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lmao everyone following and nobody divulging
Although not from a top-notch or even late-stage VC, will take a crack on this one and hope it helps. VC funds (Especially the bigger ones) normally looks for someone who belongs to any of the following 3 categories:
1. Has entrepreneurial experience, who have found or being part of the founding team and sold their business (Shows you understand the process of funding > commercialisation > scaling > exit)
2. Deep expertise within a specific space (Phd of certain bio-tech or worked in the field for 10 years is obviously complementary to a bio-tech focused VC)
3. Rich and well connected (Self explanatory, its a people business after all)
To be frankly honest, what have you done in your career to earn the right to advise entrepreneurs? This is the reason why VC funds rarely hire juniors, junior can't really provide the value they needed. It is not about your modelling and ppt skills (It is mandatory, but not the most important)
This advice is true for seed / early stage funds, but is absolutely not applicable for growth-stage. Since you're mostly betting on "teams and dreams" in the former, you don't really need to worry about numbers or operations / processes since they won't have any that are meaningful (in all categories).
At the growth stage, you have a meaningful n of data and your main job is to evaluate if the trajectory you're seeing is sustainable / replicable, which requires people who can do math and get in the weeds... which is why every reputable growth firm is a classic pyramid structure, v. early stage which can easily be top-heavy (or partner-only)
Tbh, seed is the new Series A. Early rounds are getting larger and unless you're investing in pre-seed, investors now still look for the same indicators of success that growth equity investors looked for 15 years ago, albeit with more room for imagination. That's why you see even early VCs now hiring more people from consulting, banking, or impressive operator backgrounds (except in GP roles, which are generally reserved for VCs with lots of experience or successful entrepreneurs with excellent networks of investors and other founders).
The early stage firms you'd want to get into don't really use recruiters. Some early stage firms do mostly because the GPs come from banking but it's generally not a good sign if a firm doesn't have a pool of qualified candidates in its own network to pull from and it needs to resort to recruiters.
Firms that are exclusively or stick to GE and late stage (Insight, Bain Capital Ventures, TPG Growth, etc.) do use recruiters. Though I'm honestly not too familiar which recruiters they use since I'm more on the early/early growth side.
Recruiters are the usual suspects - Glocap is big in VC/growth, as are CPI, Henkel, Dynamics, Carter Pierce, etc. I haven't seen a lot of niche recruiters that people don't really know about - perhaps JHB Search? (I've been told they're legit, they didn't get anything for me though)
For late-stage VC firms (Sequoia, a16z, IVP, TCV, etc.), referral is by far the best way. Easier alternative is to cold email someone (a principal or partner would be fine). A huge part of your job will be sourcing new investment opportunities (role is often described as analyst + sales rep), so being comfortable with proactive outreach is viewed very positively. Cold emails got me interviews with almost all of the big VC firms, although I was generally aware that they were hiring beforehand.
For VC job openings, check the @vcrecruiting handle on Twitter or go to John Gannon's website.
What do interview processes look like at these later stage firms (TCV, IVP)?
TCV is a growth equity firm, IVP is a late stage venture firm; the interviews will look very different.
I don't know why you got Monkey Shit. SB to you. This is a good post.
this is incredibly helpful, can I pm you?
how were you aware that the big firms you referenced were hiring beforehand?
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Do you need to have a banking background to recruit at these places? I'm a software engineer at FAANG interested in these sorts of positions.
No, you don’t. People with operating experience are highly sought after, probably moreso tbh than us former bankers.
You don’t necessarily see a bunch of former Big Tech engineers at funds, but I think that’s mostly due to self selection. Engineers who can think about strategic business things are fucking golden, and you’d probably get to do some cool technical diligence
Are there any funds that have hired former engineers, or can you point to some examples of ones that were hired at all? From my understanding, growth firms are fairly model-driven in their investment decision-making, and a lack of a banking background would hurt. The technical risk I can assess as an engineer really only helps with early stage/pre-product-market fit companies - at least that's what I was told.
Most early stage places don’t use recruiters. Even the growthier funds that do Series B or C don’t. You’d probably have to get to more traditional “growth equity” places to find processes run by recruiters
These are all covered by different headhunters, I think when you meet with the recruiter you get a list. It also changes year to year.
can someone shed some light on title progression at VC / growth equity firms? I see many who are "Partner" at top VCs such as Sequoia after doing just 2 years of PE...is this usual or has there been a step-up in titles at the firm? and there also seems to be more interest in candidates from very traditional tracks (eg. banking >>> PE) for growth equity roles which even a few years ago tended to prefer non traditional finance backgrounds. any perspective is greatly appreciated!
Most VC/growth firms have title progressions something along the lines of analyst >> associate >> sr associate >> VP >> principal >> partner/MD. There is obviously variation (some firms might distinguish between junior partners and senior partners, a lot of firms don't have analysts, many firms don't have the intermediate step of being a VP or sr associate, etc), but that is generally the path that I have seen.
Some VC/growth firms give fairly young members of the investment team the partner title because it makes founders/CEOs more willing to talk to and work with junior employees. A lot of founders won't respond to someone at the analyst level and instead ask to speak with a partner, so giving more people the partner title is kind of a trick to get their foot in the door (one which everyone has quickly caught onto). Other firms also claim that giving everyone the partner title makes the firm more egalitarian but that's obviously bs when the "partners" fresh out of college aren't given power to write checks, participate in investment committee meetings, etc. If you see people at established funds who are only ~5 years out of college, they are almost certainly not a partner in the meaningful sense. They often do not have check writing capabilities and only receive modest carry. Their role can vary but they might be doing things like sourcing, DD, modeling, etc. This is especially true if they went IB>PE>VC. It is, however, a different story if they got in on the ground floor at a newer fund or had a very successful startup of their own, as these routes can open the door to partner much earlier.
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can anyone share any stories of how they got a job at a top VC? sounds like it's mostly cold-emailing / proactive reaching out, so curious what people think got them the job after the fact.
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