VC is Paradise

Breaking In: From Shark Tank Scholar to LinkedIn Visionary

Venture capital had always been your goal as a college student. You often tell people in networking calls that you’re drawn to it for “the opportunity to work with visionary founders and disrupt entire industries.”

At first, you tried to land an investment banking internship after all, you read on WSO that all the top VCs come from banking or consulting. Unfortunately, you got ratioed by HireVue and didn’t make it past the first round at Piper Sandler.

But you don’t let this setback define you. Bankers are just corporate PowerPoint monkeys anyway. The real visionaries work in venture. So, you pivot.

Your strategy? Become a LinkedIn Thought Leader. You start posting hot takes about startups you have zero involvement in:

“The rise of AI is fundamentally reshaping the way we interact with technology. Excited to see where this space goes!”

“Execution > Idea. A good idea is worthless without a great operator.”

“Investors don’t back businesses, they back founders. Founder-market fit is everything.”

Your posts average 4 likes, one of which is your mom. You take this as a sign that you’re building real engagement. Next, you start cold emailing VCs. Your subject lines are variations of: “Aspiring investor passionate about disruptive technologies, would love to connect!”

Your response rate is 0.01%. But then, a miracle happens a junior partner at Moonshot Capital likes your LinkedIn post about how Uber isn’t just a ride-sharing company, it’s an AI-driven data powerhouse. You strike while the iron is hot, DMing him instantly: “Hey, saw you liked my post, would love to chat about your investing philosophy!”

To your surprise, he responds. You secure a coffee chat, where you regurgitate every buzzword you’ve ever seen in a TechCrunch article. He nods approvingly. Two weeks later, you have an offer to join Moonshot Capital as a Venture Associate.

You’ve made it. Welcome to paradise.

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The Moonshot Team

Moonshot Capital is everything you imagined a top-tier VC firm to be.

They have no LPs, just a single crypto billionaire funding everything on a whim. They have 15 employees, but act like they run Sequoia. Their investment strategy is “high conviction bets” (aka throwing money at whatever’s trending on Twitter).

Your colleagues include: The Visionary Founder: An ex-McKinsey consultant who once saw Marc Andreessen at an airport lounge and now believes he’s his spiritual successor. Talks about “theses” more than actually investing.

The Tech Bro Partner: Spent 18 months at Google before pivoting to VC. Thinks all software companies should be valued at 100x ARR.

The Crypto Evangelist: Keeps saying “Web3 is inevitable” despite personally losing half the fund’s money in NFT investments.

The Stanford MBA: Has never worked a real job, but confidently recommends go-to-market strategies to 40-year-old founders.

As a new associate, your job is sourcing deals. If you ever ask about due diligence, you’ll be laughed out of the room. Diligence? That’s for private equity guys. In VC, we invest in vibes.

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Investing in the Future (And Losing Millions in the Process)

Moonshot Capital doesn’t just invest in startups. They invest in narratives.

Unfortunately, most of these narratives end in bankruptcy, fraud, or federal investigations.

MetaMansions – The Metaverse Real Estate Play - This startup sold virtual mansions for $1 million each. - Your team justified the deal with a 50-page memo on “digital land scarcity.” - Fast forward six months: the founder pivots to AI-generated poetry NFTs.

TrustUs Crypto Exchange – The “It’s Totally Not FTX” Play - The founder was 23 years old, played League of Legends during pitch meetings, and claimed to be the next SBF (but in a good way). - Your partners LOVED him. - After securing $300M in funding, he disappeared to the Bahamas.

JuiceGPT – The AI-Enabled Cold Press Juicer - You invested $75M in a startup that used AI to determine the optimal way to squeeze oranges. - Two weeks after launch, someone realized hand-squeezing works just fine.

WeLive 2.0 – The Co-Living “Disruptor” - A glorified adult dormitory that was marketed as “Airbnb meets WeWork.” - Your team called it “the future of urban living.” - Investors called it “an illegal hostel.”

The Vision Fund: Moonshot Edition - Your firm raised $2 billion to invest in “100-year megatrends.” - 80% of it went to a startup trying to put AI in a toaster. - The startup burned through all of it in six months.

Every single one of these deals made headlines. Not for their success, but for how catastrophically they failed.

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The VC Lifestyle: All Vibes, No Due Diligence

Even though most of your portfolio is on fire, the VC lifestyle remains undeniably elite.

You attend “innovation retreats” in Bali. You post LinkedIn threads about how “the best founders fail fast.” You moderate conference panels where you pretend to know what you’re talking about. You attend networking dinners where everyone flexes their fund size instead of actually talking about investments.

Being in venture capital means never admitting failure. When a deal goes bust, you reframe it as a lesson in founder-market fit. When a founder commits fraud, you praise their “ambitious risk-taking.” When LPs ask why your fund is down 80%, you say:

“VC is about taking big swings. You only need one winner to change the world.” Which, conveniently, is what every failing VC says right before launching their next fund.

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Final Thoughts

You’ve been in VC for two years now. You’ve lost millions of dollars on NFT startups, AI-powered toothbrushes, and a company that somehow burned through $500M trying to disrupt bottled water.

And yet, you’ve never been happier.

You have the Patagonia vest. You have the Allbirds. You have 50,000 LinkedIn followers who think you’re a genius. This is the way.