Inside a college student's 'abusive' summer from hell on Wall Street

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Investment banking internships are starting now. shironosov/selensergen/iStock; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez

A college student shared his experience as an investment banking intern.
He lost 10 pounds and was afraid to leave his desk, he said.
It opened his eyes to the finance industry’s demanding and ‘abusive’ culture, he said.

(Editor’s note: This story was originally published in September 2022 and updated in June 2023 as the next wave of investment banking internships commenced.)

Every year legions of optimistic college students vie for a chance to work for an investment bank. These jobs are famous for long, often grueling hours. But the large pay packages and glamorous lifestyles (ie: putting together multi-billion dollar deals in bespoke suits) can make it all seem worthwhile.

See the pitch deck these 2 best friends made on Canva to raise $675,000 for their tequila brand

Friends Wynter Karo and Alice Parmiter start mixing tequila cocktails in their kitchen at home.
They registered their tequila brand, Pimantae, while working full-time jobs in 2021.
They decided to pursue angel investors and used a pitch deck they made on Canva.

Friends Wynter Karo and Alice Parmiter returned to the UK from a trip to Mexico in 2020 with an idea for a tequila business.

Two years later, after scaling their start-up alongside full-time jobs, the pair closed an over-subscribed £545,000 (or about $675,000) pre-seed round led by Distill Ventures.

Back in August 2020, the friends told Insider, they couldn’t shake the feeling that poor-quality tequila shots — the most common way tequila is consumed in the UK — were letting down the well-crafted tequila cocktails they’d had in Mexico.

The two started experimenting at home to create their own premixed tequila cocktail — a spicy margarita.

At the time, Karo worked as a propositions manager at Sky, and Parmiter worked in marketing at ASOS. While continuing in their full-time roles, they registered Pimentae with Companies House and immediately started saving money to invest in creating a premium tequila cocktail.

Between them, they managed to save £12,000 by March 2021. That money went into developing their first 1,400 bottles, website design, purchasing ingredients, consulting with a flavor house, and undergoing exams for personal qualifications and business licenses, according to the pair.

They officially launched the brand with an influencer campaign

“We bespoke-created 50 aesthetically pleasing hampers so that when influencers received them, they couldn’t help but post,” Karo said.

In March 2021, they hand-delivered the gift baskets across London to influencers like Conor Maynard, Maya Jama, and Grace Beverley. They didn’t ask the recipients to share their Pimentae hampers, but according to the founders, every influencer posted organically.

Within one month, Karo and Parmiter say their launch campaign had passed 500 sales amounting to £13,000. “That really put us on the map,” Karo told Insider.

Using that money and £7,000 in further sales from their online shop and trade shows, they planned to secure a pitch and create an immersive event at Big Feastival — a UK food festival — that August.

“We put everything on the line,” Karo said. “We emptied the business bank account and had to put half of the pitch fee on our Amex.”

Both quit their full-time jobs to focus on the brand.

“We knew if we could sell the right amount of liquid, that we could double our pitch fee and have enough revenue to bootstrap our business for another four to five months,” Karo said.

At the festival, they made back their whole pitch fee plus £20,000 more in revenue

As the summer can to an end, the pair still needed more capital to keep the brand running, so they started looking at fundraising options. They considered crowdfunding and venture capital as financing options, but settled on approaching angel investors.

“We needed the experience and rich knowledge that angel investors would provide,” Karo recalled thinking.

At first, they tried cold contacting people on LinkedIn and online platforms but were unsuccessful. But at a pitching event at Brown Rudnick in May 2022, the brand won the most investable brand and the best pitch deck, receiving 20 hours of free legal advice as prize money.

One of the judges for the event decided to become an angel investor for Pimentae. With their first investor locked in, other investors started expressing interest.

Distill Ventures, an independent drinks accelerator, reached out in September 2022 and agreed to become the lead investor, Karo said.

They closed their pre-seed round in September 2022 having raised £545,000, or around $675,000, between 13 angel investors and Distill Ventures — far exceeding their original £250,000 goal.

Here’s the pitch deck they used to do it.

Slides from tequila brand Pimentae’s pitch deck used for pre-seed fundraising round.

Karo and Parmiter used a pitch deck they made on Canva which took three months to develop. “We couldn’t afford a designer at the time to make it,” said Karo.

“I’ve always been a firm believer that investors believe 50% in people and 50% in the brand,” Karo said. “Which is why the investor slide comes before the product. It’s important.”

They drilled into the brand’s visuals. “It’s the bottle label that drives the first sale and then the liquid taste that drives the repeat,” Karo told Insider.

“We took that same idea into the pitch for the investors that hadn’t tried the product. It was the market opportunity paired with the unique brand aesthetic that was going to hook them.”

Their pitch deck starts with the problem and solution, lots of colorful photos, and an introduction to the brand’s founders.

It was important to both the women that their pitch deck by immersive and experience-led.

“We wanted all our angel investors who opened the deck to immediately feel the element of luxury and travel, and the kind of lifestyle we wanted to bring into the alcohol space we were entering,” said Karo.

The rest of the pitch deck dives into achievements, testimonials, and the future roadmap. Finally, on the last slide, they propose their investment ask.

“It’s about the journey you take investors on to reach the point they are so emotionally invested in the brand,” she said.

One of the major selling points for investors, which is included in the pitch deck, was that the pair had registered Pimentae for the SEIS and EIS, government schemes in the UK which meant that investors who put money into the business could receive tax relief.

The feedback on their pitch was overwhelmingly positive, with investors saying that it had the right balance of commercial and visual, with “lots of narratives about what we wanted to do, how we wanted to do it, and where the band was going,” Karo told Insider.

20/20 SLIDES

Insider recently spoke to an intern whose dreams of working on Wall Street were squashed after he spent the summer of 2022 working for a midsize investment bank in Chicago. The bank offered him big bucks to return full-time, but the experience had left such a bad taste in his mouth that he said no.

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Wall Street’s culture — even without the screaming and yelling of yore — is just too “abusive,” he said.

The intern complained of being chained to his computer out of fear. After being called out by a managing director for not jumping on a project ASAP one night, the intern found himself “obsessively” checking his phone every five minutes to make sure he wasn’t missing anything.

“The need to be available became so bad that when my roommates wanted to go on walks to explore Chicago, I would say no or refuse to venture far from home. I thought I needed to be within close physical proximity to my apartment in case I needed to run back and do something.”

He lost 10 pounds that summer, partly because sometimes he couldn’t get up from his desk to eat. He didn’t sleep well, he said.

He told his story to Insider reporter Reed Alexander on the condition of anonymity for fear that speaking out could hurt his future career ambitions. Insider has verified his identity and work history.

To see more on his story, including the soul-crushing nature of his work and how people reacted to his decision to turn down a six-figure offer, click here to subscribe.

And click here for tips on how to crush your investment banking internship, including who to turn to with questions, what to wear, and when to leave the office.