Pick you life - Venture Capital

Analyst/Associate: you really love this job. You get to talk to founders and peers all day, going to events and conferences, it's really very interesting. You feel all-powerful asking questions and judging people all day. You get calls from headhunters all the time, everybody wants to hire you (especially if you are a female). It gets a bit boring at times, and your partner keeps asking you to do some market analysis which you really hate. Also a principal took the credit for a deal you sourced, what an asshole, you're so much smarter than them anyway. You're thinking about whether you should try to join a startup? you have several startup ideas yourself but can't find the CTO. But it would be so fun to pitch your colleagues if you had a great idea, and be on the other side!!

Principal: oh shit. You used to spend your time writing fun tweets and hanging out with friends. But now the partners really expect you to find some good companies and CLOSE them. But nobody cares about your tweets... the founders you want to back don't return your emails and those you don't want to back keep emailing you and sending you Linkedin messages. The other principal has closed 4 deals already and you've only got one. Yes, you took credit from the analyst who sourced it, but come on, emailing a founder hardly qualifies as sourcing, who the fuck do they think they are? You get pissed that analysts and associates work way less than you, and you're still in the office reading DD materials when they've gone to a Forbes 30 under 30 dinner. Also those partners piss you off - they don't know shit and just got lucky, I could totally do their job if i had their title. And if I was a partner, those founders would definitely get back to me.

Partner. What? you're asking me to put $300k in the fund? You suddenly realize how VC works and that you're not going to make any money unless the fund performs. You start to think way harder about the investments you make. You've got a bunch of analysts and associates sourcing some good stuff for you, but they clearly don't work as hard as they should. But you can't yell at them, you lost 2 already to a competitor firm, and if you lose the only female in the team the diversity police is going to start tweeting at you and your firm. You wish you could ask the principal to help you out, but you suspect he doesn't respect you. That arrogant asshole hasn't even had an exit yet. You start to get really frustrated with the 55 year old founder of the firm who still wants to stick around and slows the firm, but he clearly is not going to let go. If you had your own fund, you would really do things differently...