One key asset to have to position oneself for Venture Capital is to have startup experience. Learning how to survive and operate in entrepreneurial settings makes for a much more credible VC. To this point, Ashish Chordia (my friend and a second year Wharton student) has written an interesting article on his search for a startup internship for the summer.
Much like me, Ashish spent the last few months before summer looking for that perfect summer internship in a startup. While nothing in life is perfect, he did manage to maximize his time doing something that he really loved and learnt a lot from.
His article should be a great read. Check it out.
Get It Started: How to snag a summer internship with a start-up
And that is NOT Ashish in the picture in that article.
Also, he will be a guest writer on this blog so look out for his experiences in Startup Land! He has an interesting blog going on his time at Wharton at: http://lifeatwharton.blogspot.com/
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Learning VC the Hard Way - VCIC Part I
I have a very close friend called Ashish Chordia, who left Wharton midway to join Wharton-west, and be near Silicon Valley. We both attacked a few competitions last year and won them, one of them being the Venture Capital Investment Competition at Wharton.
Now Ashish has significant entrepreneurial instincts and is destined to be one for better or worse. I really wanted to give VCIC my best shot given my interest in Venture Capital and roped Ashish in. This brings me to the rule no.1 of building teams, always work with people you like to work with. Complementary skills are important but still secondary. In fact, Ashish and me have very similar skills and mindsets. So at this point, I set about thinking about how to build up this team. We added Siddharth Sudhir to the team. Sid is a financial wiz who churns out models by the minute and practically runs a hedge fund out east. Then we got Preet Gona, who is a biotech guy with some Venture Capital experience. And finally, we rounded it off by adding Christine Chan, who has experience as a M&A analyst for Lazard.
So all in all, we were five first years with no pretensions of being able to survive this competition.
Ashish - General Tech (Software)
Christine - M&A
Preet- Biotech
Punit - General Tech (Hardware)
Sid - Hedge fund
All in all, a good solid Venture Capital firm:)
Now, the VCIC at Wharton is structured as a 24 hour contest. And this is how it all panned out:
Friday 5pm - Pick up Business Plans
Sid went and picked up the five business plans. Funnily, for a 24 hour contest, I was not really showing much urgency. I remember having gone to a dinner with an alumni and then ambling back toward's Sid home around 10pm in the night, only to see all the rest four sitting around in various corners reading various business plans. And so it started...
Friday midnight - Analyze the Business Plans
We made a decision pretty quickly to eliminate 3 business plans and pick 2 to concentrate on. In VCIC, one is given a particular fund profile with a particular level of fund divestment along with a time frame. This means that our investment decisions have to be colored with the kind of urgency we have in terms of where we are in the lifecycle of the fund, and how much money we have to still invest.
All of us picked up one business plan based on our core competencies and decided to be the champion for those deals. First, we had to convince ourselves that we liked the plan, and if we did, then we have to convince the team. This worked well because we were hard to please, opiniated MBA students. 2 out of the 5 plans were eliminated pretty quickly by the respective "champions". This approach worked well for us in this part of the competition. However, it proved to be disastrous in the next stage when our decision to invest had to be dependent on not just viability but also the audience. Something I will explain in detail in the next post.
Saturday 3 to 5am - Build basic building blocks for the next day
Once we had eliminated the 3 out of 5 business plans, we divided up into teams. A team of two was responsible for building the basic model to be used to value the companies. The rest started analyzing all the business plans and creating a list of questions to ask the entrepreneurs. Soon, we have a list of about 30 questions or so for each business plan irrespective of whether our guts told us we should invest or not.
In parallel, we built up the model based on our top investment choice and set up the cap tables, ensured that the model was in synch with the pro-forma that we have created based on the financials that the entrepreneur had given us. In addition, we set up sensitivity analyses, created best-case, fair-way and worst case scenarios. All in all, set up stuff so as to minimize our work the next day.
Now armed with the questions and models, we crashed with the alarm set to wake us up in 2-3 hours.
Saturday 8am - Entrepreneurs Presentations
This part of the contest was relatively laidback. We had to sit for about 2 hours listening to all the five entrepreneurs pitch their business plan to us. For most part, this served as sanity check for us. We confirmed and questioned our assumptions on the plan. We also had the champion of each business plan listen very carefully to their corresponding pitch while the rest made notes and cross-checked the diligence questions that we had created the last nite. This session was immensely important because it gave us a sense of how well we had understood the business from the plan that the entrepreneur had given us.
Saturday 10am - Diligence Sessions
This was intense. We have 15 min sessions with each entrepreneur. We had tons of questions to go through and in each session, we had a real Venture Capitalist judge sitting in, taking notes on how well we were performing. This part was incredibly stressful because we had far too many questions, the entrepreneur wanted time to properly explain his/her plan but we just had to get through our questions. Here we stretched the limits of politeness and tried to be as brisk as possible. We hit upon a plan to tackle this. The Champion would start the questioning, then each team member would chime in with their questions, one person in the team (usually the champion of the previous diligence session) was the time keeper and would ensure we stayed on track.
With this plan, off we went. We started and quickly realized that we were incredibly aggressive and bordering on rude. We didnt mean to be this way, but we had so much diligence questions to take care off.
On the positive side, we came off as incredibly prepared and organized. On the negative side, we came off as very rude, aggressive professionals who bordered on being snobbish. This would be a major part of our feedback at the end of the session.
Saturday noon - Lunch and Investment thesis work
From noon - 3pm, we had three hours to come up with a valuation for the deals we wanted to invest in, a investment thesis, a term sheet and a power point presentation. We had to submit this to the judges at 3pm and then present as a team to the venture capitalist judges as if they were the investment committee.
This part of the afternoon was incredibly smooth. We broke off into teams. One team worked on the valuation and one team worked on the presentation. Here is where our composition of the team helped a lot. It was obvious very quickly to all of us, that we all were very good in terms of working together. A few of us were very good at creating effective presentations and analyzing the arguments for and against a business. Two of us were very good with numbers and so the engineer and hedge fund guy were building the term sheet and valuation model. One of us (yours truly) was good at nothing, so he spent time coordinating between everyone else. I would sit with the presentation team and ensure that we were in synch with what the valuation team was thinking. Then I would spend some time with the valuation guys trying to ensure our term sheet made sense. So being the jack of all trades helped. I actually worked in this role in the later stages too and our respective competencies really made for a great team.
Saturday 3pm - Presentations
Every team had to make a 15 min presentation and then a 10 min Q&A session. The presentation went very smoothly because we did not worry too much about the form as much as the content. Our presentation was simple but effective, and we used colors to signify many of the factors that we judged plans against. All in all, our presentation was probably what clinched things. All of us spoke, in tandem and in a way that it was very professional and effective.
The Q&A session bordered on chaos and panic. We were mere first years with not that much knowledge. The judges were seasoned VCs and we were asked some very difficult questions. Somehow, we ended up answering many. There was one hilarious confusion between C-corp and S-Corp to which one of us retorted, "Yes, our lawyer will figure it out. We do not think that mistake is a big deal!" I do not know how we survived that one. But overall we were fine.
Saturday 5pm - We Won
In general, by this time we were incredibly exhausted having barely slept for 24 hours and having gone through one of the most intense experiences at Wharton. Little did we know that once we won, a more intense experience awaited us. We sincerely believed we learnt a lot and that was prize enough.
Ashish and me had won the Wharton tech competition a couple of days ago, and we both believed that our luck had run its course. In fact, when they announced the 3rd prize, I was thinking, "Man, we didn't even come third. This is the pits!". Finally, when they announced the winners (and it was us), you should have seen our faces. We did not know what hit us.
This was probably the first time as a team we believed that we could do this. We had no clue that we were even reasonably good let alone imagine winning. But now, we felt we should give this us best shot. This changed the dynamic of the team dramatically (for the better) and we started preparing earnestly for the regionals. But that is a story for the next post.
Why did I write down this story?
Because I think there are important lessons to be learnt here.
1. It is very important to build a team of people who like each other
2. A good VC team is a team of complementary skills
3. Do not ever disrespect the entrepreneur (We did a bit when we rushed them and we learnt our lesson the hard way)
4. Plan, plan and plan in advance. Our team was effective because we were so good at breaking tasks and working in parallel
5. It does not hurt to take the lead and give away leadership of various chunks of the work to various team members.
We had one person who would quickly break off things and hand it over to various sub-teams. It worked because everyone was so focused on doing well, no one cared if someone became the de-facto team lead.
Its important to learn to lead with respect and care. That probably answers a very rudimentary question in team dynamics.
Q: How does one lead a team of peers in complex situations?
A: Very Carefully
Finally, we were an awesome team. And we became great friends. Those days are remembered fondly everytime we see each other. Everyone had competencies beyond what their resume indicated- Ashish had pure guts, Christine for her amazing organizational ability, Sid for his financial warren-buffetesque brain, Preet for pure confidence in answering any question thrown at him (even if we had no clue what the answer could be!) and me, me for being amazing at nothing yet reasonably good at everything. Wait for the next stage. I will probably write about it after a few other posts.
Now Ashish has significant entrepreneurial instincts and is destined to be one for better or worse. I really wanted to give VCIC my best shot given my interest in Venture Capital and roped Ashish in. This brings me to the rule no.1 of building teams, always work with people you like to work with. Complementary skills are important but still secondary. In fact, Ashish and me have very similar skills and mindsets. So at this point, I set about thinking about how to build up this team. We added Siddharth Sudhir to the team. Sid is a financial wiz who churns out models by the minute and practically runs a hedge fund out east. Then we got Preet Gona, who is a biotech guy with some Venture Capital experience. And finally, we rounded it off by adding Christine Chan, who has experience as a M&A analyst for Lazard.
So all in all, we were five first years with no pretensions of being able to survive this competition.
Ashish - General Tech (Software)
Christine - M&A
Preet- Biotech
Punit - General Tech (Hardware)
Sid - Hedge fund
All in all, a good solid Venture Capital firm:)
Now, the VCIC at Wharton is structured as a 24 hour contest. And this is how it all panned out:
Friday 5pm - Pick up Business Plans
Sid went and picked up the five business plans. Funnily, for a 24 hour contest, I was not really showing much urgency. I remember having gone to a dinner with an alumni and then ambling back toward's Sid home around 10pm in the night, only to see all the rest four sitting around in various corners reading various business plans. And so it started...
Friday midnight - Analyze the Business Plans
We made a decision pretty quickly to eliminate 3 business plans and pick 2 to concentrate on. In VCIC, one is given a particular fund profile with a particular level of fund divestment along with a time frame. This means that our investment decisions have to be colored with the kind of urgency we have in terms of where we are in the lifecycle of the fund, and how much money we have to still invest.
All of us picked up one business plan based on our core competencies and decided to be the champion for those deals. First, we had to convince ourselves that we liked the plan, and if we did, then we have to convince the team. This worked well because we were hard to please, opiniated MBA students. 2 out of the 5 plans were eliminated pretty quickly by the respective "champions". This approach worked well for us in this part of the competition. However, it proved to be disastrous in the next stage when our decision to invest had to be dependent on not just viability but also the audience. Something I will explain in detail in the next post.
Saturday 3 to 5am - Build basic building blocks for the next day
Once we had eliminated the 3 out of 5 business plans, we divided up into teams. A team of two was responsible for building the basic model to be used to value the companies. The rest started analyzing all the business plans and creating a list of questions to ask the entrepreneurs. Soon, we have a list of about 30 questions or so for each business plan irrespective of whether our guts told us we should invest or not.
In parallel, we built up the model based on our top investment choice and set up the cap tables, ensured that the model was in synch with the pro-forma that we have created based on the financials that the entrepreneur had given us. In addition, we set up sensitivity analyses, created best-case, fair-way and worst case scenarios. All in all, set up stuff so as to minimize our work the next day.
Now armed with the questions and models, we crashed with the alarm set to wake us up in 2-3 hours.
Saturday 8am - Entrepreneurs Presentations
This part of the contest was relatively laidback. We had to sit for about 2 hours listening to all the five entrepreneurs pitch their business plan to us. For most part, this served as sanity check for us. We confirmed and questioned our assumptions on the plan. We also had the champion of each business plan listen very carefully to their corresponding pitch while the rest made notes and cross-checked the diligence questions that we had created the last nite. This session was immensely important because it gave us a sense of how well we had understood the business from the plan that the entrepreneur had given us.
Saturday 10am - Diligence Sessions
This was intense. We have 15 min sessions with each entrepreneur. We had tons of questions to go through and in each session, we had a real Venture Capitalist judge sitting in, taking notes on how well we were performing. This part was incredibly stressful because we had far too many questions, the entrepreneur wanted time to properly explain his/her plan but we just had to get through our questions. Here we stretched the limits of politeness and tried to be as brisk as possible. We hit upon a plan to tackle this. The Champion would start the questioning, then each team member would chime in with their questions, one person in the team (usually the champion of the previous diligence session) was the time keeper and would ensure we stayed on track.
With this plan, off we went. We started and quickly realized that we were incredibly aggressive and bordering on rude. We didnt mean to be this way, but we had so much diligence questions to take care off.
On the positive side, we came off as incredibly prepared and organized. On the negative side, we came off as very rude, aggressive professionals who bordered on being snobbish. This would be a major part of our feedback at the end of the session.
Saturday noon - Lunch and Investment thesis work
From noon - 3pm, we had three hours to come up with a valuation for the deals we wanted to invest in, a investment thesis, a term sheet and a power point presentation. We had to submit this to the judges at 3pm and then present as a team to the venture capitalist judges as if they were the investment committee.
This part of the afternoon was incredibly smooth. We broke off into teams. One team worked on the valuation and one team worked on the presentation. Here is where our composition of the team helped a lot. It was obvious very quickly to all of us, that we all were very good in terms of working together. A few of us were very good at creating effective presentations and analyzing the arguments for and against a business. Two of us were very good with numbers and so the engineer and hedge fund guy were building the term sheet and valuation model. One of us (yours truly) was good at nothing, so he spent time coordinating between everyone else. I would sit with the presentation team and ensure that we were in synch with what the valuation team was thinking. Then I would spend some time with the valuation guys trying to ensure our term sheet made sense. So being the jack of all trades helped. I actually worked in this role in the later stages too and our respective competencies really made for a great team.
Saturday 3pm - Presentations
Every team had to make a 15 min presentation and then a 10 min Q&A session. The presentation went very smoothly because we did not worry too much about the form as much as the content. Our presentation was simple but effective, and we used colors to signify many of the factors that we judged plans against. All in all, our presentation was probably what clinched things. All of us spoke, in tandem and in a way that it was very professional and effective.
The Q&A session bordered on chaos and panic. We were mere first years with not that much knowledge. The judges were seasoned VCs and we were asked some very difficult questions. Somehow, we ended up answering many. There was one hilarious confusion between C-corp and S-Corp to which one of us retorted, "Yes, our lawyer will figure it out. We do not think that mistake is a big deal!" I do not know how we survived that one. But overall we were fine.
Saturday 5pm - We Won
In general, by this time we were incredibly exhausted having barely slept for 24 hours and having gone through one of the most intense experiences at Wharton. Little did we know that once we won, a more intense experience awaited us. We sincerely believed we learnt a lot and that was prize enough.
Ashish and me had won the Wharton tech competition a couple of days ago, and we both believed that our luck had run its course. In fact, when they announced the 3rd prize, I was thinking, "Man, we didn't even come third. This is the pits!". Finally, when they announced the winners (and it was us), you should have seen our faces. We did not know what hit us.
This was probably the first time as a team we believed that we could do this. We had no clue that we were even reasonably good let alone imagine winning. But now, we felt we should give this us best shot. This changed the dynamic of the team dramatically (for the better) and we started preparing earnestly for the regionals. But that is a story for the next post.
Why did I write down this story?
Because I think there are important lessons to be learnt here.
1. It is very important to build a team of people who like each other
2. A good VC team is a team of complementary skills
3. Do not ever disrespect the entrepreneur (We did a bit when we rushed them and we learnt our lesson the hard way)
4. Plan, plan and plan in advance. Our team was effective because we were so good at breaking tasks and working in parallel
5. It does not hurt to take the lead and give away leadership of various chunks of the work to various team members.
We had one person who would quickly break off things and hand it over to various sub-teams. It worked because everyone was so focused on doing well, no one cared if someone became the de-facto team lead.
Its important to learn to lead with respect and care. That probably answers a very rudimentary question in team dynamics.
Q: How does one lead a team of peers in complex situations?
A: Very Carefully
Finally, we were an awesome team. And we became great friends. Those days are remembered fondly everytime we see each other. Everyone had competencies beyond what their resume indicated- Ashish had pure guts, Christine for her amazing organizational ability, Sid for his financial warren-buffetesque brain, Preet for pure confidence in answering any question thrown at him (even if we had no clue what the answer could be!) and me, me for being amazing at nothing yet reasonably good at everything. Wait for the next stage. I will probably write about it after a few other posts.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
The search for the one
During my undergrad engineering days, I was in a batch of 60 students in Electronics Engineering. 54 of them were men and 6 were women. And my class has more women than most other engineering majors at school. Naturally, the supply-demand situation was skewed. It led to significantly low reservation prices for most men, and huge premiums on most women. All my life, I found myself in these situations. BSEE, MSEE, Silicon Valley companies, Wharton, the list goes on:)
So it is natural than I would want a job in Venture Capital. The supply-demand situation is as bad (well, not as bad as in engineering school but pretty bad) but my previous experiences have engendered the skill to survive in highly rationed markets. This continues to stand me in good stead. And will help when (if) I land up on Sand Hill Road because after all, where are the women Venture Capitalists?).
So beyond going to parties (networking), can we hit some online sites and look for VC jobs? What resources are out there to source those few and far between? I will try to list a few for mutual benefit. As usual, if I miss something, leave a comment, email your indignation or come talk to me.
Venture Capital Internship/Job Resources:
1. Doostang - All right, We in UVF passed over this deal an year ago because we were not sure the market needed another professional "Linkedin" clone. The long term viability of this site may be suspect but right now, it has some of the best venture capital jobs out there. Ask someone to invite you in and see for yourselves.
2. LinkedIn - Well, everyone knows what it does. There are some VC jobs posted here also. Though if someone posted out here and you just saw it, you probably already missed the boat. Still just generally from the professional network point of view, this is the best site out there.
3. Glocap - This is a PE/VC recruiting firm and it does a reasonably good job of ensuring its presence and profile in Bschool campuses. It has more PE (obviously) jobs than VC but that's the nature of the beast. They do have a nice job status tracking system. I tend to differentiate between later stage stuff and our typical, crazy early stage stuff by calling the former PE and latter VC. You can call it what you want, this is just nomenclature.
4. PERecruit - This is more EU focused. They come to campuses to interview folks and get a headsup on the applicant pool out there. Most jobs are Europe focused. They are rumored to starting a Mumbai office soon.
5. Pinnacle Group - It is another one of these executive recruiting sites. I like the fact that they are more proactive about creating personal relationships and actually exchange emails with prospectives before the jobs open up, so as to get to know them better. A good place to hit and establish a relationship with.
6. PEWire - PEWire has an annual internship lovefest. They will ask VC firms to send in job reqs for summer internship and then will post them out in a huge list on their newsletter. Keep an eye on this. Its easy to miss as it comes as a part of their daily newsletter, and it can have interesting opportunities.
7. Your Business school Venture Capital Club - Frankly, Wharton's VC club is barely there. We have a huge PE club which funnels the hordes into later stage shops but Venture Capital does not have much following (here or elsewhere). Too much risk appetite required. Having said that, things are improving by the year. Look up your VC club site. Most VCs will post through the management of that club.
8. Sharon Park Starbucks - The Sharon Park starbucks (right next to the safeway and behind Clearstone/Lightspeed and other VC firms) is the place to really sources those jobs. You basically sit there day in and out during your summer, and drink latte after latte. 50% of the guys in navy blue shirts and khakhis are VCs. Just lunge at them and grab their foot. Don't let them go till they offer you a gig at their office. Don't lunge at the ones wearing suits. Those are the entrepreneurs and bankers.
Ok, the last one is just me trying to be funny. Don't try it. But then, maybe you should. Who knows what may work.
It's late. Midterms are over. I am not recruiting courtesy my Venture Capital ambitions. A week of pure unadulterated VC networking:) Life is good. Good nite.
So it is natural than I would want a job in Venture Capital. The supply-demand situation is as bad (well, not as bad as in engineering school but pretty bad) but my previous experiences have engendered the skill to survive in highly rationed markets. This continues to stand me in good stead. And will help when (if) I land up on Sand Hill Road because after all, where are the women Venture Capitalists?).
So beyond going to parties (networking), can we hit some online sites and look for VC jobs? What resources are out there to source those few and far between? I will try to list a few for mutual benefit. As usual, if I miss something, leave a comment, email your indignation or come talk to me.
Venture Capital Internship/Job Resources:
1. Doostang - All right, We in UVF passed over this deal an year ago because we were not sure the market needed another professional "Linkedin" clone. The long term viability of this site may be suspect but right now, it has some of the best venture capital jobs out there. Ask someone to invite you in and see for yourselves.
2. LinkedIn - Well, everyone knows what it does. There are some VC jobs posted here also. Though if someone posted out here and you just saw it, you probably already missed the boat. Still just generally from the professional network point of view, this is the best site out there.
3. Glocap - This is a PE/VC recruiting firm and it does a reasonably good job of ensuring its presence and profile in Bschool campuses. It has more PE (obviously) jobs than VC but that's the nature of the beast. They do have a nice job status tracking system. I tend to differentiate between later stage stuff and our typical, crazy early stage stuff by calling the former PE and latter VC. You can call it what you want, this is just nomenclature.
4. PERecruit - This is more EU focused. They come to campuses to interview folks and get a headsup on the applicant pool out there. Most jobs are Europe focused. They are rumored to starting a Mumbai office soon.
5. Pinnacle Group - It is another one of these executive recruiting sites. I like the fact that they are more proactive about creating personal relationships and actually exchange emails with prospectives before the jobs open up, so as to get to know them better. A good place to hit and establish a relationship with.
6. PEWire - PEWire has an annual internship lovefest. They will ask VC firms to send in job reqs for summer internship and then will post them out in a huge list on their newsletter. Keep an eye on this. Its easy to miss as it comes as a part of their daily newsletter, and it can have interesting opportunities.
7. Your Business school Venture Capital Club - Frankly, Wharton's VC club is barely there. We have a huge PE club which funnels the hordes into later stage shops but Venture Capital does not have much following (here or elsewhere). Too much risk appetite required. Having said that, things are improving by the year. Look up your VC club site. Most VCs will post through the management of that club.
8. Sharon Park Starbucks - The Sharon Park starbucks (right next to the safeway and behind Clearstone/Lightspeed and other VC firms) is the place to really sources those jobs. You basically sit there day in and out during your summer, and drink latte after latte. 50% of the guys in navy blue shirts and khakhis are VCs. Just lunge at them and grab their foot. Don't let them go till they offer you a gig at their office. Don't lunge at the ones wearing suits. Those are the entrepreneurs and bankers.
Ok, the last one is just me trying to be funny. Don't try it. But then, maybe you should. Who knows what may work.
It's late. Midterms are over. I am not recruiting courtesy my Venture Capital ambitions. A week of pure unadulterated VC networking:) Life is good. Good nite.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
What did I do (and am doing) to position myself?
So I remember mentioning somewhere that I will list out the things one could do at school to position themselves for a Venture Capital job. Let me list out what I did and we can go into some detail on each. This is in ascending order of importance (in my opinion).
1. Take a VC class - Yeah, you could do that. It may help some. But as I have said before, the amount of process stuff that one needs to learn to do well in Venture Capital can be learnt in a few hours. The rest is (as they say) is experience and intuition. This means you got to have experiential knowledge.
2. Do a Field Application Project - Do a study on an issue of importance to Venture Capitalists as a self-study in school. I did one of these last year with Professor Steve Sammut (on oddly enough, Pharma sector), and it was an awesome experience from the point of interacting with Safeguard Scientific and learning about the business.
3. Do a VC Trek with your fellow students - This is a good one. A first year mentioned this to me recently and I think this is incredibly useful. I would say try to organize a trek if you can, but the next best thing to do is to go on it. One gets to meet a lot of VCs in a very relaxed atmosphere, and it is an easy way to make a few contacts in the industry.
4. Compete in VCIC - The Venture Capital Investment Competition or VCIC as it is known, is the single best, intensive course in Venture Capital one could take. A team of five are given a bunch of business plans. They have three days to diligence, evaluate, grill entrepreneurs and come up with an investment thesis. We won this last year at Wharton and barely lost the 2nd spot in the regionals. All in all, a fantastic experience.
5. Work for a local VC firm - I am an associate for University Venture Fund, which is not really a local VC fund but has enough reach and deal flow to keep me busy and teach me the inner workings of a successful venture fund. Try to get into a local VC firm or your university's Venture fund (if there is one), and this could be the best thing you could do for yourselves beyond landing a summer internship in Venture Capital.
And in the end, spend the rest of the time looking for an internship, networking and reading tech blogs:)
Between all these things, you should have enough on your resume to take a serious stab at a career in Venture Capital. Beyond that, it's fate, timing, luck, whatever you may call it.
1. Take a VC class - Yeah, you could do that. It may help some. But as I have said before, the amount of process stuff that one needs to learn to do well in Venture Capital can be learnt in a few hours. The rest is (as they say) is experience and intuition. This means you got to have experiential knowledge.
2. Do a Field Application Project - Do a study on an issue of importance to Venture Capitalists as a self-study in school. I did one of these last year with Professor Steve Sammut (on oddly enough, Pharma sector), and it was an awesome experience from the point of interacting with Safeguard Scientific and learning about the business.
3. Do a VC Trek with your fellow students - This is a good one. A first year mentioned this to me recently and I think this is incredibly useful. I would say try to organize a trek if you can, but the next best thing to do is to go on it. One gets to meet a lot of VCs in a very relaxed atmosphere, and it is an easy way to make a few contacts in the industry.
4. Compete in VCIC - The Venture Capital Investment Competition or VCIC as it is known, is the single best, intensive course in Venture Capital one could take. A team of five are given a bunch of business plans. They have three days to diligence, evaluate, grill entrepreneurs and come up with an investment thesis. We won this last year at Wharton and barely lost the 2nd spot in the regionals. All in all, a fantastic experience.
5. Work for a local VC firm - I am an associate for University Venture Fund, which is not really a local VC fund but has enough reach and deal flow to keep me busy and teach me the inner workings of a successful venture fund. Try to get into a local VC firm or your university's Venture fund (if there is one), and this could be the best thing you could do for yourselves beyond landing a summer internship in Venture Capital.
And in the end, spend the rest of the time looking for an internship, networking and reading tech blogs:)
Between all these things, you should have enough on your resume to take a serious stab at a career in Venture Capital. Beyond that, it's fate, timing, luck, whatever you may call it.
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