I worked on several projects, but the primary projects are listed below:
- Overhaul of private equity fund data room to support fundraising
- Completion of research report on domestic fiber markets to inform firm’s view on projected prices, which drive the economics of investments in recycling facilities and paper mills
- Completion of research including evaluation of specific investment opportunities within the organics market, to understand trends, pain points and key players in organics/composting, and to develop the firm’s strategy on where it wants to enter the market

On the data room project, I helped Closed Loop significantly improve its investor-facing materials and process to support the due diligence process for new prospective investors. Securing capital from limited partners is essential to Closed Loop’s mission of investing in companies in the circular economy. In the case of the private equity fund, the firm seeks to invest primarily in companies that operate infrastructure to keep materials in play, such as recycling facilities, organics/composting facilities, or paper mills, or logistics companies serving any of these sectors. The research projects on recycled fiber and on the organics market helped the private equity team inform how it was viewing certain investment opportunities in these spaces, and supported strategy development on how specifically Closed Loop wants to invest in these markets.

The skillsets I applied came primarily from my work experience prior to business school and from internships completed during business school. I applied skillsets related to financial analysis and capital structure in evaluating investment opportunities and considering how Closed Loop could invest in different spaces most effectively given the funds that it has across multiple strategies (early-stage venture, growth equity, private equity, debt).I also applied skillsets related specifically to venture funding in helping one of the firm’s portfolio companies finalize its financial model in advance of its next capital raise — this involved understanding the key metrics and indicators that venture investors are looking for at the company’s stage, and thinking about how to communicate a relatively complex business model as clearly as possible. Additionally, I applied skillsets related to valuation, including researching public market benchmarks for comparable companies and developing projections for different types of business models.

Challenges I faced included that the private equity team was just closing an acquisition when I began my internship, so it didn’t make sense to involve me much in that process, but the closing was delayed by over a month and continued to take a lot of my manager’s time, which detracted somewhat from the bandwidth available to push forward other investment opportunities.cAnother challenge was that the team has yet to develop strong processes and best practices around work process, such as data generation and management, document management, and utilizing the team’s time as efficiently as possible. Finally, some of the work I did was very necessary and urgent for the firm, but was more administrative/organizational in nature, as opposed to higher value workstreams. This is to be expected to an extent however given the stage of the private equity fund, which reached its first close in October 2019 and is still working toward a final close.I have experience working with a number of firms that have funds pre-close, including with new firms or first-time funds, so I understand the challenges associated with building a firm and a fund at the same time.

My key takeaways from the experience are as follows:
Working across multiple investment strategies and asset classes is both interesting and helpful in how it shapes how you view an investment opportunity. Taking a coordinated multi-strategy approach when investing in really major problems, such as the need to develop a circular economy, I think is also necessary and can be more effective than working on one strategy alone in a space that is both early-stage but also has many traditional well-established players, such as the traditional recycling industry in this case. I would be interested in roles that allow me to work across multiple asset classes/investment strategies. Building partnerships between different types of players in a space, and building a robust ecosystem/network, is a crucial endeavor in tackling very large-scale and complex problems. For example, as part of the work that Closed Loop does, it connects very different players such as early-stage startups, distributed infrastructure owners/operators, and multinational brands, to build mutually beneficial partnerships in developing circular supply chains.