By: Sarthak Tayal
The IE Private Equity club is one of the biggest clubs at the university, and enjoys a large network of members. It focuses on getting the students of IE familiarised with the world of private equity and venture capital. For many aspiring investors, it is the club to join and has many events to look forward to.
Find out more about the IE Private Equity Club below.
Interview with Alphonso Gila, President of the IE Private Equity Club.
What is the aim of the IE Private Equity Club?
Basically, the objective of the club is that the IE community, including master’s students and undergrads as well as alumni and faculty, can learn about how private equity and venture capital funds work.
What is the process for joining the IE Private Equity Club?
If you are referring to how to become part of the board, once or twice a year we open positions so people can become part of the board. Once we have opened the positions, people have to apply by sending us their CV (it is better if they have previous experience in PE or VC, but it is not necessary) and, above all, sending us a letter of motivation explaining the reasons why we should choose them.
On the other hand, to become a member you just have to join through the club’s page.
Do students who wanna join the club need to have some prior experience or do they get trained?
I think I’ve answered it above. But to make it clear, once you have joined as a member you can become part of a WhatsApp group where we inform about events. In addition, we also advertise events via email and other platforms such as campus life.
What is the IE Private Equity Club all about?
We try to organise at least one event every month where we bring in people from different PE or VC. Before Covid, we used to do club networking events where we invited all the members but unfortunately, that is no longer possible.
However, we hope that as soon as the situation is better with regards to the pandemic, we will get to plan something for everyone.
What is the club most proud of, something that is unique about the club?
What we are most proud of is the community we have managed to create over the years where we always help each other. We currently have more than 2000 members, which is absolutely fantastic. Nowadays networking is key, so having such a large number of members is beneficial to every member of our club.
Personally, how do you think joining this club will benefit students?
In relation to what I mentioned in the previous question, I think that being part of this community is something that will always come in handy if you are interested in the financial world, and especially if you like PE or VC. You will meet many people with the same goals that will always be willing to help you.
Which have been the major events you have organised, and what are your hopes for the future?
All the events we organise are really good and interesting. But if we refer to the bigger ones, we could refer to the PE day or VC day. It is an event divided in two days, in which one day we bring people involved in PE and on the second day we focus on VC people. These events are usually the most crowded both in terms of audience and speakers.
On the other hand, we can also mention the “London Trek”; every year we used to organise a trip to London for 2-3 days, where we arranged meetings with London based PE firms such as Apollo Global Management, Oaktree Capital Management, The Carlyle Group or Permira for top performing students.
Editorial Note: This article was previously published without a featured image.
