a short thread on starting and managing venture careers, which is a far more nuanced topic than “become a VC profit ” 1/21

It's obviously an incredibly competitive industry, with a lot of different paths and methods to success. I'll discuss three main entry points focusing on "typical" VC backgrounds. 2/21

the three main “entry points” - early career, mid career, and late career. We will focus on the first two, because late career means people are asking you to join as a partner, and you probably don’t need this thread. 3/21

entry point 1: early career. there are two main tracks here.

“Business”: banking, consulting, VC analyst

“Technology”: pm/eng/product marketing at a high growth pre IPO co, or large respected logo (Google, Twitter, Uber, etc)

4/21

In both cases, you shouldn’t assume that this is your ticket into a long term venture career. Especially not if you’re at a smaller, non brand name fund. 5/21

The goal here is to learn the VC job, absorb as much as possible, and build your network like crazy. You have a business card that gets you access to people you have no business meeting. You can learn immense amounts from them. 6/21

Use this time to determine if you like the VC job, learn the fundamentals, and build relationships. If you source some companies that become immediate winners, your fund might want to keep you. 7/21

But in many cases, you’ll need to go elsewhere - either to another venture firm, or to an operating role. 8/21

If you go to another VC firm, you’ll want to find a place you can likely spend 10+ years. People don’t often work at more than 2 venture firms. 9/21

If you pursue an operating role, it’s your chance to take your venture network and access to find a really cool job. You may be an operator for the rest of your career, or you may use this as a rebrand to come back into venture in a more senior role (more on that later). 10/21

But do not feel that you need to stay in VC if you feel blocked on upward mobility. people will tell you that leaving VC is a high stakes decision because once you leave, it’s hard to get back. That is not true, in my experience (YMMV, of course). 11/21

Entry point 2: you have 5-8 years experience at a tech company, along the same lines as track 2 above (tech co with recognizable brand, as pm/eng/product marketing). 12/21

In this case, you have solid “operator” cred at one or two notable companies. Sometimes this also looks like a few yrs “business” and a few years “technology”. For people “curious” about VC, this is a great time to try it. 13/21

You’ll probably come in at mid level (sr associate, vp, principal; titles VERY firm dependent) - and get a few years to decide if you like the job. If you like it and your firm has you on partner track, great! 14/21

If you like it and you’re not partner track, lateral. “Operator cred” + “has invested” is a great combo to make you super attractive to other firms. Especially if your operator profile plugs a specific gap that they have at their firm (consumer, fintech, open source, etc). 15/21

At this stage it’s important to decide if you want to do venture or not. If you don’t it’s probably best to pull the plug around the two year mark and go back into operating - either joining or starting a company. 16/21

The plus side of this, and why joining a VC firm at this stage of a career is really useful, is that you get status elevating “VC cred”. There are a lot of Google/Uber/Twitter PMs - but there are very few that have been “blessed” by a venture firm. It gives you clout. 17/21

In some cases, if you’re 5-8 years in and don’t know what you want to do next, there’s an argument to be made that the chance to spend a few years at a venture firm might actually be the best move to find your longer term plan. 18/21

And there is no better perch to find your next job than as a part of a venture partnership that’s seeing the top companies being started, and has the pulse of where things are going. 19/21

The “late career” piece of this is… not useful to discuss. If you have people asking you to join as a partner or GP, you probably don’t need my help. 20/21

The TLDR is that getting into VC and making a career of VC are very different things. And you should not be afraid to leave VC and come back with more leverage at a later time. The more you operate, the more unique you’ll be, and the better of an investor you’ll likely be. 21/fin