Leaving the Corporate - Part Deux; or, How to exit Private Equity

After a two year hiatus I’m back!  My initial dream of escaping the corporate didn’t happen according to plan.  The “telecom services” startup actually got started but I did something unfortunately a lot more corporate at the same time.  We launched iJunxion (no site yet) 6 months ago with an initial conference calling service for India.  Unfortunately,  I didn’t quite leave the "corporate" like I was expecting – I ventured into something quite the opposite – Private Equity. 

So, I guess you’re asking what happened?  Well in January 2007 I got a call from a former boss at Merrill (where I worked for all of 3 months, or was it 6, I can’t remember) as well as some other partners of a Private Equity firm that was just starting in India.  In the U.S. I had worked on a bunch of deals in the Telecom Tower space and these new PE hotshots were looking at doing a deal in the space in India.  They had no Associates or junior level help of any kind so they asked me to help them out for a few weeks by building a model and starting to execute a transaction in the space.  Little did I know that this “project” is one I am still working on and has led to a few transactions in the space.  I guess I got sucked into the buy-side and have been with the firm (to be named later when my link won’t be the only one – as we just put the web-site up). 

Now, though, I am doing it again!  I am "leaving the corporate" to try to start my own business, or at least figure out what is important to me (besides cash money!).