First VC interview this week-- How to prepare? Tech/consumer focused fund
I have a VC interview this week with a consumer and tech focused VC fund.
My background is in IB and real estate PE. What kind of questions should I prepare for? Any good resources to get up to speed on things?
Any help would be much appreciated.
From my own experiences:
First-rounder is usually a get-to-know-you type interview.
- Why VC, the fund, the vertical?
- Trends I'm noticing in the market, interesting companies, what stage I'm interested in,
- Experiences ( your ib and PE exp), how that is useful, sourcing, how do you source?
- how do you evaluate what makes a good company
- what portfolio company do you like?
- What portfolio company are you not that fussed about.
Metrics:
- What metrics do you look for in a certain stage company
- what aspects of the company are you focusing on when analysing.
Case study:
- the most common is here is a deck, typically either have (15 and/or up-to 40-60 mins to assess). then IC style questions talk to me about the opportunity, how do they make money, what the competition is, what are your worries and concerns, and what are you happy about. what are you looking for in the cap table, what are you looking for in the team?
- Less common but still a few cases, Here is an excel please pull the relevant metrics, from the PnL, cohorts etc. usually getting ARR, Run rate revenue, LTV, CAC, and ARPA. Gross margin, make comments typically you're doing it for two different years. make some observations. on the company and the market sizing.
- Make a small PPT with your findings on the key aspects, usually ( Product, team, KPIs and Traction, Market, etc)
Awesome. Thanks a lot! This is really helpful.
Do you know of any primers/presentations/etc that would be helpful to get up to speed? I've found a handful of newsletters etc, but nothing with longer term info
not really primers but, Chirag Modi is a VP at Atomico (Prev at Lakestar), has an interesting newsletter, on recent deals to keep up with market news, Bessemer has this periodic table on startup metrics.
I've started the book called Venture Deals by Brad Feld- it's been very useful and covers a lot of VC terms as well as legal documents and the capital raise cycles. Highly recommend you pick it up- it's available on Kindle.
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