I recently left a gig as an analyst and started at VC and wow are the worlds different. There's a lot more thinking here, and while banking prepared me for the process of a deal, now I need to take extra time to think about things.
I wanted to reach out to the VC professionals here to see what I can do to set myself up for success in VC. I feel like banking set me up well for getting work done, getting it done well, and being a good analyst but I want to put myself in higher shoes and start developing an investor's mindset. Would it be beneficial for me to start attending conferences / setting up meetings and networking with founders / leaders in the space I am covering? Any advice would be huge
CHECK6, bummer your thread hasn't had a response yet. Maybe one of these threads could point you in the right direction:
More suggestions...
If those topics were completely useless, don't blame me, blame my programmers...
Reach out to other VCs in your sector/ or generalist at your level, you are only as useful as your network and your ability to source, if you have regular catchups you will first know what others are looking at, get intro'ed to their founders and share dealflow (especially useful if your a seed investor and your talking to a series a or above investor as your not actively competing'
Great advice. I should reach out to other VC's for sure. I will say that our deal flow is quite backed up and most of our deals are banked / through our partners. It's a niche industry and most of our partners already know the major players and who is raising so I am not sure if I can add value by introducing new ideas, but potentially it can make me more situationally aware?
How much time do your colleagues spend making twitter threads?
LMAO Zero, if your on twitter,medium,linkedin then your not investing waste of gahd damn time.
Lots of famous/good VCs have newsletters + twitter threads...
- Understand the corporate investment themes and how your skill set fits into it
- Learn how to structure, research and validate a thesis and how an investment may benefit your group
- Read up a lot within your space and acknowledge key SMEs in your investment area. Researchers, professors, large studies, founders, events, ..
- Recognize the key voices in your group to estimate how much time you'd need to win them over on a future deal, but also what their thought process is like
- Network as much as you can with the right people
edit, forgot:
- You would have to understand the team dynamics and who is an expert on what. Many VCs have no idea about technical details because they simply don't have the time to understand them. Often, they small details are relevant, but may not matter that much on the deal. Across a range of startups in the same space, the one with the best tech isn't always the one that wins in the market. (i.e. does anyone care whether MySpace or Facebook had the better tech during the early days?)
Great advice, thank you! I definitely need to reach out to SMEs and such. My only issue on your last point is that we are a strategic VC and many people are new to VC / investing itself so we are all learning as we go. I feel like it's good and bad. Bad because I don't have anyone to really learn from in terms of building that investor's mindset but good because I have a potential advantage of developing one from my mentors and bringing in value to the fund.
You're right that VC is a very different job than banking. I'm still kind of shocked that banking is such a strong feeder into VC, as they are totally different skillsets. Ultimately, you have to remember that VC, especially at the junior levels, is basically a sales job. Your main job is to generate leads (potential deals) to qualify and serve to your partners. So it's a combination of hustle, volume, and quick judgment about what pitches are good quality, what is going to resonate with your partners, etc. Generally I've found the best thing early is to network with peers at other firms, particularly those who are one stage before you. For example, if your fund mainly does Series As, get to know every seed fund you can. Keep a recurring meeting/call with your peers to trade notes on deals - pass things along to them where you can co-invest, or are looking at, even deals you passed on. Once you know enough firms, you should have a continual drip of quality deal flow. That's step one.
Agree - definitely tougher than banking. However I think I am in a different spot since I do 0 sourcing here. We have a ton of banked deals and pipeline is strong so I just get staffed to take al ook at companies and analyze them. That's been the biggest transition is trying to understand what makes a good investment and what doesn't. Not sure if you think reading case studies on VC investments gone wrong, and learning what exactly went wrong to see if a start-up could follow the same trajectory?
While I am grateful I am doing a lot of execution, running the model, leading diligence calls, etc. from an early start - it keeps me quite busy and I don't really have much bandwith / idea how to actually get smart on the industries we look at. I like the idea about networking with peers at other firms? How do you generally do this - I can network my way into a job but don't want to come across that way to someone at another firm and maybe raise some alarms that I am trying to jump ship. I am also in a niche space and there's only a few other shops out there who are new and have people who are all 30+ and not at my level / age so can't really play the "bro" card either.
Numquam minus laudantium necessitatibus et. Accusamus qui nesciunt est est doloremque ipsam suscipit.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...