Undergrad Buyside Analyst

Overview

This internship is a high-intensity training opportunity focused on hands-on experience in lower-middle-market M&A and deal execution. Rather than passive research or slow-paced modeling, interns learn M&A fundamentals through live conversations, deal structuring exposure, and real negotiation preparation.

Responsibilities

• Call business owners and executives daily
• Navigate objections, gather context, and understand founder psychology
• Learn how buyers and sellers negotiate outside of textbooks
• Practice controlled, professional persuasion
• Keep conversations structured and outcome-oriented
• Support structuring deals in the lower-middle-market M&A space
• Understand seller motivations vs. buyer constraints
• Evaluate fit, feasibility, and deal readiness
• Learn deal mechanics including earnouts, seller financing, rollover equity, reps & warranties, and related components
• Observe how real deal conversations unfold and how structures adjust dynamically
• Support live buyer–seller interactions
• Prepare call notes, next steps, and negotiation plans
• Observe how valuation gaps and structure negotiations are handled
• Learn what can kill deals and what can revive them
• Understand transaction pacing, sequencing, and the “psychological arc” of a deal

Training and Progression

• Early focus on outbound calls: communicating with founders, reading motivation, overcoming objections, and extracting deal-relevant information
• As early as 4 weeks, transition into 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
• Opportunity to collaborate with the deal team and research team after showing strong KPIs after one month
• Potential success-fee based incentive: 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+)
• Preference to hire full-time team members from the internship program (3 interns converted to full-time roles in 2025; more full-time hires expected from the internship program in 2026)

Requirements

• Must be fluent in English
• Strong communicators
• Fast learners
• Students who want responsibility early
• Interest in learning how deals really happen (not just academically)
• Learns better by doing than observing
• Enjoys structured, dynamic conversation over spreadsheet-heavy analysis

Compensation & Benefits

• Paid hourly
• Potential performance-based success-fee incentive: up to 20% of success fee (with a noted potential bonus pool of $50K+ for several interns)

Location

Not specified