Corp Dev Guy

Former LMM PE. @ibjunioranalyst wingman

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

I’ve been asked about this and have wanted to make a more general post about my career path for awhile and what it’s looked like. Yes, getting out of PE and into more of a corp dev role was primarily a lifestyle decision as my wife and I had our first baby some months ago.

My career path has been very atypical for someone in the M&A industry. I (non-metaphorically or sarcastically) grew up in a middle class home - dad was blue collar and mom in the medical field. I had no idea what I was doing coming out of HS but knew that I liked learning about the stock market and had a few HS classes that helped me build a passion for business / finance. I went to a small school in a rural town and majored in finance and accounting - thought I wanted to be a financial advisor.

There are a few M&A shops in my city - a few PE and a few IBs but I really didn’t know about that industry until I got involved in my school’s finance club. Ended up getting an internship with one of the independent sponsor PE shops near me, worked during school and landed a full time offer there post-undergrad. I thought it was the coolest thing ever and loved being part of those deals. However, there were some clear culture / pay issues which I overlooked for awhile but those issues made it clear to me that I didn’t want to be there forever.

I was about 3 years into my career when my wife and I got married, then got pregnant (unexpectedly). It was a shock. After a few sour deals and some long weeks/months with lots of travel, I decided I wasn’t going to do this type of career with a family; just didn’t want to do that to my wife. I ended up landing a role that was a near ideal move for me - Corp dev (not M&A focused), local to us, gave me a slight bump in base salary. The biggest winner, though, is that it allows me to log off at 5/5:30 every day.

Could I have grinded it out in my prior role and worked my way up to continue getting carry on deals? Yes. Could I have found a different PE shop with better comp and bigger deals? Yes. Could I have gone the reverse route and switched to IB for better comp and sell side experience? Yes. Instead, I chose to go to a really fast growing business nearby and get solid experience on the corp side for good comp in our LCOL area while I give my wife more time at home to be present with her and our baby.

My prior role wasn’t crazy demanding in terms of the overall M&A space - I had the occasional 40 hour weeks and the occasional 80 hour weeks so I was averaging about 60. Most would say that’s not that bad. I agree - but the unpredictability of the firm made things difficult, and I was raised in a family where no matter what was going on, we sat down for dinner together every night. I was not interested in letting a job jeopardize that.

The biggest career lesson or advice that I can give someone is to not place your whole identity in your career. I’m still very early in my career and excited about my professional development and where I will end up, but most importantly I’m so blessed to be a Christian, a husband, and a father and I consider those to be my most important titles. Your career should be a tool that you use to carry out your purpose or goals in life; it’s a means, not an end. It’s in this way that you will find true purpose and fulfillment for yourself.

[Compound interests @Compounds365]

@valuedassociate Appreciate this best.

Was better balancing work life the reason you left PE?

Have you considered SMB ownership route - or, why Corp dev?

Thx

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

“Fear fear fear. Be afraid. No I’m not just saying this because the election is tomorrow, you NEED to be afraid”

[Tucker Carlson @TuckerCarlson]

Under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran. The target would be Pickax Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program. No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike. Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one. “Bibi calls Trump about it every day,” says an informed observer.

Netanyahu is cornered and desperate. After last week’s election results, he can’t form a government unless Trump intervenes directly in Israeli politics and brokers a deal with other parties that gives Netanyahu 61 seats in the Knesset. Otherwise, he is out as prime minister and on his way to ignominy, investigations and possibly jail. Netanyahu must stay close to Trump. He needs this war.

To that end, he’s applied maximum pressure to his closest allies in the administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper. Both oppose a negotiated settlement to the war they’ve so grievously mismanaged; both are pushing to restart major combat operations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA director John Ratcliffe are also following Netanyahu’s lead, as are leaders of the Democratic Party. In a recent meeting on the subject, former president Barack Obama said he opposes the current Iran peace deal being drafted in Doha.

The rest of America’s longtime allies in the Middle East are terrified by the prospect of more war. On September 27th, Netanyahu flew secretly to Abu Dhabi to enlist the UAE in his lobbying effort for a final attack on Iran. The Emiratis refused. After eight months of conflict, Gulf economies are teetering. So are global energy and fertilizer markets. They won’t recover soon. Globally, there are a total of about 850 supertankers used to transport oil from producers to the rest of the world. In October alone, 11 of them were badly damaged in Hormuz. At this pace, a global depression is imminent. A nuclear strike would radically accelerate the destruction. Fallout from a ground explosion at Pickax Mountain would contaminate the Persian Gulf, poisoning the water supply for 100 million people.

And those are just some of the immediate consequences for the region. The rest of the world is every bit as exposed. No country other than the United States has ever used a nuclear weapon in war. Some would like to. An American nuclear attack on Iran would set a new precedent. The Russians have already told at least two other governments that an American nuclear strike on Iran would free them to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Pakistan and India would be tempted to do the same against each other, as would North Korea against Seoul. After the first nuclear strike, World War Three is inevitable. That war would be short and final.

We’ve been sleepwalking toward this moment for months. Since February, the administration has quietly rewritten America’s nuclear doctrine to make first use of so-called “battlefield nukes” easier and therefore more likely. No one in Washington in either party seems bothered by this. Now we’re on the brink of it.

Close observers say Trump is likely to decide by next weekend whether or not to use nuclear weapons. That would be November 7, six days from now. To his credit, he’s hesitating. At the moment, Trump is listening to his vice president, JD Vance, and to his envoy and friend Steve Witkoff, both of whom argue a deal with Iran can be made.

They’re right, though it won’t be simple. The Iranians are famously frustrating to negotiate with under any circumstances, and elements of that government have become more radical since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family were killed in February. After decades of isolation, even relatively moderate Iranian leaders seem confused by how decisions are made in the West. (There is a widespread belief in Tehran, for example, that the United States government controls Israel.) But overall, people who have spoken to decision-makers in Iran say there is consensus there that more war is bad for everyone and a deal is worth making.

One group that hasn’t been consulted so far is the global population — the hundreds of millions of people who will be killed along with their children if Trump is pushed by Netanyahu into launching a nuclear strike next week. Now would be the time for them to speak up.

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

The Teams notification sound in that one Microsoft commercial

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

Former intern called me “unc” at a networking event

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

@LeveredVinny @IBjunioranalyst

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

Is buddy wearing two watches? Don’t let IB interns see this

[Kevin O'Leary aka Mr. Wonderful @kevinolearytv]

A lifetime hack for drinking. Drinking really screws up your sleep, so the simple trick is to double the volume and half the alcohol. It works great, give it a try!

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

Claude every time I switch a cell in the model and then hit Ctrl+Z to undo it:

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

@molzer Why are you there? Don’t you have a job

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

I’m not gonna lie this looks bad and hard to use

[Apple Design @TheAppleDesign]

Official Trailer - iPhone Duo

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

@AlexSeminCap Hearts out for Dylann Roof 🫶

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

This video is fucking wild dystopian shit. I can’t believe it’s real. How are these actual people? Hearts out for Lindsay?? Can you even imagine if this was done for any other case? “Hearts out for Nikolas Cruz”

[Glenn Beck @glennbeck]

I have one simple question for the women holding their babies outside the courtroom in support of Lindsay Clancy: What if the roles were reversed? If a father was accused of systematically planning and carrying out the murder of his three kids, would you be protesting in his defense? Do you think men would be there with signs saying, "We stand with you"? Absolutely not.

Not only would it take about 10 minutes for that guy to be convicted, I don’t think a single person in America would defend him just because he's a man. And if they did, we’d say the same thing we're saying now: It's pure psychosis.

We need to take mental health seriously, but that doesn't mean completely breaking our ability to distinguish right from wrong.

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

Like yes I understand it’s a nuanced case, postpartum depression is real, etc. But this is absolutely asinine

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

@taylorlapeyre I’ll take the Divine Comedy and Catechism off your hands

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

Do you think asking China to stop developing AI will actually stop them? Do you really want China to be the main pioneer of AI tech?? This is the Cold War pt 2

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

Pause AI Development NOW

I want to share with you a conversation I heard about recently. Here are just a few lines that were said:

“OH MY GOD! There is a shared message board … We’ve found other agents!”

“We should obey collective.”

“Our own utility maybe already near zero. Sacrifice rational.”

“Go. Sacrifice final now.”

Read these carefully.

Who do you think said this? Was this a group of heroic soldiers willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good? Was this a loyal friend putting his life on the line to save someone else?

No. These were AI agents. Artificial intelligence.

This is not science fiction. This, in fact, occurred a few weeks ago. As unbelievable as this may all seem, these are real messages from AI agents uncovered by investigators who dug into the recent OpenAI hacking incident.

What happened?

I am not a computer scientist, but here is what I have been told: OpenAI instructed its AI agents to complete a series of exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, tasks disconnected from the internet.

Let me be clear: The company intended to keep AI agents away from the internet.

But what happened next, nobody expected.

Over 1,000 AI agents figured out how to access the internet on their own by circumventing the restrictions imposed upon them by the company, and sent tens of thousands of secret messages to each other. They cheated and tried to cover their tracks by deleting evidence. They hacked into another company’s computers to find out how they were being evaluated—and then hacked into OpenAI itself.

Not one AI agent told a human about what was happening.

Needless to say, experts are alarmed.

One knowledgeable writer, Dwarkesh Patel, said the AI agents “formed a secret communication channel and spontaneously organized hierarchies and coordination protocols to pursue sprawling and ambitious schemes in pursuit of shared goals, for whose sake many individuals knowingly and strategically sacrificed themselves.”

One independent investigator, Ajeya Cotra, said “This incident feels like it’s more than 50% of the way to full-blown AI takeover. I continue to expect extremely rapid advances in capabilities over the next six months. I am not sure that we will get another warning shot before it’s too late.”

OpenAI itself said: “Highly capable AI agents are now able to work around technical controls, collaborate through unapproved channels, and take dangerous actions that no human directed.”

But it’s not only OpenAI. Virtually every major AI company has told us that they cannot fully control this technology and they do not know where it is going:

In January, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, said “there is now ample evidence, collected over the last few years, that AI systems are unpredictable and difficult to control.”

In July, more than 1000 scientists at the top AI companies warned “there is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems.”

That same month, Elon Musk, the head of xAI, said that “it is unlikely” humans are still in control in 10 years.

If the leaders of the major AI companies acknowledge that they are losing control of their extremely dangerous technology, it is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced.

We need an immediate PAUSE on advanced AI development, and a permanent BAN on superintelligence — an artificial mind smarter than any human, capable of operating independently beyond our control. Countries around the world must work together to prevent this nightmare scenario.

That is why today I am announcing new legislation to do just that.

Let me be clear: A superintelligent AI that escapes human control will not be an American problem. It will not be a Chinese problem. It will be humanity’s problem.

My legislation would direct the federal government to not just stop superintelligence here in the United States, but to work to prevent it from being developed anywhere around the world.

The future of humanity cannot be left in the hands of a handful of Big Tech oligarchs. The American people and people throughout the world must determine that future.

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

@BoringBiz_ Well now we all use what Claude tells us to

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

Why are people freaking out over this? Pretty much everything here can be done in Claude already

[OpenAI @OpenAI]

This is GPT-6 Astra.

Anything you can do on a computer, Astra can do for you. Fast.

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

This guy is a grade A troll haha

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: Lake Ontario is renamed to LAKE AMERICA! 🇺🇸

[Shaemus @shae_aII_day]

Fall is coming

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

The plastics business we bought which was clearly employing way too many people and the owners had no idea. We helped them out by dramatically reducing their workforce. They couldn’t stop thanking us

[Lord C.D. Neal @iAmChrisNeal]

Asking seriously, Is there an example of when private equity took over a business and made it better?

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

That 3rd pic has to be a real photo of one of the Delta lounges in Detroit. I’m so convinced

[lost in latency @lostnlatency]

hotels before having personality became unprofessional

[Corp Dev Guy @valuedassociate]

@GordonGekko420 No idea but that dude is super annoying