5 May 2022
In 2015 I left my career in Private Equity and moved to Bangladesh.
I left to start building. Companies, teams, products and services.
The hardskills I learned at AlpInvest Partners (writing, thinking, calculating, reading SPAs and SHAs) are still incredibly useful today.
But I am so glad I made that move.
Why do I bring this up? I came across a quote from Steve Jobs today that I had never heard before, which he apparently once said about Strategy Consulting. But it applies just as well to Investment Banking, and to early career roles in Private Equity or VC.
In the end, in those careers you miss out on something really important, which is grappling with outcomes and learning from mistakes.
“You do get a broad cut at companies [in those jobs], but it’s very thin. It’s like a picture of a banana. You might get a very accurate picture, but it’s only two dimensions and without the experience of actually doing it you never get three dimensional. So you might have a lot of pictures on your wall, you can show it off to your friends -I’ve worked in bananas, I’ve worked in peaches, I’ve worked in grapes- but you never really taste it.” -Steve Jobs
This is exactly how I felt after a few years in PE and why I left. I wanted to taste the fruits. Wanted to learn to be a player in the field rather than just shouting from the sidelines.
Now if only there was a Steve Jobs School of Metaphors....