Q&A: IB Analyst to Corporate Venture Capital Associate

All else equal, a MM is probably better than a boutique: Likely to have better training, better deal flow, and a better network when you leave IB.
But the boutique was tech-focused and the MMs I was interviewing at were generalists or focused on something else. I think it’s important to get into your area of interest.
When I got to my current position, there were investors who went to a UBS/Barclays/Morgan Stanley but weren’t in their tech groups. There was a lot of basic tech stuff they didn’t know when they joined (building a retention analysis, LTV/CAC, etc.) and they didn’t have a good understanding of what “good” metric were in SaaS. Their ramp up was longer than mine despite going to a much more prestigious bank.
Pros and cons to both, but I’m happy with the choice I made.

Founders definitely treat us differently because we are different. We aren’t returns focused so by definition we have other motives. A lot calls or emails end with them saying something like “you’re not investing unless there’s a clear and obvious path to you helping us grow” but they’re always respectful about it. We get a lot of meetings that turn into that but we also get a high response rate on sourcing since everyone’s heard of our company (as opposed to a “random” VC)

The day to day isn’t too different at the junior level but is very different at the higher level. There’s also less room at the top in CVC and lower comp since there’s no carry.

To be clear, I do think moving from CVC to VC is very doable at the junior level and there’s a lot of overlap. You don’t learn everything you need to but I’d say it’s much better than staying in banking if you want to move into VC.

I applied on LinkedIn but we’ve also hired through recruiters.
The interview process was straightforward: 6-7 interviews with a simple case study.
I always recommend learning as much as you can on the company before going into the interviews. Type the name of the company/firm or their partners into Spotify and YouTube and listen to every interview their execs do, read the “thought pieces” their partners publish, do all of that. If you can go into an interview and use their lingo and act like you’ve always been following them, you’ll differentiate yourself

Short answer is that many of them are in the bay area.

Long answer is that some companies will put their CVC group in the bay so that they are close to the tech/VC community but but I don’t think it’s that common to do so. Many companies that have a CVC are already bay area tech firms so their CVC team is in the bay because the whole org is.

CVC teams don’t really need to be in the bay area though since, as I said in a comment higher up, they’re treated differently. We’re not hustling to lead deals or meet entrepreneurs in every sector.

Another thing to note is that some big companies will not have a separate venture group. If they only do a couple of deals each year (if any) it can be part of the M&A team’s work.

That being said, it’s still venture. People try to act like Austin, Miami, Boston, or other cities have this growing ecosystem but they don’t compare to the SF/Bay Area. The gap haa gotten smaller post covid but it’s still pretty damn big.