think Tomo Bravo has been on a bit of a rocket ship I think recently um when I joined tomor Bravo in 2019 I did my recruiting in 2018 while it was still slightly smaller I'd started raising larger funds but to is a tech only soft like software only fund and I think that's really what it's built on is we only do Tech and we know Tech and there's not that many funds out there that do that outside of Tom Rob say the only real like comparable is probably Vista um but even then Tom and Vista play in adjacent some overlapping spaces but even a little different like we differentiate between application software and infrastructure software even internally and we have specific teams within our Flagship fund that are dedicated to specific verticals so I specifically worked on infrastructure software excluding security and even excluding like data so I spent my time looking at like communication software um Network networking software things like that so we built a lot of expertise in specific spaces um and I would say that's what Tav was known for um and then the other thing I think Tom Rob did a really good job of is towards the end of my time at TB we didn't really do much investing with other private Equity firms and so our premise was that if you work with us you only have to work with us um we don't need that the reason why we're raising such large funds is we could put in enough equity where there was only one active investor um and obviously there was times when we needed co-invest from other like you know Sovereign wealth funds and Pension funds but you know there was only one like Tomo Bravo name in there uh who wanted to actively be a participant in the deals and I think that was really attractive to firms where you know it can be really tough board Dynamics if you're navigating like Toma Bravo versus like x y and z private firms like who do you really to like that's a t Road to navigate and it also gave us a lot more clarity around vision and strategy and what we wanted to pursue and I think we could take a lot of that from our Tech expertise so then were you guys doing full buyouts because it kind of makes it sound like maybe you doing minority is type Investments as well or was it all just buyouts um or from I was in the flagship fund so we would do buyouts only majority controlling Stakes owning business yeah got it got it and I guess I just kind of like just a more detailed question but typically like how what percent debt would you guys fund your your debt your deals with all over the place um obviously there's like a bit of like a debt boom in there um and so rates were really great and we were leveraging companies sometimes we could go up to 7 and a half times IA if it was a cash flow generating business if it was not we also did a lot of ARR loans and he'd probably get up to like three times ARR 3.5 times AR maybe yeah so software I guess now at this point has become a lot of companies you know are cash cows and I guess but if you look maybe like 20 years in the past then a lot of the funding for these companies are just do venture capital and so when you guys were looking at your these like software companies were they cuz you kind of just mentioned the cash flow and how it could kind of be all over the place but typically for lbos you know you want to look for those really like safe companies that have been generating cash for a while and you can make some Opex improvements Etc at given I'm curious to know given that you guys invested in Tech were there any um I'm sure I don't know everything seems like I'm guessing it would have to be cash flow positive correct me if I'm wrong uh but how did what was your guys's I guess criteria when you were looking at each of these firms how profitable did they need to be not necessarily all that profitable to be honest it really depends and I think that's when like the AR loans came in that could be really interesting and useful um and I'd say that's like one of the beauties of T braa was like we were flexible we had a flexible mandate we just knew software and we knew Tech and I think people forget how many like not sexy tech companies are out there and not everything you know is VC funded there's actually a lot of like compan that are bootstrapped or have been owned by other private Equity firms or just were out in the market and did their thing and eventually maybe it made sense for them to be privately owned again so um definitely all over the place like we had some companies that were growing over 30% 40% and we said go grow like you don't have to be you know generating 20% margins and I think we followed the I don't know if you've heard of the rule of 40 um which is like what is your margin plus your Revenue growth um that's something that I think we may have coined or someone else has coined but we've taken on and we believed in like the rule of 40 in many ways I would say um so that was like one maybe heris did it hit the rule of 40 and then obviously if things are going really well sometimes people like but how about the rule of 60 you know can we get 30% growth and 30% margins or whatever it may be um or 20% growth and 40% margins and sometimes you can sometimes you can't but I think yeah the companies are out there and we really just believed in profitable growth so that's actually really interesting so you guys would purchase companies and then even if they were not profitable you kind of banked on the fact that they would become profitable because you need to service your debt at somehow right or how did you guys do that yes no I think like the way instructor St you can obviously like take on pick loans um and I think it also just depends what you believe exit is I think we were hitting an era in size where the companies that we own were getting bigger and bigger and they were eventually going to go public so you went public and that paid down your debt and that was it you didn't really need to pay it off otherwise um so that was just like a different strategy because we were just buying bigger and bigger companies where no other private Equity Firm could necessarily by the companies that we were selling so either they were sold to you know a corporate or it just went public and I think the market is very different for that okay yeah that's that's actually super interesting um and for those a lot of people don't know what pick loans are so can you actually explain what those are but essentially um your interest gets added to your principal and and you pay it at the end or something like that right right at maturity got it so you're just basically AC crewing interest correct and instead of having to pay it each year yes and so you don't have cash at the door and it just yeah right right right but that's pretty risky right I guess like you model everything out and hope that everything works like sure you could buy a company say like oh it's going to grow we're going to hit the rule of 60 it's going to IPO in five years but if the Market's tank if this company like gets disrupted for sure that's like extremely risky so how did you guys control that um like model cash flow eventually I just think it we like to invest in companies where you have multiple options right like maybe today you know we don't take cost out of the business every time and it's growing 30% and it's 0% margins fine but maybe in one or two years like we have an expectation for where the epid do is going to go and what the cash flow is going to look like and we're going to hit that number regardless of how we get there does that mean we have to take out cost out of the business in like year three maybe but that's only if the company was maybe underperforming on its Top Line otherwise it would have flowed down to the bottom line so I think we just wanted to create optionality for our elves and we wanted to believe in the business we wanted to support management if they really believed that they could grow 30 40% like it wasn't really on us to stop them but we would just ask them to prove it out um and I think that's kind of what a partnership is is like going in with that strategy and having a plan and then you know planning for contingencies as well right yeah always need to have backup plans for sure because in business every anything can go wrong actually like I took a PE course at Orton and then it was so interesting because what we did was throughout the entire course kind of look at a investment that warberg actually worked on and they invested into and the whole time it seemed like the professor who worked on the deal was like like so many good things about the company there are some risks but they're all mitigated but and it turned out to be a good investment but so much of what they had predicted and all the good qualities of it didn't really Safeguard them from a lot of what actually ended up happening um but yeah I just wanted to make a note on that and I also wanted to kind of dig in I guess also a little bit more into the partnership part that you mentioned where I'm Cur I I wanted to know like how does Tomo Bravo help in terms of operations like how closely did you work with your portfolio companies I would say pretty closely depending on how things are going um I think it's always going to be like a depend kind of answer so the way it worked at home Bravo is we had a bunch of operating Partners who were all so fantastic like former CEOs CFOs people who've worked in the space um just like super accomplished super helpful know their stuff and know how to like run businesses like I think that was really important for us is we just had you know like the best operating Partners on the street and when we built our board like our operating Partners would be chair of the board and would sit on the board and make up a majority of the board along with some of our investment like you know individuals but we made sure there's like more operating Partners on the board than there were you know people like me or investment like I was never on a board but you know like a VP or partner like they were on the board as well but there was always just more operating Partners um and so I would say like they were really intimately involved in like how the business was running um and that's when things were even just going well you know those that was just like table Stakes for us and when things aren't going well I think that's when the investment team tends to get a little more involved um because you're just thinking about contingencies how you want to structure the investment going forward does it make sense for it to still operate like in this way um how can we think through like the business strategy the numbers like there's a little more like what does the number need to look like and how do we get there and how do we solve for that when things are going poorly then I would say when things are going well um so when things are going well I think we were more involved in like the m&a activity um how do we find good targets for the business that might make sense for the thesis um but beyond that it wasn't super operationally heavy for like an investment associate got it and when you guys acquire a company and you're working with the portfolio company um are you a lot of times I don't know like did you find yourself and your at your firm I guess replacing a lot of management teams because that's kind of the reputation that a lot of times um private Equity firms have but it's also not always a bad thing because sometimes the executive teams are paid out right and then they leave um but other times if you feel like you guys need to replace certain members of the management team or maybe ENT the entire team then you guys might just have to do that what was it like you know since you were in kind of an Insider into at a PE shop I think that's where like the partnership piece comes in comes in for us is like we just didn't like to replace management um we were there to support management and back management as opposed to like like rip out management for like someone we knew and our operating Partners but our operating Partners were there to like be advisers and be on the board and help them you know bounce ideas off etc etc as opposed to become the new CEO or CFO and I think what happens is like when people are struggling business are struggling things aren't going as well that's when you know management changes happen or you're replacing the CFO for someone else or maybe it's the CMO for someone that we do know and have brought in in the past like sure that happens but I think we go in with the mindset that we like this business because we believe in the thesis we believe in the market we did a ton of Market work and we believe in the management team and we've stepped away from deals where we didn't think it was the right management team at hand because it's a lot of work to replace management teams and it's a lot of work to find the right people to lead those businesses and gain that trust and if the first thing you do is just rip out someone everyone's known like that could take away so much value from that business and so it just didn't really make sense for us to do that got it who is the one that would have to let's say fire a CFO or something who is the one that does that is it like a partner at the PE firm or is it like one of the op is it the board that and which is somewhat influenced by the operational Partners like how who how does that work I think fundamentally the decision is probably sitting with the investment team um but in conjunction with like the operating Partners you've been working with that CEO potentially for the last however many months and the operating Partners will have a view as well and like this isn't working out so well and I think we need this person to not be involved in the business anymore or whatever it may be so it's definitely a group decision um it's not like one person has like full say or anything like that and sometimes like the management team will also say like this person on our management team we need to you know upgrade yeah and that happens as well got it got it and I guess like on this note you know a lot of times people from the outside looking in kind of look at private Equity firms and then they think well these like firms all they do is like Financial engineering they mainly just care about making money and uh you know but I think a lot of my friends who work in private Equity do find the work first of all like really stimulating really interesting the ones who really drink the Kool-Aid think it's like a necessary part of the financial ecosystem like what's your take on private equity and why it maybe even in your opinion should or need to exist in uh as an industry like do you have any thoughts about um that negative perception at times that people have about private Equity like do you want to defend it do you want to acknowledge it like what do you think yeah I I definitely think there are people who drink the Kool-Aid and believe like they're doing good for the world I do not sit in that camp personally um I personally just found it really interesting like I definitely believe in like the deal High the adrenaline that comes from looking at a business and you know I was what 24 25 26ish when I was in private equity and I was like I have no business being in the room as like the CEO of a$1 15 billion doll company and asking him questions like what am I doing and so there is that adrenaline that just comes with that you know industry and you're so empowered in a way that feels kind of crazy and you have and I just loved working with extremely smart people like I genuinely believe like the people who work at TB are some like the smartest people I've ever met and know um and they just had such creative and thoughtful ideas so interesting about like how they wanted to approach certain companies and it just gives you a new lens and perspective and I just felt like I was always learning and you know I wouldn't stand here and say or sit here and say that you know PE has to be part of the ecosystem but you know it's just like an interesting Financial instrument that like was created and people made money off of it and continue to do it and I think a lot of the senior folks in private Equity are just really smart and would have done something similar even if it didn't exist as the industry right like it would have come become an industry in some way shape or form um I don't think it deserves necessarily the like end all V all like this is where people need to be and you know it's like the best thing in the world but I think it offers a lot for young people especially and I think I've benefited a lot from that um and I just have like mentors and Friends from the space who are like so dear to me and have been really important to me even as I move away from private equity and on as you kind of mentioned the benefits you know what do you feel like if you could pick you can pick more than one but maybe like one professional SL one personal lesson or something you feel like you really got out of private Equity that you probably wouldn't have been able to otherwise yeah I mean I would like to say I think I grew up in at Toma Bravo I that's the type of investing I was taught and so I'm going to carry a lot of that with me going forward into my you know professional life regardless of what I end up doing and I think I have an understanding of tech companies and Tech businesses in a way that most people don't as someone who hasn't worked in a t company before or before I worked in my summer internship but there's just an understanding of business that I gained from being in that space thinking about businesses all the time thinking through you know Revenue models how do companies make money how can we think about cost structure and does it make sense for a business or not and for a tech business as well and you learn a vocabulary that allows you to continue to connect with investors who will be part of you know this business ecosystem forever regardless of whether you like it or not in some capacity um so you will always be able to connect with them on that aspect so I think that's like definitely one of the main benefits is you know I just grew up in this space space all my professional like learnings are in this space and I'm going to carry that you know toor Bravo experience with me wherever I go um it's so weird to be like yeah this is like on your resume and like but it's really like a part of you and so you're going to kind of hold on to that regardless um and I think personally like it gave me a lot of appreciation for businesses and it gave me a lot of clarity around what I found interesting and not interesting cuz you can just as you're going through a diligence process think through like oh what are the parts I want to ask more questions about or the things I don't really care about or when you think about markets like what really was interesting to me like what did I want to dig deeper on what questions did I have like it just gave me more perspective and you know it took me time to take a step back to reflect on those things but I only had a chance to reflect on those things because I did it and what were I as you we took a high Lev kind of question right of like what did you kind of get take from all of this but going diving into the details of what you doing each day how would you describe your day-to-day as like a private Equity associate yeah I mean all over the place um so I worked on like a super lean team most of the teams at TB are so lean um it was basically like me a VP and a partner in the dayto day that was kind of like the entirety of my team and often times like me and my VP like chasing things down um so one day I could be doing like Market diligence I would do a ton of customer calls market research calls and I think a lot of firms like you know Outsource that to Consultants but it was just important for us to understand the business like if you're going to be Tech investors and have Tech expertise um you need to know that stuff even if you think you can ask someone else to teach it to you so that was like really important for us and then obviously there was like a modeling aspect to it and you know making sure that the numbers work um CU if they don't work you just it's just not going to happen and and uh it's also a big part of our job was like sourcing looking for the next deal um if you don't want to play in auction processes which are never fun I think uh and that's not really I think where the money is made unless you're really really creative in an auction process it's important to go find deals and create relationships and so we did a lot of sourcing cold emailing reaching out to people finding like the next small business for you know one of our portfolio companies even and I think that was a lesson that you know I really to learn my partner always said you might think of yourself as like a very Junior person but like you can still add value and this is a very tangible way for you to add value it's like go find the next deal got it and was that you know you mentioned when you're in banking you're you kind of try to look for that next thing you could do for your associate I imagine it's super hard to try to find the next deal and you'd be surprised okay so um another person who is one year older than me who's now a VP at Tomo Bravo who I have a lot of admiration for was the best at sourcing like he got in contact with you know multi-billion doll company that was public and got like a meeting with them from cold emailing and putting together like putting in the work and the research to learn the space and be like we know your space and we think you're a great fit to like partner with us and here's why and he was an associate a senior associate at the time got it got it before he became VP and like you can do it it's like just a lot of work and you know for me I struggled with that I was like I don't know if I want to be sourcing on my Sundays when like I'm finally sleeping but people did it and like if you felt so strongly about it like you would create a thesis and you would build one and you know you would drive decision- making and because we were such lean teams like you could have real impact and like that was so cool to see yeah some people are just built different I are born to for this industry and cross this of course that's true for all Industries like some people are born for certain industries and uh you kind of touched upon the work life balance in a sense how was it at Tomo Bravo and did you guys for the most part I feel like private Equity firms don't have like stuff like protected weekends or whatever um but you're better better able to kind of uh foresee what's going to happen and kind of control your schedule can you kind of describe the work life balance in PE for you yeah mine sucked personally but I think you know part of some of it is by choice some of it is just how the market how the cookie crumbles um I think it was better preco um but it was also just like where was the tech Market at the time there was obviously a lot happening in the tech Market once Co hit and onwards coming up going into like 2022 which is when I left Tomo Bravo um we deployed like an entire Fund in 10 months m wow um during which was insane like my team so my team had two trees I was on One Tree and there was another tree um we announced two deals in back toback weeks basically which is wait wait sorry what are these trees yeah so um at Tom Bravo within the flagship fund each team covers a different like sector essentially okay um and it's kind of like just led by the partner so like my partner had two separate teams happening underneath him that ounc deals and back to back weeks so my partner announced a deal and back like two deals and back to back weeks essentially um and I was only on one tree and someone else was like really running the other one but sometime like you know someone who was another associate underneath me at the time had to work on both deals and so you know it just got really tough because we were industry specialized not just software but like the verticals went in that and so if your vertical is really active there isn't really anything like a break and you see it coming yeah um so things just got really busy like I don't think I took a weekend off um in 2022 before July 4th dang um and like but that was like a choice too cuz like you also want to perform right like it's your team and there's so much ownership that comes with it and so if you believe in the thesis and you want to work on those deals like you're going to put in the work because every deal could just be the next major transaction and that was the cool thing about Tomo Bravo was the next deal could be $10 billion and that would be you working on that and again you're like well I don't have any like there's no reason I should be in the room doing this and you're like 26 but that was like such a cool experience and so I think you took that um and the hit was you know your work life balance as a result um I remember I was just like on three backtack Deals that like we got to the end on three of them and none of them went our way or we didn't necessarily want them by the end and so you know you just went I remember like a deal died and a data room opened that night for the next deal so it was just really tough yeah uh I remember like in a similar note like I remember Closing one of my analyst buddies who finished a deal closed a deal announced it in uh when I was in banking and then the next day he was staffed on another big project for like one of the our biggest clients and he was just like so pissed um I imagine it'd be something similar but I guess like you seem very positive so I don't know if he took it like in a much more like I think it's because we weren't a staffing model so it's not like you were staffed on it like you already knew that deal was happening you just didn't know when it was going to really take off and the timing there was just bad it was very unfortunate but at the time it was like a 1520 billion do company and who doesn't want to potentially like take down a 20 billion company that's public and work on it and own it like that's so cool um and this space was interesting and you you realize that the deal Cycles are just so long and they just hit at different points like that you track companies for so long you're in conversation with these companies for so long because it is about that relationship right like you don't just because there's an auction process if you met the company during the auction process you are not winning that auction process and so there's so much l work that goes into it that you already feel like you own this relationship in this process with this company and so you're just waiting for the deal to hit and you just don't know when it's going to be a lot of people who work in finance whether they worked in Investment Banking venture capital or private Equity go get their mbas in order to build up their leadership and soft skills and also to build out their Network overall a lot of people also use the NBA to break into Finance Industries as well and if you're interested in getting an MBA from a top program be sure to check out a new course I recently launched called liquid MBA and let me tell you a little bit about the course so first of all we give you application advice where we go over everything you need to know in terms of what admissions committees look for second we also go into almost excruciating detail about each school that we cover for things like Student Life academic life Leadership opportunities clubs and resources and more after we've spoken with over 100 students and alumni across various schools and then lastly we purchase over 10 admitted essays for each school so you can understand what it takes to write a killer essay for each MBA program you apply to so with that said feel free to check out liquid mba.com if you're interested in an MBA and be sure to use the code welcome25 to get 25% off can you actually walk us through one of the deals you worked on and you don't have to name names or anything like that but if you could kind of provide the context I think you know we can we when we just talk about working on a private Equity deal and all of that um for people who' have never worked on one myself included then it can seem you know very opaque but if you could walk us through something one of the deals you worked on I think a lot of people would love that Insider Insight yeah for sure um so I worked on a workforce management and software company and when I was like a first year um at T B we actually looked at one of their competitors and so we had done a lot of work around uh like workforce management software quality monit monitoring and I'm not going to say names because there's really not that many players here in the market um but it was just like really interesting it was one of the first deals I worked on and they ended up their public company ended up having like investors come in but it wasn't like a take private or anything like that and eventually they did a stock split but that was our intro into that space and so a couple a year plus one to two years later at some point um one of their competitors came back on the market and it was a private Equity owned asset and you kind of resurface some of like the industry knowledge that you've already built like we're you know super focused on workforce management this like it's related to Communications we did a lot of work around the communications you know Market as well and so you resurface some of that information and then you are learning new information about this you know company in particular and this competitor and we had had a relationship we actually so Tom Bravo has multiple funds and they had been speaking to one of our smaller funds that does like Middle Market deals but it had just moved to a size where it belonged in the flagship fund and that's how we were connected but we had held like you know a 5-year relationship with this business like been talking to the CEO for at least that long and so we got to know the CEO really well this was during Co so everything was also like from home and online um and then you just start to ask for more information like every meeting it's like okay what do we can we learn about your financials right now does this look attractive to us can we start modeling this um and then they eventually went into a process like a very small process and we were already built up enough like credibility with them done a lot of the leg work and then it just came down to like okay now we have your real financials now we have you know X Y and Z information from the data room how do we put this into like a real model think about your Revenue what are the questions we have left and I think what we pride ourselves on is our ability to move very quickly so our partner would often promise like yeah diligence we can be done in two weeks um which is not a lot of time when you're combing through a data room right but that was like what we did because we had done so much leg work and we proved that we knew the industry then for those two weeks you're just focused on like what does the company have what can are the trends that we can look at how can we break this down in like all these different ways and really Shore up what we think the financial model should look like um because we've done the leg work on everything else and then we would put in a bid and we'd go back and forth and continue to tweak maybe we could go under L you know sign an Loi and the process would repeat and then eventually you're like we're going to sign and then you put together an i investment committee deck and IC deck and you go to IC like the next morning and then it was done yeah that sounds like a whirlwind because I I think you know people don't exactly know how much work work it takes to analyze a company and all the different aspects and from what I've spoken when I've spoken with my friends who work in PE like you might work at with like a consulting firm to understand the market you have to work with accounting firms for the accounting portion customer research if you need to there's so many different aspects even like the tech that the company uses and then building the financial model all that stuff and if you had to do that within like two weeks and then also go to build a present ation that has no mistakes and then go to IC that's like that's really a ton of work um and I wanted a lot of people want to know like when you're working on let's say like this kind of process what are the hours like during that time yeah I would say like the f i you know the process is beyond just the two weeks the two weeks is really like just your initial diligence and getting to an Loi like putting a number on the table once you get past that it slows down a little more I would say umek for the worst of the worst the worst of the worst and then maybe like an average yeah I was you know and this is true of not just this deel but maybe a few others I'd probably work like 8 or 900 a.m. till 2: or 3 a.m. for a couple weeks Monday through Sunday or like m i me Saturday Sunday would maybe be more like 10 to 10 or something like that I got it but you just like on the phone all the time you were just like cuz this is also during Co right so I'd be like calling my BP and we'd be talking for like 5 hours through a model on a Saturday and then you would fix the model and then re output everything and then be like does this look right and then debate it and then call your partner that night and then with your VP and then debate it again be like do we really believe this and then come up with a new case and then have it ready to go by like the next morning if you were giving it to a managing partner got I got it um so when the timelines are short a like really all hands- on Deck yeah um but I think that's true of a lot of processes like when things need to move quickly I think that's really when you know the hours get long is cuz timelines are just so compressed but you know it's a little Sprint and then you move on or you keep going so yeah what about like a really good week what did the hours look like in a really good we week in PE I mean before covid I had like I was working probably like 8 to 8 or like 8:30 to 7:30 sometimes and Frid as I was out of the office by like 5 or 6 so it used to be pretty good and I think there was just I was on a team at the time or my team at the time was just it was just a slower market for my segment of the tech industry when I first joined and it was just a little slower and hours were better and then Co changed everything wrapped everything up I think also some people may be a little um well if they know banking PE they'll be like okay those hours are good but for those who aren't you know as aware then they might be like 8 to eight it's like a good week could be a little surprising but I guess that is yeah that's really just kind of how the FI Finance industry is kind of like I would say if you could make dinner with your friends it was a good week and I kind of think of like 7 p.m. is like the cut off for that and I was making dinner with friends yeah and so we kind you know work life balance is a hot topic for PE and I asked this about banking as well but if you could pick you know one thing that you you kind of mentioned already also some things that you liked about PE like working with really smart people like what you learned all of that maybe anything that we didn't talk about yet something you like about you really enjoyed about PE maybe if it was also a s um delightful surprise almost and then um something that you just did not like about PE that wasn't the work life balance cuz I think that's like an easy answer yeah I mean what was like a surprising Delight I mean a lot of it actually was like I I mean it one it just does come back to the people I think first and foremost just not just like really smart people but really caring people there's so much camaraderie in PE I think because you're at a a fund just has fewer people than a bank right um the lack of bureaucracy was amazing one of my favorite things about PE I think like that's huge yeah um and the way to Bravo was like when I joined it was like the underdog firm I don't know if you can really say that a firm that you know know it was Upper Middle Market at the time but it felt like an underdog firm and the way like the culture was that we have something to prove and we're going to go do it and we're going to do it ourselves and we're going to do it our way and that was so fun to be a part of because it was so entrepreneurial it was like everyone owned something and that was like infused into our teams and so I just feel like I had so much leeway to do something and so much ownership if I thought someone was a good idea like I could go pursue it um and people really valued your opinion early on because you had to have an opinion otherwise the work wasn't going to get done and I just remember being asked by Partners like what do you think like you're the one who's done all the customer research you've talked to 25 customers you've built the model and you've backed your way into like this thesis from talking to you know 10 industry experts former employees etc etc like what do you think um and that kind of decision- making power is so like empowering and gives you a lot of confidence and obviously you'll make mistakes and things like that but you know just to be in that kind of environment where people really push you like that was so cool um and I value that a lot and like yeah you build up your confidence and you're empowered to speak and that's something I will carry with me going forward in my career I'm not afraid to ask questions and I think part of it is because my partner was so like willing to listen and always ask me questions and continue to like pry and like be like well do you have an opinion you don't get to not have an opinion here because if you don't have an opinion like where am I going to draw my expertise from or like sometimes you be like you need to teach me what this company does like you've done the work so tell me in your own words and your Viewpoint like what is this industry and what are they going to do so that was like surprising cuz I think from banking where so often you're told what to do to being told like okay you figure out what you need to do and what's important um can be really jarring and I would say like I think my what sucked was like my first six months on the job were so tough or first year or even beyond that like I just felt like I had no idea what was going on it was so stressful um and that was just like really really tough uh what else did I not like about the job you know beyond work life balance I think it's just a lot of pressure um a lot of expectation and it's not for everyone um and that's really it yeah when you're talking about your partner asking you all these questions and all of that I feel like that pressure I was kind of just getting anxiety L listening to it a little bit yeah that sounds I mean but as you also mentioned like you can only grow from that kind of experience as well um but I've asked you a ton of questions about PE so just wanted to also ask a little bit about your experience at school so far at Wharton um you know a lot of people want to go to Wharton and go into private Equity Etc why did you want to leave PE and go to school yeah I think very similar to banking I looked up and I said is that the life I want to live do I want to be a partner because I you know Tomo Bravo was partner tracked so um most of my class made VP last year and I'm so proud of them like they're incredible they're going to do great things but I just realized I didn't want to be a partner one day and it didn't really make sense for me to get kind of like golden handcuffed into carry um and I knew I wanted to leave before that and I think that there was an opportunity to potentially transition away from PE um like while you're still in the PEC but you're often limited to like corporate development corporate strategy m&a and I knew I didn't want that um I left private Equity to become an operator I knew I wanted operating experience and if I did somehow go head back to PE then I felt like I would have operating experience to you know inform some of my views if I ever sat on a board for example or just maybe be taken a little more seriously in the boardroom so it was like important for me to get some operational experience in some way shape or form um and I believed like going to business school was the best way for me to do that and also I think when you think about like the really good people you work with like a lot of the you know best managers I had or who had really good EQ or just like were people who went to business school CU I think it's such an opportunity to work on soft skills and like what does that mean and how do you carry that with you as a manager going forward so those were like the two main reasons and at Wharton I think I've really held to those things as like the things I've cared about and the experiences I'm looking for and uh I guess you didn't mention which company you worked at um over the this past summer but can you talk about how you hope to bring the lessons you learn from working at that tech company into what you'll be doing next and also I guess kind of explain what you're planning to do after school yeah for sure so over the summer I worked in sales strategy and operations at Adobe which was kind of like my foray and go to market operations strategy just a whole host of things it was super fun I was at like in a New York ad Adobe um just like a very classic big tech company I would say um I really loved my manager it was a great experience I think for me it was just not the pace of life that I was looking for I think I was so used to something so fast-paced and just moving from one thing to the next and Adobe and just big Tech definely just reminded me of the bureaucracy that came with banking probably and I was like ooh I'm not sure I want that and I also was just thinking longer term my career I didn't want my career to necessarily stagnate so quickly and I believed that if I was going to ever take risk risk in my career this was the time to do it like still relatively young I hope I think you know um don't really have like anything time me down to anywhere to do whatever I want like financially secure like super Lucky in that regard and so like I was open to taking a risk and I thought that I wanted to go earlier stage smaller company see if I could like really have impact that was what I loved about TOA was like being entrepreneurial and having impact and working with really great people so I essentially re-recruited while I was like negotiating with Adobe if they had paid me more maybe I would have gone back but um I am choosing to work um at with Shore Capital as part of their cxo program which the X stands for essentially like anything it's not like an experience or you know it doesn't stand for chief experience officer but the idea is that you're essentially Chief of Staff to a CEO and you work your way into SE sweep position which I thought was super cool super interesting a way to get a taste of operating in like a relatively safe environment so not fully risk averse but you know I could go somewhere earlier stage so Shore Capital invests in micro cap companies so much smaller smaller investment sizes um and I thought that was really interesting because there's just so much impact that can be made at that scale and then we I have since matched with the company in Los Angeles called roaming hunger which I'm really excited to join this summer and yeah I was just excited by the opportunity to like work and operating um and think through companies from like inside the lens of a company as opposed to outside looking in so if you would think about what kind of cxo you might become do you think you're more of like the CEO type coo type CFO type what are your thoughts um I think ideally one day I'd like to be like a CEO or coo um I don't really see myself as a CFO I would say I oh the other thing I did not like about Pac I don't think I have the best eye for detail oh okay like I love high level questions I Love Thinking bigger pictur strategically about like what is a company's Direction how are we going to get there and what metrics do we care about and what do we need to know um I hated ticking and tying numbers more than anything else like I hated pulling comps I hated checking comps I hated like going into 10 cases search for numbers and anyone who worked with me in PE will probably be able to attest to my rid of comps like did them over Christmas after the first like two months of working on them no one likes comps right but like I just did it all the time in PE or just like checking my own work and taking tying numbers I was not the best at that and that's something that I personally know I need to improve on but um that's probably why I will never be a CFO cuz you know checking deferred revenue probably not going to do that yeah you definitely definitely don't want to also be like was it lift where they had like an extra zero or something and then yeah everything their stock fell yeah no no so not interested in that which is kind of why I was like you know don't think CFO is for me but I just think operations and processes and all that stuff is so interesting and thinking strategically how do your operations tied into that and you know classes of Wharton have helped inform a lot of that for me so yeah got it yeah that's actually also very surprising that you feel like that may be one of the things you don't like in terms of attention to detail because I'm sure throughout the past five plus years you you that was like such an important part of your job for sure like I'm sure I can fake it to an extent but if I could choose to not do that I would prefer to not Mak sense you know that far into it got it and then I guess one last question about Wharton and your experience here so far you mentioned there were soft skills you picked up like kind of leadership and those are all important aspects of the experience and NBA experience so what is like one key takeaway lesson it could be about leadership or it could be like a personal thing you skill you developed what was like one key takeaway from you from you from your time at won so far oh just one thing um I think it's just so important to be authentic and genuine I think that's I think that's a takeaway from like any stage of life really but I think it holds true especially in the Wharton context and thinking about leadership but also like what is your career path down the line um and it's really important just to be self-aware and reflective so that you know how to be genuine and authentic to yourself and it's not just like outward facing to other people but also like internally like I think so much about what I'm searching for in my own career and what's important to me and I would say what I learned at Wharton is I care so much about like building teams building companies and enabling others like that's so important to me and interesting to me and so how do I translate that into to a business context and how does that inform what my next job for like should be for me and that's kind of how I landed on being like a chief of staff was okay I'm going to enable the CEO to execute on his vision but I'm also going to be in a position to work on strategic projects that enable me to help other people achieve goals for these companies um or like hit certain targets things like that so that was something I kind of had known but like didn't really verbalize or create action plan around and execute on when I was in you know banking or private equity and it had traces of that you know in PE or enabling companies and helping management teams but it feels more real now to me um and that was something that you know helped me be more authentic and genuine when I was talking to these companies that I wanted to potentially go work for down the line I was like this is my career goal this is who I am what I want and it just came across as more you know genuine because I had done that self-reflection but I also think it's so so important in leadership and you know hopefully I manage people down the line and someone said you can manage processes but you lead people so my executive coach told me that today um and I just think that's right like that's true like how do you lead people and you can only do that when you start from like you know a place where you're being genuine and you're being self-reflective and aware about who you are what you bring to the table and filling in the gaps around you of like what you don't bring to the table um and it's that combination I think that will get you really far with people and help build trust and you know Rel as I said earlier like relationships are just so important and they're Paramount in every business so that's like something that I care a lot about and on the topic of you know a lot of self-reflection and all of that I I wanted to ask you as we were talking this entire time you seem to have like this internal Motor Plus like a positive attitude for a lot of things and that kind of seems to have carried you along throughout all the different experiences you're talking about and I was wondering if you have thought about like where that came from like I know you were like into sports and stuff like that but how would you put that into words I think there's a lot of things that go into it I think it comes from you know being the daughter of immigrant parents and you you know just put everything into context like the hardest thing I've ever had to do is like switch jobs right think about like how to pay for business school maybe but not even that like you know and my parents like like moved across the world to give me like opportunity so and they have such an adventurous spirit so like I shouldn't be afraid to take a leap of faith and jump off and try something new and you know approach it with an optimistic spirit because that's the spirit that they brought with them to this country so that's like kind of growing up I think they've been always harping on like go find your thing like we don't actually care what you do but like go have a plan be motivated um to do what you care about and be happy and choose happiness so I think you know growing up it came a lot for my parents who just have such like this joyful energy I'm very lucky to have grown up with like such supportive joyful like wonderful parents who I'm like very very close to and still live in LA actually um and then beyond that like when you're an athlete sometimes things get dark things aren't always going great and you have to find a way to get yourself out of that um get yourself out of that funk and also how do you motivate other people so I guess I didn't mention this earlier but I was a coxen for the men's lightweight crew team Yale and you're often like outside sitting in like you're in the boat but you're not rowing um everyone knows you're not rowing but how do you motivate people and how do you you know create that positive energy your spirit that pushes people along and to do that like you also have to be really positive or at least delude yourself into being really positive in that moment and then in banking like you just make the best of the situation cuz like it doesn't help to be negative I think personally um and and having like that positivity and carrying that with you I think it just makes every situation better and it helps teams function better because everyone else is bought into that or doesn't carry that like negative cloud with you and that's something that I try to bring with me and I just remember like how lucky I am to be here how grateful I am for the opportunities I've gotten and you know things could be so much worse so like there you know I have nothing to be negative about really um I've like you know I'm sitting here I get to go a place like Wharton I've worked at fabulous places met amazing people and like some of it is luck being in the right place at the right time but I wouldn't have gotten here without any of those people and so you know just being grateful I think is just so important yeah that's one thing I want to comment on it's funny that your parents are like choose happiness and you're like banking private Equity go into these tough Industries but no that's totally true and I think I reflect also during my time when I was in banking where I came into the analyst class same time as one of my analyst buddies but then he had a very kind of like negative approach to a lot of things and then that just we just had very different experiences while being in the same group so I do think having a good attitude and wanting to being grateful for the experience that you have is super important not just in finance but kind of everywhere and kind of on that note as like a last question if you could go back to your former self when maybe you're in high school or College um which is actually around the age maybe a lot of people watching this might be in what kind of advice would you give that former person and it could be personal or professional yeah I think it's just like continue to cultivate relationships with people um I don't know like friends are so important also just like professionally and personally like those relationships are what carry you through tough times like I can think about all the support I've gotten from my friends even when things were super tough and banking your PE um and so it can be on the personal side and how important they are but also professionally like these people will continue to be your network they'll support you like I would obviously not have gone into business school without the support of like my partner and my VP at the firm um for giving me opportunities but also like writing your recck letters and things like that and so just relationships are so important and continue to cultivate them put effort into these relationships like they don't spring up from nowhere um it's something that I've been told so many times but like continue to believe in like just more and more and I think it's never too early to start thinking about the people around you um and obviously there's like you know a time and place for people to you know think about yourself and like I think the NBA experience in many ways is like a very selfish time of my life where I've gotten to do whatever I wanted but at the same time like never forget about the people around you um cuz they're just so important to your life who you are they keep you ground Ed they support you and they also like lift you up um so I would always go back to tell myself like the people around you are so important who you surround yourself with and like really cultivate that um and continue to like water to water those relationships so they'll really grow and be you know people that you can rely on potentially for the rest of your life well I think that's a great way to end the conversation so thanks so much you shared so much great Insight uh about banking private Equity but also a lot of just uh Positive Vibes and you know I think um a lot of great insight as to like how you were able to carry yourself and build those relationships over time I think that's really apparent and important for everyone to really always uh keep in mind so thanks again Ashley for your time I'm sure a lot of people appreciate this awesome thank you all right okay so that wraps up the episode and I wanted to comment on two things that really struck me about Ashley the first is that I could tell she had a really strong internal motor but was also really positive at the same time and I feel like that probably came a lot from being an athlete when she was at Yale and also from just having a really grounded attitude from her parents who were immigrants and I feel like she really was a person who had a lot of gratitude and that kind of leads to the second thing that really struck me which was her focus on people she said that it's very important to water your relationships and then another thing she really really took away from a lesson she learned recently was that you manage processes but you lead people and I think that is so true I could tell she cares a lot about the people she works with she gave them so much credit for how much growth that she had and also for getting into NBA and Etc and so those are the things that I really took away from this episode let me know what you took away down in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube with that said Thank you guys all so much as always for watching hope to catch you all in the next episode thanks so much guys and peace out

Channel: rareliquid

Views: 22,848

Keywords: private equity interview, private equity fund, private equity fund structure, private equity real estate, private equity investing, private equity analyst, private equity case study, private equity salary, private equity interview questions, thoma bravo, thoma bravo podcast, thoma bravo interview

Id: yeiwU48CCEc

Length: 95min 8sec (5708 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024