What skill set is needed Early stage VC

It totally depends what sort of company you are looking at and as you mentioned how involved they are. My company does everything from seed to later stage to growth and we are very involved in assisting the companies if they seem to show some legs—I came from an investment bank background and help the companies get more professional by assisting with marketing material creation (important for series A, B raises) and creating organization in their financial and operating plans. Depending on the firm, many VC’s won’t be as involved or they might have some employees be more focused on sourcing and finding new opportunities than assisting portcos. Generally one thing to note—a lot of people tend to want to break into VC and there are a lot of clowns in the space. Because so many people want to break in, the good firms are often only hiring from their network and people that have shown success through founding a company or demonstrating particularly strong experience/ intellect to a partner of the firm. I would personally say, IB actually is very transferable to assisting portco companies in VC and just helps you be a better professional in general, however, it’s really hard to break in to a good VC firm. To your point, you might be better off doing IB getting into a startup and learning a niche space then joining a VC firm by fostering a relationship with a VC partner and building experience in understanding a space in addition to having a great financial and professional background.