19yr Old VC Associate

I'm not gonna hate on the kid because it is an accomplishment, but he's hardly a VC associate. He's really a member of the growing legion of VC "scouts", a la Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz:

http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/04/sequoia-confirms-existence-of-stealth-…

http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/08/andreessen-horowitz-confirms-its-scout…

Not to take anything away from the kid, but his function is to bird-dog early stage start-ups happening in dorm rooms, despite what the company tells him or allows him to call himself.

How would you consider this for being an actual VC?

http://www.uventurefund.com/

Bit of an afterthought, but for further reading, I just wanted to direct you fellas to this Quora post which was almost definitely the impetus for Alex Banayan's article yesterday: http://www.quora.com/Venture-Capital/How-did-these-young-people-qualify…

In it, you'll see that the top answer is actually by Stewart Alsop (of Alsop Louie Partners, the kid's firm), who elaborates on the hiring rationale a bit:

Stewart Alsop I believe that the thinking behind vetting a young VC is that many innovative startups and ideas are coming from campuses and the only way to hear about these ideas is to have eyes and ears on campus. Entrepreneurs who cold call VCs rarely get a meeting as most of connections are made through "warm" introductions by a trusted contact. Thus it is very hard for a young entrepreneur at Stanford with a brilliant idea, but few connections, to find a VC. I believe that in hiring these young overachievers VC firms are trying to tap into whats going on at college campuses.

How Ms. Fu and Mr Banayan actually got the jobs is an entirely different matter. I think that to in order to get the attention of the senior VCs, these motivated individuals had to do an incredible amount of self-branding, intense networking, and publicity seeking. They probably proved that they can handle massive amounts of work and go with very little sleep for weeks at a time. In my opinion, degrees are as useful as the paper they are printed on (except for hard sciences) so I don't think lacking this is very impressive. I think at 20 it is almost impossible to get experience that would actually get you hired as a VC, but the accomplishments these two individuals have already achieved are impressive.

These kids don't necessarily have experience in the normal VC sense of having seen a lot of deals or run companies, but they have a lot better insight into the mind of the tech-savvy early adopter 20 yo mind than a 50 yo does. That give them a perspective that most partners at the VC funds don't have, which can be valuable when evaluating new companies/ideas. I'm in my mid-30's, have a ton of experience in tech and have no idea what college kids today are thinking about.