Off-duty: Charlesbank’s Mike Choe on Dungeness crab ramen, FOMO and ‘All Eyez on Me’

Buyouts’ Off-duty provides a snapshot of top investors, including a few details about what they do when not chasing deals.

As a boy, Mike Choe, CEO of Charlesbank, moved back and forth between the US and Asia, forcing him to continually relearn a new language. As a result, he told Buyouts, “I always felt like an outsider.”

This inspired in Choe a strong desire “to create an environment where outsiders are welcome,” something he has done in promoting diversity at Charlesbank.

Choe had no plans to become an investor. At university, he found himself “soul-searching,” at least until he joined McKinsey & Company in 1995. From there, he was offered a job at a new firm recently spun out of Harvard Private Capital Group.

As such, Choe began his private equity career with the 1998 founding of Charlesbank – one of 15 employees running a $300 million Harvard-capitalized fund. Nineteen years later, he became its top executive. Today, the mid-market buyout shop has 168 employees, with more than $17 billion of capital raised since inception.

Living in Boston with his wife and two teenagers, Choe donates his time to causes, including Nativity Preparatory School, which helps low-income, inner-city kids attain educational opportunities.

Where is your hometown?            

I grew up mainly in Seoul, Korea.

If you weren’t in PE, what job would you like to have?

That is a hard question! I’ve been working in private equity for 27 years, more than half my life.

As much as I’d like to say something creative like scriptwriter, more realistically I would have probably enjoyed working at a start-up; we have tried to unleash entrepreneurial energy to grow Charlesbank.

How do you relax when you’re not working?

One of my favorite ways to spend a Sunday afternoon is cooking dinner for my wife and two teenagers. I love every aspect of it: going to the store to buy the ingredients, thinking about what might suit the family’s mood, the solitary work involved in prepping and cooking, the collaboration I get from them in the final stages – and, of course, eating together.

We often live off the leftovers of these meals during the week. I started cooking random things I saw on Food Network 20 years ago and it’s now morphed into a full-fledged obsession.

What book are you reading right now?

I typically read a few books at a time, one fiction and several non-fictions.

For fiction, I’m reading Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel. For non-fiction I’m reading Thirteen Days by Robert F Kennedy and How To Know a Person by David Brooks. (My partner Brandon White told me to read this one – maybe he was trying to give me a hint?)

I recently finished reading Thinking in Bets (Annie Duke) and Atomic Habits (James Clear), both of which I thought were immensely relevant to private equity. (We made them required reading for our strategy off-sites this year.)

What is your favorite song, album, performer or music genre?

I am a musical omnivore and love everything from jazz and classical to ’90s hip-hop.

I’d probably have to go with All Eyez on Me by 2Pac (the final album before he died) and Welcome to the Black Parade, by My Chemical Romance, as albums I’ve completely worn out by listening to them over and over.

What is your favorite meal, recipe, cocktail or bottle of wine?

I make a really good Dungeness crab ramen with a soft poached egg on top.

What is your favorite place for a vacation, sanctuary or to explore? 

Our family loves vacationing in Hawaii. At one point, a few years back, we went there three years in a row to the island of Kauai. I also personally love exploring all the hip new eateries in Seoul when I visit my family.

Who in your career do you regard as a mentor?

I tend to think of mentorship more in terms of values than skills. From this perspective, I’d say my three biggest sources of mentorship have been my mom, Michael Eisenson (my predecessor and co-founder of Charlesbank) and my wife. All three have shown me what it means to be guided by humility, duty and consideration for others.

I also find mentorship everywhere in life: our management partners, our colleagues at Charlesbank. I try to learn something about how to be more effective from every one of our colleagues, all of whom bring unique strengths and wisdom (and life hacks) to the job!

Professionally, what was your toughest moment?

There are too many to count! I’d say learning that one of the first deals I led was 80 percent off-plan (this was around 23 years ago) was a pretty scary moment.

There were a lot of lessons learned from this that stay with me to this day – heavily discounting brand-new business lines, thinking more carefully about management team dynamics, etc.

What was your most rewarding moment?

Any day I see one of our team members taking on a new leadership role and excelling.

What PE buzz words or jargon do you hate most?

There are a lot. “Acqui-hire” is one. “Rule of” would be another. Somewhere along the way the “Rule of 40” became its own metric and people will say stuff like, “This is a rule of 52 company,” which obviously makes no sense linguistically.

The worst part is that I myself say all these things. Argh.

What advice would you give a young person interested in a PE career?

Decision-making is both a talent but also a trainable skill. Train yourself how to commit to informed decisions, starting with small ones. I always say to our team that we are professional decision-makers. Our investors depend on us to use our talent and processes to manufacture one singular product: good investment decisions.

What word or phrase best describes you?

Restless. Driven by FOMO (fear of missing out).