Ultimately the most important factor in developing your skill is deal flow. You need to see as many deals as possible as quickly as possible. This repetition will teach you not only the investments analysis, but all of the important fringe details like negotiating all of the legal phases of a deal, cultivating broker relationships, and learning to screen out duds so you can focus on the important deals.

If you work at a megafund, you’re almost guaranteed to see a lot of deals. You have a small piece of the total action, but it’s still going to be a lot of work.

If you work at a small shop, you will get a much larger piece of a smaller pie. If the shop is fundless, that is they raise for each investment, you will focus a lot more time on fundraising and less on investing. However, if the small shop has a fund, you will likely be the go-to person for all sorts of work.

In short, there’s a reason people target megafund experience. You get to see a wide spectrum of deals. However, you can become a key player very quickly in a small shop and get a lot of hands-on experience with elements of investing that you may miss out on at a megafund, like fundraising.