• The Breakdown - What should your CV look like for a VC Job? (For anyone looking to break into VC).

• 23+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities - Investment & platform roles.

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THE BREAKDOWN

What should your CV look like for a VC Job? (For anyone looking to break into VC).

Most of you reading this will never get rejected by a VC firm. You’ll get ignored.

Your application goes into a pile of 300+, someone spends 6-10 seconds on it, and moves on. Not because you’re unqualified - because your CV is written in the wrong language.

I’ve seen this from both sides - screening applications and applying to them. And the CVs that get passed over usually aren’t bad. They’re close. Good school, decent experience, clean formatting - rejected anyway, because of one thing missing.

A consulting CV speaks in “workstreams” and “stakeholders.” A banking CV speaks in “deal execution.” A student CV speaks in GPAs and club titles. Even a working professional’s CV, the one with the “right” experience on paper, usually speaks in job titles instead of the three things a VC firm actually screens for.

VCs hire for:

1. Sourcing - can you find interesting companies before everyone else?

2. Judgment - can you form a view on whether something is a good investment, and defend it?

3. Hustle - do you do things without being asked, outside your job description?

Every bullet on your CV either signals one of these three, or it’s wasted space.

And a student, a consultant, and a working professional aren’t fixing the same problem - you’re starting from different raw material, so the rewrite looks different for each.

Today’s deep dive covers exactly what changes depending on your background, plus a quick LinkedIn fix, so your CV screams sourcing, judgment, and hustle no matter where you’re coming from.

Here’s what’s ahead:

The Audit (1.5 hrs) - Run your current CV through the same screening checklist reviewers use. Score every bullet. Most people find that 70% of their bullets signal nothing a VC cares about.

The Rewrite (3 hrs) - Rebuild your CV using the VC-specific structure and the 3 bullet rewrite formulas. We include translation guides for 5 backgrounds: consulting, banking, students, startup operators, and engineers.

Proof-of-Work (2 hrs) - Add the one section that instantly separates you from 95% of applicants and what to actually put in it (even if you have zero investing experience).

LinkedIn Quick Fix + Send (1.5 hrs) - The headline formula, the 5-line About section, and your first 10 applications with the new CV.

Here’s what cover in this issue:

• The 3 bullet rewrite formulas (with 15+ before/after bullet examples)

• Two full before/after CV transformations - a consultant and a final-year student

• Background translation guide - how to reframe consulting, banking, student, operator, and engineering experience into VC signals

• The proof-of-work section - 6 things you can build in a weekend that count as “investing experience”

• The 20-point screening checklist reviewers actually use

• The LinkedIn 30-minute fix = headline + About formulas

• Proven VC template that you won’t find on Google.

Also, don’t miss these premium resources written by VCs:

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• The Breakdown - How do VCs really evaluate your take-home assignment? Market map, memo, deal sourcing - decoded.

• 31+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities - Investment & platform roles.

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THE BREAKDOWN

How do VCs really evaluate your take-home assignment? Market map, memo, deal sourcing - decoded.

Most of you reading this have already applied to a few VC roles. Some of you have gotten the email back - “here’s a take-home, here’s a case study, send it back in a few days.”

And honestly? It probably felt easy. You’ve got ChatGPT open in one tab, a “VC investment memo template” you found in ten seconds in the other. You fill it in, it looks clean, you hit send feeling pretty good about it.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you before you submit: the template was never the test. The person reading your memo, your market map, your cold email - they’re not scoring how polished it looks or how complete your research is.

They’re scoring one or two specific things buried inside the assignment, and most candidates never find out what those things are, because funds don’t hand out feedback.

So you don’t fail loudly. You fail quietly, doing a genuinely good job - on the wrong part of the assignment.

I’ve sat on both sides of this. I’ve been the candidate sweating over these assignments at 1am, convinced my draft was good. And I’ve been on the other side too, seeing how they actually get graded, and how far that grading is from what most candidates assume.

So for the three take-home formats early-stage funds actually use - the market map, the investment memo, and the cold sourcing exercise - here’s what you get for each:

• The real prompt structure, and the one line inside it most candidates read past

• A weak answer next to a strong one, side by side, so you can see the gap instead of guessing at it

• A fill-in-the-blank template built around what’s actually being scored - not a generic one you’ll find on Google

• A pre-submission checklist to run your draft against before you hit send

Plus a one-page Take-Home Scorecard at the end you can reuse for every assignment you get from here on, across all three formats.

In this edition:

1. The Market Map - the exercise that tests judgment, not research effort

2. The Investment Memo - why a clean summary loses to a decisive one

3. The Cold Sourcing Exercise - the test most candidates don’t realize is a test

4. The Take-Home Scorecard - grade your own draft before a partner does

1. The Market Map

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• The Breakdown - Should you get excited seeing “Carry” in your VC offer? Here’s how to make the most of it.

• 26+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities - Investment & platform roles.

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THE BREAKDOWN

Should you get excited seeing “Carry” in your VC offer? Here’s how to make the most of it.

Almost every time someone finally gets an offer from a fund, it happens the same way: somewhere in the offer call or the letter, the word “carry” shows up and the excitement spikes. “Wait, I get carry?”

I’ve watched this play out more times than I can count, on both sides of the table. And the honest answer to “should I be excited?” is: probably not yet. And almost nobody explains why.

Every comp guide out there throws around “carry” like it’s a bonus sitting in your account. It’s not. It’s a promise, tied to a timeline most junior people don’t stay long enough to see, calculated in a way most junior people are never taught.

I’ve sat on both sides of this - negotiating my own offers early on, and later watching how firms actually structure these grants for people coming in below partner.

So today, sharing the real mechanics and what you should actually ask for if a firm dangles “carry” at you during an offer.

Today At A Glance:

• What carry actually is (in plain English, no finance degree needed)

• The real number: what % of analysts and associates ever see a cent of it

• Why “vesting” for carry is a completely different trap than vesting for equity

• The math on why a 0.25% carry grant might be worth $40,000 or worth $0 and how to tell which

• What to negotiate for instead, if you’re junior and carry isn’t realistic yet

Let’s get into it.

What carry actually is (skip this if you already know - most don’t)

A VC fund usually runs on what’s called “2 and 20.”

The fund charges a 2% annual management fee on the money it manages - that’s what pays salaries, rent, your Bloomberg terminal, all of it.

The “20” is carried interest: the fund keeps 20% of the profits it makes for its investors (LPs) once it returns their original capital.

That 20% pool is “carry.”

It gets split among the people at the firm - usually weighted heavily toward partners, with smaller slices trickling down.

Here’s the part nobody says out loud: that pool only exists if the fund actually makes money, and it only pays out years after the fund has already returned investor capital. A VC fund typically runs 10-12 years. You’re not getting a check next year.

The real number: what % of analysts and associates ever see a cent of it

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• The Breakdown - This is how people with zero VC experience actually get in.

• 27+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities - Investment & platform roles.

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THE BREAKDOWN

This is how people with zero VC experience actually get in.

Let’s talk about the most common rejection in this industry:

“We loved your profile, but we’re looking for someone with prior VC or operator experience.”

You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it. Everyone trying to break in has heard it. And it creates the most frustrating loop in careers: you need VC experience to get a VC job, but you need a VC job to get VC experience.

Here’s what most people don’t know - VC firms built a side door specifically to solve this problem for themselves.

They’re called scout programs and fellowships. Firms like Sequoia, Accel, and Lightspeed have run scout networks for years because they need eyes in ecosystems their partners can’t reach. Fellowships exist because funds want to test junior talent over months instead of betting on a 45-minute interview.

Translation: these programs are hiring pipelines disguised as side projects. Fellows regularly convert into full-time VC roles within 12 months.

• Scouts have gone on to raise their own funds - Jeff Morris Jr. went from Index Ventures scout to launching Chapter One.

• An engineering manager named Jamshed Vesuna got into Accel’s Starters program and was writing $25-50k checks as his “night job.”

The problem?

So we did the mapping for you.

Here’s what’s inside today’s deep dive:

• The full scout & fellowship database - 15+ programs across the US, India, and Southeast Asia, with direct application links, what each program actually gives you (carry, stipend, training, or just access), and which ones are open right now (one closes THIS MONTH).

• The application playbook - what these programs actually screen for (hint: it’s not your resume), the one asset almost every application asks for, and how to answer the “pitch us a startup you’d back” question that filters out 90% of applicants.

• The conversion play - how to turn a 6-month scout gig or fellowship into a full-time analyst offer, with the exact behaviors that make funds want to keep you.

• The no-program play - what to do if your target fund doesn’t run a scout program (most don’t). This connects directly to our “Get Hired in VC Before Anyone” system - you can pitch yourself as their first scout.

One more thing before we get into it: acceptance rates for the top programs hover around 3% - roughly Y Combinator odds.

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• The Breakdown - How do you get referred for VC job when you don’t know anyone in VC?

• 31+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities - Investment & platform roles.

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THE BREAKDOWN

How do you get referred for VC job when you don’t know anyone in VC?

Here’s the thing nobody says plainly - a referral doesn’t get you the job. It gets you the first conversation and in a process where hundreds of applications compete for one opening, that first conversation is the whole bottleneck.

Someone the firm already trusts says “you should talk to this person,” and suddenly you’re being read carefully instead of scanned in nine seconds.

That’s what a referral actually buys you. Not the offer - the shot at earning it. Everything after that is still on you: the answers, the case study, the judgement.

And to be clear, it isn’t the only way in. People get hired off cold applications, off sourced deals, off writing that a partner happened to read. If you have no referral today, you are not out of the running. But a referral is the fastest and most reliable way to convert effort into an interview, and it’s the one thing most candidates never build because nobody explains how.

Because the advice always stops at the same three words: build your network.

Which isn’t a method. It’s a description of an outcome. It tells you nothing about who to approach, what to say, in what order, how long it takes, or what makes someone actually willing to attach their name to yours - which is the whole difficulty, because a referral is a person spending their credibility on you.

That’s the gap. Today we’re closing it.

What we’re covering

• Who can actually refer you? - Four types of referrer, ranked by how much their word is worth. Most people spend their time on the weakest one.

• The one almost nobody uses - The most powerful referral source in venture, why it’s sitting unused, and the sequence to earn one.

• How long does this take? - Realistic timelines for each type, in weeks, so you can plan instead of hope.

• The ask - What to send so that referring you takes ninety seconds instead of an hour - with the full templates.

• The mistake that kills it - The most common way this fails, and it happens before you’ve even asked.

Part 1 - Who can actually refer you?

Not all referrals are the same, and this is where most people waste their effort. A referral’s value depends almost entirely on how much the firm’s judgement of that person is already on the line.

Here are the four types, weakest to strongest.

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• The Breakdown - 15 questions you’ll be asked in a VC interview and how to answer them so they remember you.

• 23+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities - Investment & platform roles.

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THE BREAKDOWN

15 questions you’ll be asked in a VC interview and how to answer them so they remember you.

Let me describe something that happens in almost every VC hiring process.

A partner interviews six candidates for a junior role over two weeks. All six are smart. All six have done the reading. And by the time they sit down to discuss it, the partner can barely tell four of them apart - because four of them gave versions of the same answer to every question.

Why VC? Because I love working with founders and I’m fascinated by the intersection of technology and business.

Why our firm? Because I really admire your thesis and your portfolio companies.

What company would you invest in? Well, I’ve been really excited about AI infrastructure lately...

None of those answers are wrong. That’s the problem. They’re perfectly acceptable, entirely forgettable, and by the fourth candidate the partner has stopped listening, because they already know what’s coming.

This is the actual competition. It isn’t that other candidates are smarter than you or better connected. It’s that when someone is choosing between six acceptable people, they choose the one they remember and being memorable is a completely learnable skill that almost nobody works on.

Why the random lists don’t help

You can find “top 20 VC interview questions” in thirty seconds. Which is exactly why they’ve stopped working - everyone read the same list and memorised the same model answers. Sounding like the internet is the fastest way to sound like everyone else.

And those lists tell you what to say. Almost none of them explain what the question is for - what a partner is trying to learn, and why they phrased it that way. Once you know that, you stop reciting and start answering. A real answer sounds nothing like a prepared one, even when you’ve prepared it.

One thing we’re skipping: the math. It comes up, and it’s where a lot of people fall apart - but we covered it properly in The VC math you’ll be asked to do live. Read that one alongside this and you’ve got the whole interview.

Today is everything else - the questions with no right answer, where you’re judged on how you think.

I’ve sat on the other side of these interviews, and I’ve spent years comparing notes with partners and colleagues about what they’re actually listening for. Almost none of it matches the advice that gets published. That’s what’s below.

What we’re covering

Fifteen questions, in four groups.

• Group 1 - The motivation questions (4).

Where most candidates lose the interview inside ten minutes. Includes the single most fumbled question in the process and the one that quietly filters more people than any other.

• Group 2 - The judgement questions (5).

Where they find out whether you have taste or just enthusiasm. One of these is a deliberate trap about their own portfolio, and almost everyone falls into it by being too polite.

• Group 3 - The job questions (4).

Whether you know what the role actually is. The standard answer to one of these doesn’t just fall flat - it tells a partner you’ve never done the thing you’re claiming you’d do.

• Group 4 -The character questions (2).

Including the last question of nearly every interview, which candidates treat as a formality and partners weight more heavily than almost anything else.

For each: what they’re actually testing, the answer everyone gives, why it fails, and a stronger one worked out in full.

Group 1 - The motivation questions

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THE BREAKDOWN

Read these before you apply

50+ VC job opportunities are waiting below - but a generic application won’t get past the first screen.

These writeups cover both sides of the table: how VCs actually decide who to hire, and how founders experience the other side of the deal. Spend 15 minutes here first.

• Why your CV keeps getting ignored for VC jobs (And how to fix it in one weekend) - The VC hiring question most candidates get wrong, straight from an a16z partner - plus the exact weekend system to rebuild your CV so it signals sourcing, judgment, and hustle. Read it →

• The VC math you’ll be asked to do live in an interview (and most candidates fumble it) - Ten VC math questions worked out step by step, no finance background needed - the arithmetic that separates a junior from a liability. Read it →

• Every resource you need to break into VC (deep dives, templates, lectures) - 100+ curated VC resources in one hub - learning modules, fellowship videos, Excel templates, and an investor contact database. Read it →

• How Seed, Growth and Micro-VC Funds Hire Differently (And Which One You Should Apply To). Seed, growth-equity, and micro-VC funds hire in three completely different ways - here’s how to spot which lane fits your background before you apply.. Read it →

• Which layer of the AI Stack will capture the most value? - Chamath’s Six-Layer AI Investing Stack. Chamath’s six-layer framework for where AI value actually accumulates and why the middle of the stack may be the riskiest place to invest. Read it →

• How should AI startups sell to enterprises? - a16z’s Lighthouse vs. Landgrab Framework. Two enterprise sales strategies for AI founders, and the two questions that tell you which one your buyer actually needs. Read it →

• What does a VC really write in their internal notes after they reject you? (Most founders never see it). Inside the internal record every fund keeps on a passed deal - how to decode the standard rejection phrases and know which passes are worth chasing again.Read it →

• How is your seed valuation actually decided? (It has almost nothing to do with your company). Your seed price is mostly fund arithmetic, not your pitch - the three real inputs, and why funds under $75M often can’t lead you at today’s prices. Read it →

• What VCs are really asking AI founders during due diligence? (And what you’re expected to show). 21 new AI diligence questions investors are asking that didn’t exist a year ago, plus the documents founders are now expected to have ready. Read it →

VC JOB BOARD

50+ VC job opportunities - investment to non-investment roles.

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• The Breakdown - Source one deal, get hired: the play that works without a network

• 29+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities - Investment & platform roles.

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THE BREAKDOWN

How can one startup deal get you hired in VC without any network?

Every path into VC that gets written about has the same problem. It’s slow, and it depends on people who don’t owe you anything.

Build a network. Get warm intros. Publish takes. Apply and wait. All of it works eventually, and all of it puts you in a queue behind hundreds of people doing the identical thing, hoping someone senior decides to be generous.

There’s one action that skips the queue entirely.

That’s it. That’s the whole play. And when it works, the dynamic flips completely - you’re no longer someone asking for time. You’re someone who just made a partner money and cost them nothing to get it. Funds have hired people off a single sourced deal who had no finance background, no MBA, and nobody in the industry who could vouch for them.

Why this works when nothing else does

Understand what a fund is actually short of.

They’re not short of applicants. A junior opening gets hundreds. They’re not short of smart people either - smart is cheap at this level.

What every fund is genuinely, permanently short of is good companies they saw before someone else did. That’s the entire business. Their returns depend on it, their LPs judge them on it, and no amount of hiring fixes it.

So when a stranger sends a partner a company that turns into a deal, they’ve just demonstrated the one thing that can’t be taught in the first year. And they’ve demonstrated it with evidence, not with a CV claim.

This isn’t a theory. Sourcing has been a documented route into investing roles for years - Jana Messerschmidt, now at Lightspeed, and Lee Linden of Quiet Capital both started out scouting, and the deals they sourced launched their investing career.

The formal scout programs at large funds exist precisely because firms will pay for outside deal flow from people who don’t work there.

You don’t need to be in one of those programs to run the same play.

What we’re covering

• Part 1 - How do you find a company before it raises? Seven public signals that show up months ahead of a round.

• Part 2 - What do you say to a founder when you don’t work at a fund?

• Part 3 - What goes in the email to the fund? The exact structure of an intro that gets opened, with a full worked example.

• Part 4 - Which funds, and how many? How to pick five funds instead of fifty, and why sending to more is worse.

• Part 5 - The deal happened. Now what? When to make the ask, how to word it, and how not to make it feel like an invoice.

• Part 6 - What if it doesn’t work? What to salvage, and how the failed version still moves you forward.

Part 1 - How to find a company before it raises

Become a Break Into VC Premium member, you also get:

• Today’s deep dive: All-in-one guide to souring startup deal and getting hire.

• Insider tips from working VCs on breaking in without a traditional background

• Curated VC job & internship opportunities across the US, India, and Southeast Asia

• Full access to our All-In-One VC Library - 100+ resources, templates & lectures

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• The Breakdown - Why do most VC candidates fail the investment memo? (What a great one actually looks like).

• 31+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities.

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THE BREAKDOWN

Why do most VC candidates fail the investment memo? (What a great one actually looks like).

Here’s where most aspiring VCs actually get rejected.

Not the screening call. Not “why VC.” You clear those. Then an email lands on a evening with a pitch deck attached and one line:

“Take a look and send us a memo in next 48 hours. Whatever format you like.”

No page limit. No structure. No rubric. You spend two days on it, hit send, and a week later get a polite no. Nobody ever tells you what was wrong with it.

I’ve watched a lot of good people lose offers right here. And when I’ve read what they submitted, the problem was almost never intelligence. It was that they’d been asked to write a document they had never once seen an example of.

What’s actually being tested

Candidates think the case study is testing whether they can pick a good company.

It isn’t. The firm already has a view on that company - they’ve often already passed on it, invested in it, or invented it. Your yes or no barely matters.

What’s being tested is:

Can you produce the artifact a junior investor produces, at a quality a partner wouldn’t be embarrassed to forward?

That’s the actual job. You won’t be picking anything for years. What you’ll be doing is turning messy, incomplete information into two pages a busy partner can act on in six minutes. Every week.

So the question in their head isn’t “do I agree?” It’s “if I sent this round with your name on it, would I look good or careless?”

Different question. Very different right answers.

Why memos fail

The failures are remarkably consistent. Four patterns:

• Too long: Fourteen pages, because effort feels like it should count. It doesn’t - length reads as an inability to prioritise.

• It’s a summary, not a judgement: The deck said the market is $13 billion, so the memo says the market is $13 billion. Nobody needed you for that.

• Decorative risks: Competition, execution, market timing. Three risks that fit any company on earth. This is the loudest tell there is.

• No recommendation: “Compelling opportunity with risks worth monitoring.” That’s not a decision.

None of these are intelligence problems. They’re format problems - which is good news, because format is learnable in an afternoon once someone shows you one.

So today I’m showing you the actual thing.

What we’re covering

• Part 1 - The prompts. The three formats firms actually send, what each one is really testing, and how your approach should change depending on which one lands in your inbox.

• Part 2 - The rubric. The five things a partner is scoring, whether or not they’ve written them down. With what a 1 out of 5 looks like versus a 5 out of 5 on each.

• Part 3 - The memo, annotated. A complete two-page memo on a Series A company, written out in full, with margin notes explaining every choice.

• Part 4 -The 48-hour plan. Hour by hour, what to do with the time. Including the two hours most candidates waste and the ninety minutes almost nobody spends.

• Part 5 - After you hit send. What happens to your memo inside the firm, and how to prepare for the follow-up conversation where a partner pushes on your conclusion.

Become a Break Into VC Premium member, you also get:

• Today’s deep dive: A complete memo you can use as a structural template

• Weekly deep dives on how firms hire and what actually gets candidates offers

• Insider tips from working VCs on breaking in without a traditional background

• Curated VC job & internship opportunities across the US, India, and Southeast Asia

• Full access to our All-In-One VC Library - 100+ resources, templates & lectures

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THE BREAKDOWN

The VC math you’ll be asked to do live in interview (And most candidates fumble).

Let me tell you about the fastest interview death I’ve ever watched.

A candidate - sharp, genuinely sharp 0 had just spent twenty minutes giving one of the better answers I’d heard on why AI infrastructure was mispriced. Real depth. He’d clearly done the reading.

Then the partner leaned back and said:

“Cool. So we own 12% of a company going into their Series B. They’re raising $40 million at a $160 million pre. Where do we land, and are we taking our pro-rata?”

Silence.

Not a wrong answer. Just... silence. Then “sorry, could you repeat the numbers?” Then more silence. Then a guess that was off by a factor of two.

He didn’t get the offer. And here’s the thing that still bothers me - he probably would have been good at the job. He just never practiced the one part of the interview that has a right answer.

Because that’s what makes this section different.

Every other part of a VC interview is subjective. Your “why VC” answer can be great or fine. Your market take can be interesting or forgettable. Your founder assessment is an opinion, and a partner might just disagree with you and respect you anyway.

The math is not like that. The math is either right or it isn’t. And when you get it wrong in front of a partner, you’re not signaling “I need to work on my framing.” You’re signaling “I don’t actually understand how this business works.”

That’s fatal. Because the entire job - every memo, every IC discussion, every reserve decision, every conversation with an LP - sits on top of this arithmetic. A junior who can’t do it isn’t junior. They’re a liability.

The good news

None of this is hard math.

I want to say that clearly, because I know a good number of you come from non-finance backgrounds - engineering, law, marketing, journalism, operations. And there’s a myth that VC math is some Excel-modeling dark art you need a banking background to touch.

It isn’t. Growth equity and PE? Sure, there’s real modeling there. But early-stage venture math is almost entirely multiplication, division, and percentages. The kind of thing you learned at fourteen.

What trips people up isn’t the arithmetic. It’s that nobody ever told them:

• Which numbers to reach for

• In what order

• And what the answer is actually supposed to tell you

That’s a vocabulary problem, not a math problem. And vocabulary problems are solvable in an afternoon.

So that’s what today is. Ten questions. Every one of them a question I’ve either asked, been asked, or watched get asked. Worked out line by line, with the reasoning spelled out, in plain language.

By the end, none of these should be able to surprise you.

What we’re covering today

Part 1 - Company math (the deal in front of you)

1. The pro-rata question - dilution, and what your stake becomes after a round

2. The option pool shuffle - the dilution founders don’t see coming, and neither do candidates

3. SAFE conversion - what a $1M SAFE on an $8M cap actually turns into

4. Reverse-engineering your entry price - “we need 15% and we write $3M checks. What can we pay?”

5. Life-of-company dilution - what 15% at seed is really worth at exit

6. The liquidation preference waterfall - who gets what when a company sells for less than everyone hoped

Part 2 - Fund math (the business you’re joining)

7. “Can this return the fund?” - the single most important number in early-stage venture

8. Carry and the waterfall - how GPs actually get paid, and what a junior’s slice looks like

9. The reserves decision - a real judgment call, with the math that should drive it

Part 3 - The question underneath all of it

10. Bottom-up market sizing - and how to land it back on fund math instead of a made-up TAM number

Plus, at the end: a one-page cheat sheet with every formula, and a spreadsheet template you can plug numbers into so you can drill these until they’re automatic.

Part 1 - Company Math

We’ll start with deal-level math - the arithmetic you’d be doing every single week if you had the job. Then we move up to fund math in Part 2, which is where candidates really separate themselves.

Every question follows the same shape: the setup, the working step by step, and then the answer you’d actually give out loud.

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• Full access to our All-In-One VC Library - 100+ resources, templates & lectures

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• The Breakdown - Can a platform role (the non-investing jobs at a VC firm) lead to an investing career?

• 28+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities.

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THE BREAKDOWN

How to get hired for non-investment roles in VC (and convert to an investment team).

Every week I get some version of this message:

“I applied to 40 analyst roles. Two replies. Both rejections. I don’t have banking, I don’t have consulting, I didn’t go to a target school. Is there any other way in?”

There is. And almost nobody takes it seriously, because it’s wearing the wrong job title.

While everyone fights over the same handful of analyst and associate seats, venture firms have quietly been hiring a completely different category of person and hiring a lot of them.

The VC Platform Global Community studied 850 firms across two decades. Their finding: 52.8% of venture firms now have a moderate or significant platform team, roughly double the share in 2000. Among firms managing over $1 billion, it’s 92.7%. One in eight people at a venture firm now works in platform. In 2000 it was one in sixteen.

That’s not a rounding error. That’s the fastest-growing headcount category in the industry, and it’s a category that regularly hires people with no finance background at all.

Here’s what those roles actually look like, by their real titles:

• Platform - the umbrella. Portfolio support, founder programming, the firm’s “value-add” machine.

• Talent - recruiting for portfolio companies. Filling VP Engineering and Head of Sales seats at 40 startups at once.

• Community - founder networks, summits, Slack groups, alumni programs, expert networks.

• Marketing, brand & content - the firm’s public voice. Podcasts, newsletters, the annual state-of-the-industry report.

• Business development & partnerships - connecting portfolio companies to enterprise buyers and strategic partners.

• Portfolio operations / founder success - the operators who go deep with companies post-investment.

• Investor Relations & fundraising - LP reporting, data rooms, capital raising for the fund itself.

• Internal operations / fund ops - the machinery. Close processes, CRM, fund admin, compliance.

• Chief of Staff - usually attached to a specific GP. Often the closest seat in the building to actual investing.

Nine doors. Most people applying to VC don’t know eight of them exist.

But here’s the part nobody wants to say out loud, and the reason this edition exists.

There is a widespread belief that platform is a career cul-de-sac - that you go in, you’re useful, and you never get out. That the investment team eats lunch at a different table. That you’ll spend three years building the thing that makes partners look good and never sit in an IC meeting.

That belief is partly true. And the data on how true is much more interesting than either the optimists or the cynics will tell you.

So today I’m not going to sell you on platform. I’m going to show you the numbers, tell you which of those nine doors actually opens into the investment team and which ones structurally never will, and give you the honest version of what conversion takes and how long it takes.

What’s in today’s deep dive

• Part 1 -The proximity map. Which of the nine roles sit close to deal flow, and which ones structurally never will.

• Part 2 - The conversion data. How many platform people actually make it onto an investment team, which firms promote internally, and how long it takes.

• Part 3 - What to do once you’re in. The three things that make conversion possible, and the trap where doing your job too well keeps you stuck in it.

• Part 4 - The IR route. Why investor relations teaches you more about how a fund really works than an associate seat does, and how to get one with no experience.

• Part 5 - How to interview. What not to say about your ambition, what to say instead, and the questions that reveal whether a firm ever promotes.

• Part 6 - When this is the wrong move. For some of you it is, and I’d rather say so now than after you’ve taken the job.

Plus:

• Role-by-Role Conversion Map - all nine roles scored on how close they sit to deal flow, how likely conversion is, and how long it usually takes.

• Firms that promote platform into investing - a working list across the US, India and SEA.

• Platform interview question bank - the real questions funds ask, including the 90-day program exercise that decides most of these interviews.

Read more

• The Breakdown - How seed, growth and micro-VC funds hire differently (And which one you should apply to).

• Insider Tips - The 2 safe paths into VC and the hustler path for everyone else - Eric Reiner, Vine Ventures.

• The Reading List on startups, tech & venture capital.

• 29+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities.

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THE BREAKDOWN

How seed, growth and micro-VC funds hire differently (And which one you should apply to).

You’ve sent forty cold emails this month. Ten funds never replied. Five sent a polite pass within a day. Two asked for a case study that took you six hours, then went dark. One asked which deals you’d want to lead - a question you weren’t remotely ready for.

Here’s what nobody tells you when you start applying to “VC”: you weren’t rejected by an industry.

You were rejected by three different industries that happen to share a job title.

A $20M pre-seed fund, a $2B growth-equity platform, and a solo GP writing $250K checks out of a rolling fund are not looking for the same person. They don’t recruit the same way, they don’t score you on the same criteria, and they don’t even agree on what the job actually is. Apply to all three with one resume and one pitch, and the math is simple: you’re guaranteed to look off to at least two of them.

So today, we’re breaking down exactly how the three main types of VC funds actually hire - not the generic “network and show passion” advice, but the real mechanics: who gets hired, how the process runs, which credentials matter where, and what to do differently depending on which lane you’re actually in.

Here’s the three-way split, at a glance:

• Seed-stage funds - hire on relationship-building and career coherence more than pedigree. Tiny teams, no fixed process, almost entirely referral and outreach-driven.

• Growth-equity funds - hire close to how private equity does. Banking/consulting backgrounds, real financial modeling, headhunter-run processes.

• Micro-VCs and solo GPs - often don’t have a junior “role” to apply to at all. You get in through scout and fellowship programs, or by proving yourself before anyone offers you anything.

Below, we go inside each category - named funds, real programs, what they actually screen for, and the exact move to make depending on which one fits your background. This is the difference between spraying your resume everywhere and applying like someone who already understands the industry from the inside.

The quick-reference table

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• The Breakdown - Why your CV keeps getting ignored for VC jobs (And how to fix it in one weekend).

• Insider Tips - VC firms ask one question before hiring you. Here’s how to answer it - Erik Torenberg, a16z

• The Reading List on startups, tech & venture capital.

• 31+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities.

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THE BREAKDOWN

Why your CV keeps getting ignored for VC jobs (And how to fix it in one weekend).

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: most of you reading this will never get rejected by a VC firm.

You’ll get ignored.

Your application goes into a pile of 300+, someone spends 6-10 seconds on it, and moves on. And the painful part? It’s usually not because you’re unqualified. It’s because your CV is written in the wrong language.

A consulting CV speaks in “workstreams” and “stakeholders.” A banking CV speaks in “deal execution” and “financial modeling.” A student CV speaks in GPAs and club titles.

A VC firm is screening for exactly three things and none of those words signal any of them.

VCs hire for:

1. Sourcing - can you find interesting companies before everyone else?

2. Judgment - can you form a view on whether something is a good investment, and defend it?

3. Hustle - do you do things without being asked, outside your job description?

Every bullet on your CV either signals one of these three... or it’s wasted space.

Today’s deep dive is a complete weekend system to rewrite your CV (and quickly fix your LinkedIn) so it screams sourcing, judgment, and hustle - no matter what background you’re coming from.

Here’s the full weekend map:

The Audit (1.5 hrs) - Run your current CV through the same screening checklist reviewers use. Score every bullet. Most people find that 70% of their bullets signal nothing a VC cares about.

The Rewrite (3 hrs) - Rebuild your CV using the VC-specific structure and the 3 bullet rewrite formulas. We include translation guides for 5 backgrounds: consulting, banking, students, startup operators, and engineers.

Proof-of-Work (2 hrs) - Add the one section that instantly separates you from 95% of applicants and what to actually put in it (even if you have zero investing experience).

LinkedIn Quick Fix + Send (1.5 hrs) - The headline formula, the 5-line About section, and your first 10 applications with the new CV.

Here’s what cover in this issue:

• The 3 bullet rewrite formulas (with 15+ before/after bullet examples)

• Two full before/after CV transformations - a consultant and a final-year student

• Background translation guide - how to reframe consulting, banking, student, operator, and engineering experience into VC signals

• The proof-of-work section - 6 things you can build in a weekend that count as “investing experience”

• The 20-point screening checklist reviewers actually use

• The LinkedIn 30-minute fix = headline + About formulas

Read more

• The Breakdown - The ultimate guide to VC scout programs and fellowships (with full database).

• Insider Tips - Dragonfly’s Managing Partner: Write your way into VC (Here’s exactly how).

• The Reading List on startups, tech & venture capital.

• 29+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities.

THE BREAKDOWN

The ultimate guide to VC scout programs and fellowships (with full database).

Let’s talk about the most common rejection in this industry:

“We loved your profile, but we’re looking for someone with prior VC or operator experience.”

You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it. Everyone trying to break in has heard it. And it creates the most frustrating loop in careers: you need VC experience to get a VC job, but you need a VC job to get VC experience.

Here’s what most people don’t know - VC firms built a side door specifically to solve this problem for themselves.

They’re called scout programs and fellowships. Firms like Sequoia, Accel, and Lightspeed have run scout networks for years because they need eyes in ecosystems their partners can’t reach. Fellowships exist because funds want to test junior talent over months instead of betting on a 45-minute interview.

Translation: these programs are hiring pipelines disguised as side projects. Fellows regularly convert into full-time VC roles within 12 months. Scouts have gone on to raise their own funds - Jeff Morris Jr. went from Index Ventures scout to launching Chapter One. An engineering manager named Jamshed Vesuna got into Accel’s Starters program and was writing $25-50k checks as his “night job.”

The problem?

So we did the mapping for you.

Here’s what’s inside today’s deep dive:

• The full scout & fellowship database - 15+ programs across the US, India, and Southeast Asia, with direct application links, what each program actually gives you (carry, stipend, training, or just access), and which ones are open right now (one closes THIS WEEK).

• The application playbook - what these programs actually screen for (hint: it’s not your resume), the one asset almost every application asks for, and how to answer the “pitch us a startup you’d back” question that filters out 90% of applicants.

• The conversion play - how to turn a 6-month scout gig or fellowship into a full-time analyst offer, with the exact behaviors that make funds want to keep you.

• The no-program play - what to do if your target fund doesn’t run a scout program (most don’t). This connects directly to our “Get Hired in VC Before Anyone” system - you can pitch yourself as their first scout.

One more thing before we get into it: acceptance rates for the top programs hover around 3% - roughly Y Combinator odds.

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• The complete scout programs & fellowships process with database (this edition)

• Insider tips from Dragonfly’s Managing Partner.

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• 29+ curated VC job & internship opportunities

• Full access to our All-In-One VC Library - 100+ resources, templates & lectures

Read more

• The Breakdown - Get hired in VC before anyone interviews you (the 30-day sourcing engine).

• Insider Tips - How to break into VC with no startup or investing background - VC partner.

• The Reading List on startups, tech & venture capital.

• 33+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities.

THE BREAKDOWN

Get hired in VC before anyone interviews you (the 30-day sourcing engine).

Last week, I told you about Jason Shuman - the guy who sourced deals for free, wrote theses nobody asked for, and drove Uber at night until he became a Partner at Primary.

Today, I’m giving you the actual system.

Because “start doing the job” sounds inspiring, but on Monday morning it turns into a real question: doing what, exactly? Which startups? Where do I find them? What do I send, and to whom?

I’ve seen this method work again and again - both from candidates I’ve watched break in, and from the other side of the table when I was working inside VC firms. When an aspiring analyst sends a partner a genuinely good deal that fits the fund’s thesis, something shifts.

You’re no longer a resume in a pile of 400. You’re a person who just did the job - for free, without being asked.

Here’s why this works better than any application:

• VCs are judged on one thing: did they see the best deals?

Every partner lives with the fear of missing the next big company. When you show up with relevant deal flow, you’re not asking for a favor - you’re solving their biggest problem.

• It answers the only hiring question that matters.

I’ve said this before: every firm is really asking, “Will this person help us invest in companies we otherwise would have missed?”

A resume says “maybe.” A sourced deal says “yes, and here’s proof.”

• Almost nobody does it properly.

Plenty of people cold email VCs. Almost none of them attach value. The bar is embarrassingly low - which means the opportunity is embarrassingly big.

Over the next 30 days, this system will take you from zero to: a defined sourcing niche, a tracked pipeline of 30-40 startups, 8-10 packaged deals, and outreach to 15-20 investors - with email templates for every single step.

This is the exact playbook.

The 30-Day Sourcing Engine

Four weeks. Here’s the map:

• Week 1 - Pick your lane and build your target list (startups + investors)

• Week 2 - Build your pipeline and tracker

• Week 3 - Package your best deals into mini-memos

• Week 4 - Outreach, follow-up, and converting replies into interviews

Become a Break Into VC Premium member and get 👇

• The complete 30-day sourcing playbook (this edition)

• Insider tips from VC partners on breaking in without a tech background

• Weekly deep dives on how firms hire and what gets candidates offers

• 33+ curated VC job & internship opportunities

• Full access to our All-In-One VC Library - 100+ resources, templates & lectures

Read more

If you are looking to break into VC, you know the drill - great resources scattered across dozens of posts, threads, and links. Useful, but messy. Even there is no proper material to learn about VC.

Not anymore.

Today we’re launching the Premium Break Into VC All-In-One Resource Hub - a single library with 100+ curated resources covering everything from “what is venture capital” to building investment memos and modeling a fund.

Overview

All access links are at the end of this edition, for Premium members.

🎓 VC Learning Resources - 14 structured modules

A step-by-step curriculum through the entire VC knowledge stack:

• A brief history of venture capital & VC roles

• Fund cycle & fund economics

• Financial instruments: convertible notes, SAFEs, term sheets

• VC valuation methods

• Thesis & memo building

• Learning VC technical skills

• Best VC newsletters & must-watch podcasts

• Interview preparation guide

Each module links out to the best material we’ve found - videos, guides, and practical breakdowns. No fluff.

🎥 VC Fellowship Videos & Lectures - 7 full series

Recorded sessions from leading investors and more. Highlights:

• Building cap tables & modeling a VC fund

• Designing portfolio strategy

• Market sizing in venture capital

• Term sheets & negotiations

• Spotting PMF - cohorts, traction, CAC

• What does it take to become a partner?

• Starting your fund before 30

• Generative AI from a VC lens

Plus the complete 12-session VC fellowship (fundamentals → deal evaluation → structuring → hard decisions in VC) and fellowship content from Harlem Capital.

📊 VC Funds & Startup Financial Excel Sheets

The actual templates founders and investors use - download and practice:

• Cap table templates

• DCF & 3-statement financial models

• Carried interest calculators

• Comparables analysis

• CAC, retention cohorts & customer LTV models

• Enterprise value vs. equity value breakdowns

• Finance interview case studies

If you’ve ever been asked to “walk me through a model” in an interview, this folder is your prep room.

🗂️ And more

• Investors Contact Database - verified investor contacts across USA, India, Africa, Australia & France

• VC Scout Roles guide - compensation, full-time vs part-time, and firms hiring scouts

• Hack To Stand Out In Crowd - how to differentiate yourself in a small industry

• Pre-Reads on VC - why VC, pros & cons, and skills you need

Unlock everything with Premium

The resource hub is the foundation of Break Into VC - Premium. Members get:

• 🔓 Full access to the 100+ resource hub - every module, lecture, template, and database above

• ✍️ Deep dives on breaking into VC, every week - 2-3 premium posts on how firms hire and what gets candidates offers

• 💼 VC jobs & internship opportunities - curated openings across the US, India, and Southeast Asia

• 🎯 Interview prep guides & answer frameworks - “Why VC?”, market sizing, deal walkthroughs, mock memos

• 🛠️ Practical workflow resources - sourcing, due diligence, investment memos, portfolio support

• 💬 Private Substack community - ask questions, share opportunities, connect with other aspiring VCs

We built this because breaking into VC shouldn’t depend on who you know or which school you went to. It should depend on how prepared you are and now, everything you need to prepare lives behind one link.

All the links shared below 👇

Become a Break Into VC Premium member to get this access - early members get 20% off, forever. Only 8 days left.

Read more

• The Breakdown - This one skill separates great VCs from everyone else (And every VC interview tests it).

• Insider Tips - No pedigree? Here’s the 4th path into VC - Jason Shuman, Partner at Primary

• The Reading List on startups, tech & venture capital.

• 27+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities.

🎙️ Announcement

In the next few days, we’ll be launching “Break Into VC - Premium.”

You’ll get access to:

• Deep dives on breaking into VC, every week

• VC jobs and internship opportunities

• Interview preparation guides and answer frameworks

• Practical resources on sourcing, due diligence, investment memos, portfolio support, and VC workflows

• VC Educational videos from investors, operators, and startup professionals

• Private Substack community discussions where you can ask questions, share ideas, and connect with other VC enthusiasts

Stay tuned.

THE BREAKDOWN

Develop your opinion / thesis about the world: The most important skill that every VC job seeker should have.

To find a job in VC you will need to find ways to let the firms you’re ‘applying to’ answer the following question positively:

How to do this in a way that is unique to you?

Watch this video from 2010.

The two folks being interviewed are Fred Wilson & John Doerr, two of the most legendary Venture Capitalists from the US. You’ll notice two things about them:

• they have incredibly clear opinions, about everything

• they are sometimes wrong

And that’s exactly what makes them amazing VCs.

In the same way their well-thought-out opinions sometimes end up being wrong, they sometimes end up being very right. And in VC being right once will make up for being wrong 100 times.

Fundamentally, the role of a VC is to decide where to put money. To do that, you’ll need to have or develop clear and strong opinions about the world, and at the same time adopt the mind of a learner, accepting that you’re wrong most of the time.

Starting to develop your well-thought-out, clear and interesting views of the world today will help you stand out amongst the other 1,000 individuals looking for the same thing as you (a job in VC).

Having clear opinions is easier than you think, because there is a ton of data out there to help you with it. Additionally, you’re betting on the future, not the present. This means that - in the short-term - nothing you’ll come up with as your ‘view on the world’ will be right or wrong. It will just be you. So, let’s get to work!

One of the most important things for a VC is their investment thesis. Defined as “the strategy by which a Venture Capital professional (or fund) makes money for the fund investors”, your thesis will be a guideline / set of principles that will drive your decisions as an investor.

While many investors see their thesis as the ‘group of industries or categories they are interested in’, it doesn’t need to be limited to that.

Many VCs have theses about the types of founders they look for and their personalities, the types of business models they like or the geographies they believe are undervalued by other VCs. Having your own thesis (written or very clearly expressed verbally when questioned) can increase your chances of breaking into VC significantly.

Read these well-articulated investment theses

• a16z AI in bio and health thesis

• a16z fintech thesis

• Bedrock capital thesis

• USV Thesis

• Nakul Mandan (x-Lightspeed)’s Thesis

• Stride.vc’s Thesis

Write your own personal thesis

You may never end up sending it to anyone as a written file, but I found that writing down your thesis is a fantastic exercise that forces you to dig much deeper into “why you love tech”.

What would you be like as an investor? If you wanted to put money to work, how would you do it and why?

I suggest taking days to do it. Keep updating it every time you get new ideas and you come to new visions of the world as you master the following hacks. The format doesn’t matter. It could be on Google Docs, on Notion, on your laptop’s notes, handwritten in your diary or anywhere you want. What matters is that you make a conscious effort about it.

INSIDER TIPS

No pedigree? Here’s the 4th path into VC (Jason Shuman, Partner at Primary)

This week’s tip comes from Jason Shuman, Partner at Primary Venture Partners.

Jason didn’t have any of the “classic” VC boxes checked - no Ivy League degree, no successful exit, no brand-name startup on his resume. When he asked a VC how someone like him could possibly get in, the answer was simple: “make yourself invaluable before you have the job.”

So that’s exactly what he did. For four months, he:

• Sourced the best deals in Boston - for free and sent them to VCs in New York

• Devoured every book, S-1, equity research report, and funding announcement he could find

• Wrote investment theses and market breakdowns and shared them with every VC he met

• Built lists of potential hires and customer intros for each VC’s portfolio companies

And he drove Uber at night to pay the bills.

A decade later, he’s a Partner. His takeaway? There’s no “normal path” into VC - the people who make it are simply obsessed.

The lesson: Don’t wait for the job title to start doing the job. Source deals, write theses, make intros. Show up as an investor before anyone pays you to be one.

VC CRAFTER’S PICKS

Must read posts, articles on VC, startups & AI

• How to identify VC job opening ahead of time (Insider tips). (Link)

• What’s your superpower - Sourcing, Selecting, or Servicing ? (Link)

• The Guy Kawasaki’s test that tells you if you’ll make it in VC. (Link)

• AI hiring paradox: What 21,000 companies reveal. (Link)

• What should founders never automate with AI? The signal vs. repetition framework. (Link)

VC JOB BOARD

27+ VC job opportunities - internship to full time job roles

• Head of fund accounting - Stepstone Group | USA - Apply Here

• Associate or Senior Associate - Bessemer Partner | USA - Apply Here

• VC Fellow - V11 | Remote - Apply Here

• Portfolio & Ecosystem Analyst Intern - Motion Venture | Singapore - Apply Here

• Investor - Superseed | UK - Apply Here

• Principal - ICMG Group | India - Apply Here

• Ventures Analyst/ Associate - plug and Play tech center | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Primary VC | USA - Apply Here

• Associate, Healthcare (SF based) - B Capital | USA - Apply Here

• VP — Finance & Compliance - Transition VC | India - Apply Here

• Senior Associate - ICONIQUE CAPITAL | USA - Apply Here

• Ventures Associate - Plug and Play Tech Center | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Associate / Analyst - Flashpoint | UK - Apply Here

• Hard Tech Investment Associate - Upfront Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Engine Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Senior Venture Studio Analyst - Atlantic Health System | USA - Apply Here

• Talent Investor - Associate - Entrepreneur First | India - Apply Here

• Associate, Life Sciences - General Atlantics | USA - Apply Here

• Venture Investment Manager - AMD | USA - Apply Here

• Partner 16, Partner 18 - a16z | USA - Apply Here

• Principal - 2150 VC | UK - Apply Here

• Marketing Associate - Turbostart | India - Apply Here

• Finance Intern - 0g Labs | Remote - Apply Here

• Investment Associate / Analyst - Flashpoint VC | USA - Apply Here

• VC Investment Intern - First Momentum Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Associate - Antler | UK - Apply Here

• Finance Director - AI Fund | USA - Apply Here

Want to feature any VC opportunity of your firm, just reply to this newsletter edition or comment down.

Many more newsletter edition to comes. Stay tuned!

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• The Breakdown- What’s your superpower - Sourcing, Selecting, or Servicing ?

• 25+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities.

🎙️ Announcement

This week, we’ll be publishing

• curated resources and practical guides to help you learn venture capital from the basics.

• We’ll cover VC interview questions, how to answer them,

• resume formats, and everything else you need to prepare better for VC jobs and internships.

Stay tuned.

THE BREAKDOWN

What’s your superpower - Sourcing, Selecting, or Servicing ?

As an aspiring venture capitalist, you’ve probably heard that passion for tech is just the starting point.

But what does it really take to stand out and land a role at a VC firm?

Let’s dive into the three core areas where you need to show your potential:

1. Sourcing: Finding the Next Big Thing

Sourcing is all about discovering promising startups before everyone else does. It’s like being a talent scout, but for companies instead of athletes or musicians. Here’s how you can level up your sourcing game:

• Build a killer network: Attend startup events, join entrepreneurship clubs, and connect with founders on LinkedIn. The more people you know, the more likely you are to hear about exciting new companies.

• Develop a niche: Maybe you’re passionate about fintech, or you know the ins and outs of AI. Becoming an expert in a specific area can help you spot trends and opportunities others might miss.

• Get creative: Don’t just rely on the usual channels. Maybe you can find the next unicorn by scouring GitHub for interesting projects or keeping an eye on academic research that could lead to groundbreaking startups.

2. Selecting: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

Once you’ve found potential investments, you need to figure out which ones are worth betting on. This is where your analytical skills come into play. To improve your selecting abilities:

• Study successful companies: Look at the early days of today’s tech giants. What made them stand out? What red flags did others miss?

• Practice due diligence: Even if you’re not making real investments yet, analyze startups as if you were. Dig into their financials, market potential, and team dynamics.

• Develop a framework: Create your own set of criteria for evaluating startups. This could include things like market size, competitive advantage, and founding team experience.

But this thing - come with experience….

3. Servicing: Adding Value Beyond the Check

Great VCs don’t just provide money - they actively help their portfolio companies succeed. To excel in servicing:

• Offer tangible skills: Maybe you’re a whiz at digital marketing or have experience scaling sales teams. Identify concrete ways you can help startups grow.

• Be a connector: Introduce founders to potential customers, employees, or partners. Your network can be incredibly valuable to young companies.

• Stay informed: Keep up with the latest trends and best practices in startup management. The more knowledge you have, the more valuable your advice will be.

Remember, VC firms are looking for people who can bring something unique to the table. By focusing on either of these three areas, you’ll be well on your way to landing that dream VC role.

We’ll be sharing more in our upcoming newsletter editions to help you build a stronger foundation across every area of VC.

Also, tell us in the comments: what’s your superpower.

A lot of VCs read this newsletter, and one of them might reach out to you for an internship or job opportunity.

VC JOB BOARD

25+ VC job opportunities - internship to full time job roles

Read more

• The Breakdown- Guy Kawasaki’s test: Are you right for VC?

• Insider Tips - “Identify job openings ahead of time” - VC Partner

• 20+ Venture Capital Job Opportunities.

• The Reading List on startups, tech & venture capital.

THE BREAKDOWN

Guy Kawasaki’s Venture Capital Aptitude Test (VCAT): Are you right for Venture Capital?

Many aspiring VCs think landing the job is just about having a flashy degree, a polished LinkedIn profile, and a sudden desire to fund the next big thing. They blindly jump into the application grinder, hoping for the best.

But here is a reality check.

Before you spend months chasing a role, you need a framework to see if you are actually cut out for the trenches of venture capital.

Guy Kawasaki’s The Venture Capital Aptitude Test (VCAT) to decide whether they are right for the venture capital.

Guy Kawasaki was an early employee at Apple and later served as an Apple Fellow. In 1997, he co-founded the VC firm Garage Technology Ventures and served as managing director for a long period of time.

While working with VC firms, he received daily emails from aspiring VCs that typically read something like:

I’m about to graduate from college where I majored in economics. I’ve always been interested

[what does “always” mean for a twenty-something year old, but I digress…] in business and entrepreneurship and ran my school’s entrepreneurship club. I’ve been working as an analyst for Goldman, Sachs, and now I’d like to get into the venture capital business to further my understanding of entrepreneurship and to help startups achieve success by tapping into my knowledge base. I am adept with PowerPoint, Excel, and PhotoShop.

Kawasaki Shared -

“They see a wonderful job: going to cocktail parties and networking events, flying in private jets, and getting sucked up to by entrepreneurs while pulling down a base salary of $500,000/year plus a piece of the upside of selling a YouTube for $1.6 billion. Who wouldn’t want such a job? (Frankly, I would too.)

First, a rare moment of Guy-Kawasaki humility: I am by no means “proven” as a venture capitalist. I’ve been in this game for about ten years, but I don’t have the mega-hit that “makes” a fund. Thus, I may not be a source of good advice about getting into this business, but when has the lack of knowledge stopped a blogger?

Regardless, here’s my advice to all the Biffs, Sebastians, Brooks, and Tiffanys who want to be kingmakers:

“Venture capital is something to do at the end of your career, not the beginning. It should be your last job, not your first.”

My theory is that when you’re young, you should work eighty hours a week to create a product or service that changes the world. You should not sit in board meetings listening to an entrepreneur explaining why she missed her numbers while you read email on a Blackberry and intermittently spew forth gems like, “You should partner with MySpace; I can also introduce you to a few of the losers in our portfolio.”

Furthermore, entrepreneurs should view any young person who opted for venture capital over “real world” experience with contempt. Why would you want advice from someone whose background consists of working in a college bookstore or cranking spreadsheets at an investment bank? Financial models are almost totally irrelevant because there’s no financial wizardry involved in making a good product and selling the heck out of it.

Here’s the Venture Capital Aptitude Test (VCAT) to help people decide whether they are right for the venture capital business.

Part I: Work Background

What is your background?

• Engineering (add 5 points)

• Sales (add 5 points)

• Management consulting (subtract 5 points)

• Investment banking (subtract 5 points)

• Accounting (subtract 5 points)

• MBA (subtract 5 points)

The ideal venture capitalist has an engineering or a sales background. Engineering is useful because it helps you understand the technology that you’re investing in—for example, is the entrepreneur trying to defy the laws of physics? Sales is useful because every entrepreneur has to introduce a product and sell it. For the third time in this blog, let me say, “Sales fixes everything.”

The three worst backgrounds for a venture capitalist are management consulting, investment banking, and accounting. Management consulting is bad because it leads you to believe that implementation is easy and insights are hard when the opposite is true in startups. Investment banking is bad because it leads you to believe that everything can be reduced to cells on a spreadsheet and that companies should be built for Wall Street, not customers. Moreover, investment bankers are oriented towards doing deals, not building companies. Accounting is bad because it leads you to believe that history not only repeats itself, it predicts the future.

Finally, there is the issue of the pertinence of an MBA to venture capital. The upside is that such a degree can provide additional tools and knowledge (such as calculating that 25% of $1.6 billion is $400 million) to help you make investment decisions and to assist entrepreneurs. The downside is that earning this degree (and I have one) causes most people to develop the hollow arrogance of someone who’s never been tested. All told, the downside of an MBA outweighs the upside.

Part II: First-Hand Experiences

You may have been in the right places, but you also need the right experiences in those places. Specifically, have you gone through these?

• Been kicked in the groin by a major, long-lasting economic downturn, so that you know how powerless you are. (add 1 point)

• Worked at a successful startup, so that you can speak first-hand about the ecstasy of entrepreneurship. (add 1 point)

• Worked at a failed startup, so that you understand three things: first, how hard it is to achieve success; second, that the world doesn’t owe you a thing; and third, what it’s like to be fired or laid off. (add 3 points)

• Worked at a public company, so that you know what the end goal looks like, warts and all. (add 1 point)

• Held a CEO position, so that you have this fantasy experience out of your system and will not try to run the startup from a board position. (add 2 points)

• Been an angel investor with your own money, so that you understand the fiduciary responsibility of investing other people’s money. (add 2 points)

Part III: Necessary Knowledge

Finally, can you answer these questions for entrepreneurs? Because this is the kind of advice that entrepreneurs need. (Don’t worry: many current venture capitalists would fail this part.)

• How do I introduce a product with no budget? (add 2 points)

• How do I determine whether there’s really a market demand for my product? (add 1 point)

• What do I do if customers hate our first product? (add 1 point)

• How do I get Walt Mossberg to return my call? (add 2 points)

• How do I get to the folks who run Demo? (add 1 point)

• How do I get a plug in TechCrunch? (add 1 point)

• How do I get the folks at Fox Interactive to return my call? (add 1 point)

• How do I dominate a segment when there are five other companies doing essentially the same thing? (add 2 points)

• How much time, energy, and money should I spend on patent protection? (add 1 point)

• We bet on the wrong architecture for our product; what do I do now? (add 2 points)

• What kind of people should I hire: young, old, unproven, proven, cheap, expensive, local, remote? (add 1 point)

• How do I get them to leave their current jobs without throwing a lot of money at them? (add 2 points)

• How do I tell my best friend that he can’t be chief technical officer just because he was a cofounder? (add 2 points)

• How do I get to the buyer at BestBuy to return my call? (add 1 point)

• How do I handle a customer who wants to send back his purchase for a full refund? (add 1 point)

• How do I fire people? (add 2 points)

• How do I lay people off? (add 2 points)

Results

Here’s how to assess your readiness to become a venture capitalist:

• 40 or more points: Contact major investors and tell them you’re raising a new fund.

• 35 to 39 points: Reach out to top VC firms and let them know you’re available.

• 25 to 34 points: Send your resume to many venture capitalists and hope for the best.

• 24 points or less: Keep working to improve your score and continue flying on budget airlines.

Here’s the bottom line: You should become a venture capitalist after you’ve had the shiitake kicked out of you. This will yield at least two positive results: First, you’ll stand out from the full-of-shiitake artists who entered the business when they were young. Second, you’ll really be able to help your portfolio companies—which is what venture capital should be all about.

Instead of focusing on point systems, I suggest understanding what skills and experience you need to become a VC. Don’t rush. Learn and keep challenging yourself. My consistent advice is to work in a startup before considering venture capital.

INSIDER TIPS

“Identify job openings ahead of time” - VC Partner

Read more

Almost a year and a half since we last wrote something here at Break Into VC by VC Crafters.

And honestly… some of you probably forgot you even subscribed 😅

But over the last few months, I kept getting messages from students, founders, operators, and aspiring investors asking the same thing:

“How do I actually break into venture capital?”

That reminded me why we started this newsletter in the first place.

So… we’re finally back.

For those who are new here - quick intro:

I’m Sahil, founder of Minimal Ventures, a venture studio. Over the years, I’ve worked across different roles in venture capital, from associate to partner, while also building communities, SaaS business and startup media platforms.

One thing I consistently noticed: A lot of smart people want to enter VC, but most struggle because they lack the right guidance, network, roadmap, or insider understanding of how the industry actually works.

That’s exactly why we started Break Into VC newsletter.

And now we’re restarting it with a much clearer vision. Going forward, you’ll see:

• VC job/internship opportunities

• VC interview preparation guides

• Venture capital frameworks & lessons

• Investor breakdowns

• Startup analysis

• Fund modeling concepts

• Advice from real investors/operators

• Practical insights to become a better investor

Even if you’re already angel investing, I think this content will still help you think more like an investor.

Some exciting news as well: We’re also working on a premium VC Crafters platform that will include:

• structured guides,

• templates,

• VC learning resources,

• previous content,

• and much deeper educational material from scratch.

More on that very soon 👀

In the meantime, if you missed some of our older evergreen editions, here are a few good ones to start with:

• The six most popular venture capital interview questions (and how to answer them) (Link)

• How the Venture Capital Fund Cycle Works? - VC Treadmill. (Link)

• Why it’s important to develop your opinion / thesis about the world? - The most important skill that Every VC Job Seeker Should Have. (Link)

(You can explore older editions directly from our archive.)

Also - if you’re interested in startups, investing, and founder insights beyond VC careers:

We also run:

• Venture Curator

• Venture Daily Digest

Together, they’re read by 100,000+ founders, investors, and operators globally.

And finally… If there’s any topic you want us to cover in upcoming editions, just reply to this email.

I read the replies personally.

Excited to rebuild this with all of you again.

— Sahil S.

P.S. If you know someone trying to break into venture capital, feel free to forward this email to them :)

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