PEoperator ⚡️
@PEoperator
2024 was a major transitional year for me. You may have noticed I have posted quite a bit less lately. What I have posted has mostly been cryptic allusions to the battles I’ve been fighting. Suffice to say, I have been making some major professional changes. In 2025, I will…
When I was taking my first job after banking, I was deciding between two different options… The first option was joining a PE group. Easy yes, I thought. It was exactly what I wanted to do. The second option was an unglamorous industrial role- basically an analyst. I talked…
It costs you something, but have found that life is better when you support your friends no matter what. I have never regretted being fiercely loyal to true friends.
Like basically everyone who ends up in private equity, I started my career investment banking. But, I didn’t come from the Ivy League mill. I didn’t even know what investment banking was. On my first interview with a boutique investment firm, I was a sophomore in college…
Worked for a PE firm… $3B fund, middle market. We had grown EBITDA 3x in about 3 years, half organic and half via acquisition (and half of the acquisition EBITDA was synergies we executed). We go to sell the company and the MD asks us to project gross margins by projecting…
One practice I find very helpful preparing for meetings or presentations is the solo dry run. I will literally talk through a presentation or conversation (out loud) by myself to prepare. I rarely repeat the same “speech” twice, but along the way I often discover new talking…
A manager’s job is first to choose the right problem to work on.
“Removing from” is generally more valuable than “adding to” You don’t need more friends, you need deeper connections. You don’t need to date more, you need to find the one. You don’t need more possessions, you need less junk. You don’t need to workout more, you need to eat…
Sense of urgency is my favorite trait at all levels. Most everything else can be trained.
If you are dissatisfied professionally, in all likelihood you have outgrown your situation. Let me save you some time… When I have been dissatisfied professionally, my emotions bubble up. My typical starting point has been that the problem lies with others somehow… But the…
My iPhone: unlocks itself, opens phone app, and butt dials my ex boss from my pocket Also my iPhone: gets a microscopic droplet of water on it and becomes completely unusable
Lots of replies and reposts confirming this view but I emphatically disagree. There’s nothing wrong with looking forward to what you do. That’s good. But it’s not the goal of life. (And it’s a post-enlightenment, Americanized view of things.) Making your personal self…
the goal of life is to be excited to go to work and excited to go home