VC As a Recent Grad?

Author

Michaela Gordon
February 27, 2024

Mic’s Newsletter (Early VC) - 6th Edition

Hi all! Hope everyone’s had a great start to the week 😊 Excited to share that this newsletter is now a community of 600+! 🎉 Thanks everyone for following and for checking out the job board - I hope these resources continue to be helpful!

💹 Here’s what we have for today:

New Roles This Week 💫 

Internships 🤓 
Analyst Roles 😍 
Associate/Senior Associate 😄 
Operational Roles 🤠 

Roles Still Open From Last Week 🏃‍♀️ 

❗️ Note that many VC roles are posted without application deadlines and filled on a rolling basis - if you see one you like, I’d recommend applying within a week, or as soon as possible!

Thought Piece: Pros & Cons of VC Right Out of College 💭 

There’s a lot of debate over whether it makes sense to go into VC right out of college. Some argue you should take any chance you have to break into the industry, while others are skeptical of going into investing without operating experience. As someone who chose to start in VC over an operating role, I thought I’d share my two cents on pros and cons here:

Pros

  • Breadth: Exposure to a wide range of markets and business models - you’ll hone your ability to notice patterns and identify industry trends.

  • Autonomy: You have significant autonomy in your work (this is rare in early-career roles.) You typically build your own schedule, and no one is micro-managing you. You also have the chance to form your own theses on markets and drive areas of investment focus at your firm.

  • Cutting-Edge Tech: In VC, you get to see the latest tech years, sometimes even decades before it hits the market. It’s incredible to have a front-row seat in the tech ecosystem and to watch the development of world-changing technologies play out firsthand.

  • Variety of Day-to-Day Projects: In VC, no two days look the same. You’ll go from meeting founders and chatting with other investors to working on portfolio projects, driving diligence processes and mapping markets.

  • Meet Incredible People: VC is an incredible opportunity to meet and learn from amazing people and leaders in a variety of roles (VCs, founders, market experts.)

  • Build Interpersonal Skills: This is a people-facing role. You’ll have the opportunity to lead meetings with founders, present to your firm’s leadership, and gain comfort meeting new people all the time.

Cons

  • Your Experience Will Be Shaped by the Senior Leaders at Your Firm: I can’t emphasize this enough. VC is an apprenticeship model - you learn by doing and by having a mentor that is willing to teach you the ins and outs of the industry. Because of this, your experience will be extremely dependent on the senior leadership at your firm. Before taking a VC role, make sure you have a good sense of the leadership team and whether they will be invested in your learning. This is not necessarily a con, just something to be aware of.

  • Lack of Deep Technical Skill-Building: You don’t necessarily build a technical/operating skillset in this role - you’ll be more on the broad analysis side of things rather than diving deep into a certain skill (e.g. product, sales, engineering.)

  • Individual Workflow: Given your autonomy over your schedule, the role can be lonely and you’ll spend a lot of time on your own. You’ll have an individual workflow, and many of your projects will be solo.

  • Upwards Mobility: While it does happen, there is not always a path from junior investor to partner. Firms often require younger investors to go get operating experience, or even a graduate degree before putting them on a senior investor/partner track.

  • Carry: It is a common misconception that all investors on a team get carry (a percentage of the fund’s returns), which is where the ‘big bucks’ are made in VC. Many firms won’t give carry until the Senior Associate or Principal level, and the typical base salary for an early-career investor is comparable to that of a typical big tech/finance role. (See my post about junior VC salary ranges.)

Final thoughts: Whether VC is the right path for you right out of college depends on what you’re looking to get out of the role and the skillset you want to build. Based on my own experience, I strongly recommend some form of operating experience before going into VC, either through an internship or a full-time role. 

My experience working in Marketing Ops in big tech and in Product at a startup helped me tremendously in my role today. Not only does it help with the VC recruiting process, operating experience gives you a toolkit that will enable you to better understand the founder journey and develop unique insights that will aid you as an investor, help you better evaluate investments, and ultimately become a better partner to the founders you work with.

Your career is long and there’s no need to feel pressure to break into VC right away!

This Thursday: Interview with Sammie Hasen! 👏 

I’m so excited to share Episode #1 of the Early series this Thursday! I’ll be sharing an awesome conversation with Sammie Hasen, Investor @TechNexus, founder @Medsur, and former Product Ops lead @Goldman Sachs. She also writes a newsletter on electrification called Electrification Explained 🤗 

A background on the Early interview series: I’ll be hosting guests to talk through career learnings & their experiences breaking into roles such as VC, product, startups, and beyond 🤩 I’ll be sharing written highlights from these interviews via this newsletter, and will also upload the full conversations to YouTube 🙂 

We have upcoming guests from the Westly Group, Accenture, and more! 🙌 

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And that’s all for this week! You can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X. As always, feel free to reach out to [email protected] with any questions and/or feedback. I’d love to hear from you!🙂 

-Mic

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