I joined a boutique IB (6 employees with <2 years in existence) in Jan 2023. We run $10 - $200M industry agnostic deals and have been very successful. I have 3 YOE. The title they gave me was “director”, on LinkedIn I put associate. I was worried an analyst -> director promotion would look weird. Tbh I have been acting as a director. I have built our our BD pipeline, attended networking conferences, furnished my own deals / clients ($2M in rev).
Should I change my title to VP? MBA is the goal.

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I'd question if you NEED a MBA. Can you tell us why you feel the need to get a MBA?

Btw I went from analyst > director in 3 years. It's definitely possible at a startup, I 100% agree with Partner1.

likehelpful

Thanks C1! I respect the chip on the shoulder grit that pushes us no name kids to succeed.

I hear you on the mba vs no mba thought process. Will have to consider that carefully.

Looks like you’re making strides! Congrats. I’d be careful of getting too much into titles etc. 3 years in M&A is good but you’d need at least 7-8 years at a manager level at Big 4 to be taken seriously and there’s still no guarantee you’ll get picked for a good deal. Again I’d be more worried about specialization and learning best practices coming out of a startup environment than the titles. Best of luck!

likehelpful

I don’t care about my title at all, it’s more so demonstrating “leadership experience” from early on in my career that would differentiate myself when applying to an MBA program. Thank you for the insight though!!

I'd update to be your true title/role. Sounds to me you're minimum a VP.

Savvy folks will understand the multi-hat startup / role inflation that often occurs, but you'll also want to be open about what else you want/need to learn (impossible to learn everything in 3 yrs)

smart

Right. And that’s my biggest weakness. I have less formal training than people at huge shops and less mentorship / resources to draw from. Half of the time I have no one checking my models or final work or holding my hand pitching clients. I know there is a whole level of sophistication I could add to my models but at the end of the day I don’t know what I don’t know.
Thank you very much for the time you spent providing this advice! Have a great new year.

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You probably do yourself more injustice by putting associate or VP when your official title is director. People generally know about role inflation in small/start up companies.

An acquaintance of mine was like some senior vp of business development at a decent sized start up. When that startup imploded, he got a job as a manager at a fortune 50, then got a senior vp of bd job again at a bigger startup afterwards 😂.

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