Learnings working in venture capital
My first job out of college was as the only hire at a pre-seed, generalist, solo-GP VC fund based in NYC. I worked on due diligence, research, portfolio management, founder and investor communications, and internal AI tool-building.
Learnings about myself
Re: tool-building - when working in VC, actually building something yourself is the only way to get honesty about what it takes to do so well. I scoped and coded two tools: a diligence research tool used to find sources for 40+ startup evaluations; and a portfolio management tool that parsed 500+ portfolio updates from 100+ portfolio companies. If I were to work in venture capital again in the future, I'd explicitly want my work to be a mix of investing and tool-building.
My favorite part of the work was learning about deep tech startups and how to commercialize more science from lab to market. I'm most proud of an 18-page LP-facing report I wrote about investment opportunities around the chipmaking supply chain: starting from no technical background, I got to watch videos, read papers, talk to researchers and founders, go to an ARPA-E conference on semiconductor supply chain resilience, and synthesize all my learnings. Capitalism is inimitable at driving science and technology innovation to raise both the floor and the ceiling for all of us. Like PlasticList, learning from 0 to 1 about a new technical area enough to then share it with more people felt really exciting and fun for me. Report available upon request.
My least favorite part of the work was that, although I loved learning about deep tech and science, that was about 15% of it, and I didn't feel enough emotional motivation for the other 85%. When I was in the Bay Area, learning from people who seemed able to shape the world to their will, I received the wisdom that: to build a successful startup you should literally feel emotionally driven to do so. You have a vision for how the world should be and you're upset that that's not how it is today, so you have to change it. Similarly, I learned that to do work that really fulfills me, I need to feel emotionally driven to do so. Having such a high bar makes some parts of trying to build a career easier and some much harder. If I feel emotionally driven to the work, like I feel with learning about deep tech, helping people, and tacit knowledge, I'll have the stamina to work long and hard, and no task will feel too unglamorous or tedious. But if I don't, then it'll feel like just a job. And I don't want 'just a job'.
Learnings about venture capital
With the obvious caveat that these are my observations working in only one kind of venture capital (pre-seed, generalist, solo-GP, NYC):
- Pre-seed investing is highly irrational and emotions-driven
- Mastery requires 1) understanding your environment and 2) correcting your mistakes. Political commentators and stock market analysts will probably never master their craft because their environment constantly changes. Pre-seed VCs may never truly master their craft because they can't really correct their mistakes. The most important feedback (how much your investment returned on exit) takes so long (10+ years) to receive that you can't act on it
- Following the above, the only way to have a chance at mastering VC is to previously have done something where you were able to learn your environment and correct your mistakes, which is probably why many successful VCs are former founders/builders
- A lot of VC and even founding a startup is in the small details, like replying to emails quickly and proactively communicating
- Will revisit this at some point in the future and add more