I’ve been reading a lot about venture capital and the way people get into this world. There is quite a lot of blog posts on what kind of soft skills you should have and firstly, who you should know on the market. My conclusion is that it’s not you who need to find a job it’s job that needs to look for you and spot you in the crowd.
It’s actually the most efficient way to create your market presence and let your dream of VC companies hear about you from the social media, limited partners or startup founders that got some help from you some time in the past. Get noticed. Let the community spread a good world about you! Work on your success just doing what you love and being around on the market. Just pretend working like in a VC not working there. Bring some value to the startups, connect people, meet up with early stage companies and try to analyse the prospective development.
Get involved in some Accelerators to be close to the people have ideas, entrepreneurial mindset and just spend time with them learning and puzzling all the pieced you see, touch and feel. Add something that wasn’t there before.
Also, put your skin into the game. Start to invest some small money. There are some platforms that allow you invest in startups and provide already selected pool of really good startup companies. Live this life and then the switch to the VC will be a smooth one and you may even not notice the change except for the name of the company below your name on the business card.
Be curious! Be interested in different specificities of the VC job. There are diverse responsibilities and you can work on branding, marketing, hiring, operations strategy, fundraising, logistics, systems design, PR, messaging, communications, deals searching, deal structuring.
My personal view is that it’s great to do MBA. I’ll go to Boston next year to do my MBA and respecting all opinions that say it’s waste of money, you can do any job without an MBA, you can learn everything form books and online courses. That’s all correct but the experience you gain working with people from around the world, challenging yourself stepping out of your comfort zone, spending days and nights thinking of your inspiration you just got listening to the lecture of the greatest professor you’ve ever seen is price less. It’s gonna be your year, your time to dig deeper into yourself and reconsider your way. So if you think of doing MBA and you do not have any particular obstacles, like money, to spend one your developing yourself, do it. I’d say the same refers to the PhD. If you are in love with some subject, go for it, learn like crazy about it and become one and only specialist in this field. You will be recognised for it soon.
Legal or banking experience can be also helpful. Working with documentation, structuring the legal terms of the deal, dealing with due diligence require legal mindset and for sure will speed the process. Investment bankers are welcomed to rather later stages than early, initial seed funding VCs.
There is no point to even mention that if you set up startup (successful or not, that does not really matter) you are already on the very good position. Even some attempts to found some side hustle show that you try something different than others, that you want more than others, that you are creative, not afraid of hard work and care about value creation on the market.
The last but not least, play like a hidden good ghost. I listened recently Product Hunt Radio series and (episode 78) Matt Mazzeo gave amazing, almost 100% winning strategy how to be hired by VC. Step one – find the VC you love. But seriously, the one you are in line with the mission and vision, you are crazy about their portfolio companies, you know names of the partners and can read their blog posts all day long. Got it? Ok, then pick a few or just one company from their portfolio companies and take it on your radar. Write about them, post their twitters, blog posts, follow and share their social media, help them wherever needed for free. Do it consistently and passionately. Sooner or later your name will be mentioned during the partners meeting or just ask anybody from the company to just say a few words about you now and then. If they like what you do they will do it with pleasure. You can also go directly to the VC partners and say them, that you were working with the company X form their portfolio, you helped them with Y and you bring value Z. Show them that you are interested in joining the VC crew and you actually already have some success in boosting the companies up. That’s so great and clever way to get to the point you aim to be in the near future. It requires not so little effort but if you keep doing it, it means you are truly born for VC job.
There is alway the standard path to follow which is working with a specialist venture capital headhunting firm. Let’s try: KEA consultants, PER, SPKsearch, Pinpoint Partners, The Up Group, Badenoch & Clark, Blackwood, Egon Zehnder, Glocap and Amity.
In the meantime you can work on your soft skills and try to be extremely quick at learning new things and adapting to new environments. Be fast at ingesting vast amounts of information, forming opinions, withdrawing conclusion, prioritising, managing your time and spending it efficiently. That would be great you have this special ability and can read people, listen more than speak and be rational as all in all what you are working on is supposed to bring money. Ask the right and smart questions, collect information and believe in people!
The last thought is that whatever you would do, you cannot hide your passion and it’s visible form the first sight! People in VC are totally obsessed with venture capital structure. They can talk to you the whole day what they like in here and why they’re interested, why you should be interested, how beautiful is when everything and everyone work together as a team and they truly understand you want to strive in this environment.
…and no, I’m not in VC yet 😉
