i’m a junior banker nearing the end of my analyst year and honestly i’m stuck. i’ve read the usual lists (pe = deals, vc = networks, product = PM skills) but that feels like surface-level noise. i’ve been asking people here for blunt takes and the recurring theme is: pick based on what you enjoy doing day-to-day and which gaps you can credibly close in 12 months. for me that means evaluating deal exposure, product exposure, and whether i can build tangible PM work (side projects, analytics). anyone who did this mapping — how did you pick which gaps to close first, and what concrete 90-day actions actually moved the needle?
honestly, most people overthink this. you won’t know if you like PE until you’re neck-deep in model tweaks at 2am and someone’s yelling about IRR. VC is just networking with entrepreneurs wearing hoodies; product means shipping something and owning outcomes. the real test: which of those nightmares are you ok repeating for years. close the gaps that you can show with evidence in an interview — not buzzwords. do the boring stuff that creates proof, not the flashy linkedin posts.
look, there’s no moral high ground here. if you want PE, learn LBOs until your brain hurts and make a list of target firms with partners you can actually reach. if VC, start talking to founders and write short diligence memos. product ppl want outcomes: ship, measure, iterate. stop reading career threads and start producing one concrete deliverable that screams fit. that’s the only signal interviewers trust.
- i’m in the same boat. started building a simple product analytics dashboard on the weekend and it actually helped me talk about PM skills in interviews. still nervous but it felt better than just rewriting my resume.
- i reached out to 30 alums for 2 months. got 6 useful calls. pe felt intimidating but one ex-banker turned mentor gave me a 90-day LBO study plan. small wins matter.
- i tried making a short case memo for a startup. nobody cares about my opinion yet, but it forced me to think like vc. tiny steps but helped.
- you’ve got options and momentum! pick one small project, ship it, then reassess. ask for help here — people actually reply. what will you try first?
i left my junior banking role confused too. i kept flip-flopping until i forced myself to pick PE for 3 months: built an LBO model for a public target, wrote a short memo and asked for feedback from a former associate. that tangible work got me a warm intro months later. VC was tempting but my first VC-style cold outreach got ignored until i had something to show. my rule: do the smallest credible thing that proves you can do the job.
to operationalize: set a 90-day plan with weekly milestones (7 LBO models, or 10 founder calls, or 1 shipped A/B test). track conversion rates: outreach → call (~20%), call → follow-up memo (~30%), memo → intro/request (~10%). those numbers suggest you need volume plus quality. pick a path and design your funnel accordingly; otherwise you’ll spin without results.