Started my first buy-side job out of banking at a tech-focused early-stage growth equity firm ~7 months ago and had my mid-year review a few weeks ago. Split of executions to sourcing is ~60/40. My mid-year review was extremely positive, but the two areas I was asked to focus on over the next 6-12 months are: (1) more fluid conversations with founders during intro calls (i.e., less asking questions in a checklist fashion) and (2) having a more holistic view of companies / opportunities after an initial intro call with a founder/CEO.
My mid-year feedback was basically: very strong technical skills and accurate/detailed models/analysis, but the next step for me is to improve on getting out of the weeds when I sync up with partners after an intro call with a founder. One of the partners mentioned using mental models to help assess opportunities at a high level. Does anyone have a rough checklist / mental model they use to help them assess and come to high-level conclusions? This is pre-data room access obviously.
The other point of constructive feedback is to be less-structured during founder/CEO calls. They said at times I come across a bit “banking-esque” in my questions, like I’m just checking off a list. I put in a decent amount of prep before calls, so don’t think that effort is what needs to improve here.
TL;DR, looking for (1) a way to have more fluid/casual intro calls with founders (while still extracting the necessary information to decide if we want to allocate time to engage in the financing round) and (2) any advice on a framework to assess investment opportunities after intro calls with founders before data-room access.
It sounds like the feedback was to be less checklisty and you are asking for a checklist to be less checklisty.
In all seriousness, this type of progression is natural as you continue to build experience. It
is sometimes referred to as intuition and something you may have to actively listen to if your natural strength is technicals.
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