I think Hot. Everything Patrick Mathieson says is right. But …
The simple reason is you are going to have a really hard time sourcing any deals at all in a cold market.
If you want to build up your track record, the best way is to source as many great companies as you can. You won’t make any money as an associate, you’ll get limited kudos. But you will build up your track record. And your track record as an associate will only be vaguely correlated to the fund’s. You get some credit for your winners, no matter what the % ownership or anything. But zero credit for the fund itself.
In ’14 and ’15 every firm wanted to let a non-GP do a small deal or two, even if they didn’t 100% make sense. Gotta learn.
Not sure that’ll be the case in ’16.
