MY BACKGROUND: I’ve been a commercial lead for 4 early-stage venture-backed startups (director of finance, COO etc). Never worked in ibanking or built sophisticated financial models other than the basic FP&A ones. I am confident in my ability to answer behavioral and leadership questions, but have no clue how to do “case studies” or build out LBOs in Excel.
MY ROLE: A top 10 hedge fund wants to interview me for an associate level role on the EIR/venture-building side where I would be helping form a startup within the company. None of this would be trading or PM work. I imagine a lot of it would be customer validation + aiding in product management.
QUESTIONS: I’m not gonna take this lying down. With 3 weeks to go:
Where do I even begin? Should I just devour 50 practice cases? I honestly don’t even know what these look like.
How much of these these cases are qualitative vs quantitative?
Should I assume that all of these cases involve a financial model of sorts, just because the role is at a hedge fund?
It doesn’t sound too quantitative. However, a top hedge fund would want people how can think on their feet. I would find three to five case studies and study them well (try to find a recent position they’ve put on). I would also be familiar with the companies capital structure, management, fees, IRR and recent deals, trades, etc. Understand the basics of an LBO and accretion/dilution model - you can find bare-boned samples on YouTube.
For icing on the cake and if time permits, I would prepare a stock pitch detailing the XYZ’s ability to generate returns on invested capital, how it can expand margins and beat competitors ( you know! using all 5 forces). Show a basic DCF with a valuation, entry and exist price targets. Read up on management past achievements.
It wouldn’t hurt if you knew Salesforce or whatever customer software interface is used to management clients.
They asked a lot of management consulting style questions. No financial calculations or Excel models. Made it through 4 rounds and still no offer. Thanks for helping anyways, guys.