VC Expert Interview - Advice for a Career in VC
- 03:46
Advice for a career in VC from a VC expert.
Downloads
No associated resources to download.
Glossary
Career Tips Careers Venture CapitalTranscript
Yeah, so venture is a very interesting industry. People come from very varying different backgrounds and walks of life. It's an apprenticeship, so a lot of it is learning through experience, and I find that that's quite enriching, having other people in the industry who are all coming from different experiences. And so the two things that you are trying to bottom out is a, do you enjoy doing this? At least for me it was, do I enjoy doing this? Am I any good at it? And both of those are important to answer for you to be like, right, this is what I want to do for the next, next 10 years or 15 years, or however long. And so the proxies that I would say that you should look at answering for yourself, or the questions you should look at answering for yourself to get comfortable on whether this is the, the route for you is A, you know, you have to be comfortable with context switching because there's lots of context switching. As I alluded to previously in the conversation, you could be going from like a board meeting to then writing an IC paper to then being on a panel, on a panel discussion. And so these are very different things and often enough they'll all happen in the same day, in the same day. And so you're constantly switching contexts. And so that's important. Second thing is be comfortable with long feedback cycles. So like, as I mentioned, you don't know how good you are seven, 10 years into, into venture as as you start getting data points and some of the earlier investments that you've made. And so you have to be comfortable with long feedback cycles. I think I personally feel that there is a huge extrovert nature to venture capital as an industry because you are sort of building a network. You have to maintain the maintain and keep the network warm. And that, that piece means that, you know, at least in the earlier years of your career, you're going to a lot of events, you're going to a lot of conferences, and so, and you're meeting lots of new people every day. And that was something that was a big change for me, going from a lab scientist who then actually moving to, you know, sort of venture where I have to build a network. So I think if you're someone who thrives on like being around people, talking to people, new ideas, then this would be an interesting career for you. I think if you are naturally very curious and love learning, this is like, yeah, this is probably one of the best places to be if you are, if you are someone who loves learning about new things. So by function of what I do, I know a little about a lot because every time a company comes and pitches to me, I get that much more information about a new sector, a new pain point, a new industry. And so I find that quite enriching. So if you enjoy that, that's something that you, you know, venture is, venture is potentially something for you. And then finally there's a huge element of luck. We go in so early, there are a thousand reasons companies fail. You need the reason to get to conviction rather than, you know, as I always say, when people first join in venture and it's sort of like saying no all the time, it's easy to say no, it's hard to say yes because you've gotta find conviction in face of like thousands of risks. And so you have to be comfortable with risks. And then if you're going in a specialist, and I think this is probably more with a lens of a bio investor, you know, I think you certainly need that sort of specialism. And I built that, you know, more technically through my PhD, but also through then actually investing in that space along bio co-investors and actually diving into the business models in the space and spending a lot of time with entrepreneurs that built successes in that space to understand the novel and unique challenges of building biotech companies versus tech companies.