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For those who represent megafund sponsors and are within a large fund formation practice, do you feel that you are gaining enough substantive experience to go in-house a few years in? I.e., are you seeing the same matters over and over and not working on substantive tasks/not working on a variety of matters, and feel ill-prepared to go in-house (as opposed to working on smaller client/smaller teams where you can get more exposure)?

Definitely. I started in a top-tier Investment Funds group covering everything from MFs to mid-sized funds, and most peers who wanted to move in-house after 3–7 years had no trouble doing so. If you can also spend some time in a transactional group such as M&A (nice to have but not mandatory), you should be well-positioned to make the move, so I wouldn't worry. Just make sure you want to do funds long-term because it's a very specialized field.

The recruiters most interested in your background, in order from highest to lowest, will be
(1) in-house legal teams (KKR, Apollo, etc.),
(2) asset managers (PIMCO, BlackRock, etc.), and
(3) some investment banks that are more active in this space (GS, JPM, MS, etc.)

I have occasionally seen people move into fundraising teams at funds or asset managers, but that’s less common (though not impossible if you polish your finance lingo and learn how to pitch the fund or the strategy to different types of LPs).