Is VC More Interesting Than PE
I want to eventually work in a setting where I get to deal with companies that truly interest me and make me passionate about helping them succeed. I want to help people with great ideas fulfill their visions for their companies. I feel as if VC is a better route than PE for this goal. My reasoning for this is because from what I understand in VC not as much financial analysis and cash flow analysis is done on the target companies (they are early stage and don't have much of a track record) but rather the VCs are looking for good ideas that have high upside. From what I understand it seems like PE is looking for a company with proven cashflows and revenue generation that is low risk. Obviously VC is riskier, but it seems much more interesting from my very surface level understanding of the two fields. Am I way off in any of these assumptions and or is VC a career that can somewhat align with my interests?
i work in both currently. you’re romanticizing it a bit tbf. i do series B and C and there’s less DD and excel time, but i wouldn’t say you’re looking at the next great idea very often — maybe you can get a bit of that in seed.
yes, on the VC side there’s a lot more networking and talking to founders. the thrill wears off a bit. most of the founders are a 30 year old Stanford grad who worked at some cool tech companies before. most of the ideas are not particularly revolutionary and some are just not interesting (im looking at stuff like construction management, accounting automation, affordable housing application platforms, etc.) but they’ll all tell you they’re changing the world.
there’s not as much data to inundate you with to build every analysis under the sun, but there’s still plenty of financial/ops data analysis, AND youre trying to DD a company off limited data with a founder who wont say anything but buzzwords.
i didn't mean for this to be just shitting on VC because i do like it, and it is interesting. however, it’s a personal preference and neither one is inherently more interesting. i will caveat too that there are lots of PE funds booking nice returns. the returns in VC are very right skew. a few funds and investments are winners and everyone else loses big time. you need access to good deals and good funds or you are (statistically) probably going to make a cool 1.0x return. the bottom of the VC IQR is 0.0x
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