Overview
This internship is designed as a high-intensity training ground for future dealmakers, focused on learning M&A fundamentals through real-world communication, deal structuring, and negotiation.
The internship includes daily interaction with business owners and executives, with early emphasis on the human side of M&A—how to communicate, understand motivation, and drive conversations toward next steps.
Responsibilities
- Call business owners and executives daily
- Navigate objections, gather context, and understand founder psychology
- Learn how buyers and sellers negotiate in real situations
- Practice controlled, professional persuasion
- Keep conversations structured and outcome-oriented
- Support structuring for lower-middle-market M&A deals
- Understand seller motivations vs. buyer constraints
- Evaluate fit, feasibility, and deal readiness
- Learn the mechanics of earnouts, seller financing, rollover equity, reps & warranties, etc.
- Support live buyer–seller interactions
- Help prepare call notes, next steps, and negotiation plans
- Observe how valuation gaps and structure negotiations are handled
- Understand what kills deals and what revives them
- Observe transaction pacing, sequencing, and the “psychological arc” of a deal
How the Internship Works
- Initial training is built from outbound calls, including communicating with founders, reading motivation, overcoming objections, and extracting deal-relevant information.
- As early as 4 weeks, interns may transition to supporting real deals, including valuation logic, structure mechanics, and the sequence of an ETA transaction.
Highlights
- 100% real-world communication and deal execution
- Learn negotiation psychology from day one
- Paid hourly
- Rapid exposure to real transaction mechanics
- Collaboration opportunities with the deal team and research team for strong KPI performance after one month
- Potential success-fee-based bonus: interns who make the deal team and manage deal flow can make up to 20% of success fee (several interns have accumulated a potential bonus pool of $50K+)
- Strong preference to hire full-time talent from the internship program (2025: 3 interns converted to full-time; 2026: expects to onboard significantly more full-time hires from the internship program)
Requirements
- Must be fluent in English
- Strong communication skills
- Fast learning ability
- Interest in taking responsibility early
- Ability to learn by doing rather than observing
- Preference for structured, dynamic conversation over spreadsheet-heavy analysis
- Interest in learning how deals really happen, not academically
Compensation & Benefits
- Paid hourly
- Potential success-fee-based bonus: up to 20% of success fee (potential bonus pool of $50K+ reported for several interns)