- For my STEP, Signature Project, I spent the summer interning as a Private Equity Summer Analyst at Blackford Capital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There I focused on personal development within the industry. I was working on Mergers and Acquisitions deals within the industrial and consumer goods sector; for example I would deal with companies that operate within manufacturing and consumer goods such as pool products or car part manufacturing.
- My assumptions about the world haven’t changed as I expected the workplace to be like that. Working in lower middle market space, I expected the market to be slow as the economy was in trouble as the interests were high. I saw myself as someone who was able to work much more than I thought, I had worked over 12 hours per day sometimes and it taught me so much about mergers and acquisitions as I considered the effect on different platform companies. I realized how interesting this industry is and my full capabilities.
It was a great experience working with my team members. It made me realize how important coworkers and teams are. We had a lot of team chemistry and understood how important each task was, managing what was on each other’s plates. Understanding my other interns and coworkers showed me how to really work on a team as I was always doing solo work. Learned how to manage and work with certain types of people as there are many views to working on a team and managing it.
- My biggest experience was working on a deal for a furniture company. There were so many different variables as this company was struggling so I had to reanalyze their financials. When I had to look at new companies, I was looking at so many factors that would affect the refinancing of the deal. One of my favorite things to do over the summer was to make financial models, this meant I had to make very detailed projections for every company in the platform and then be able to combine them. I did so much research into the specific area that I would become an expert after working through a model and a pitch deck.
There were also so many synergies during the deal relating to suppliers as the extra products allowed us to look at so many different companies and see if there was enough cross selling or manufacturing because that would increase our profit margin. Looking at things like this would often take a lot of time and had me working 9am to 9pm for a whole week as there are often strict deadlines in this industry. I learned a lot about myself during these weeks and my ability to handle this much work.
Working with the team at Blackford was one of my favorite parts of the summer. I would be working on a deal with other interns, analysts, VPs, and even Managing Directors. Getting to learn from these people who have been in the industry for countless years taught me so much on what kind of path to follow and receive mentorship. Many of them
have worked at bulge bracket investment banks, ran other investment funds, and went to top business schools and have so much advice to offer.
4. This was very valuable to me because I know that I want to pursue investment banking after college and this internship was somewhat of a 10 week simulation of that. I had many doubts about if I could handle the hours, if I was smart enough to do the work, and if I even enjoyed the work. This reaffirmed that I could really succeed in this industry as I received positive feedback from all the superiors. Now I know what areas to focus in school and how to tailor my electives and classes because I know I want to develop my writing skills more as well as Excel and Powerpoint.
