Venture studios, corporate VC and family offices compared
Six kinds of firm that hire different people and pay in different currencies. Applying to all of them with one CV is the most common wasted year in this market.
4 minute read"Venture firm" covers organisations that do genuinely different work, hire genuinely different people, and pay in genuinely different currencies. Applying to all of them with one CV is the most common wasted year in this market.
Here is what separates them, and who each one actually hires.
The short version
| Kind | What it does | Hires most | Upside comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Venture capital | Raises a fund, backs founders | Investors, platform, finance | Carry, after a long wait |
| Venture studio | Starts companies itself | Operators, founding engineers, designers | Equity in one company you help build |
| Accelerator | Runs cohorts of early companies | Programme, community, partnerships | Salary, occasionally small carry |
| Corporate VC | Invests a parent's balance sheet | Investors with sector depth | Corporate bonus, rarely carry |
| Family office | Invests one family's capital | Finance, legal, small teams | Salary and discretion |
| Fund of funds | Backs other managers | Finance and diligence | Carry on a portfolio of funds |
Counts move daily. What does not move is the shape.
Venture capital
The default mental model, and a smaller share of the market than most people assume.
What the job is. Sourcing, diligence, portfolio support, and for most of the team, none of the above: on the boards we read, the largest function inside classic funds is finance, followed by operations and marketing.
What to know before joining. Junior investing seats are frequently fixed-term. Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures calls the associate role a two to three years and out job. Ask what the last three people did next.
Fund size changes the job more than brand does. Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures put the mechanism plainly: returns have suffered because funds have got very large, and it is hard to deliver fantastic results when you have a six hundred million dollar fund. A big fund is a different job, not a better one.
Venture studio
The kind most people have not considered and the one hiring hardest per firm.
What the job is. Studios start companies in-house and staff them. So the roles are founding engineer, venture designer, growth lead, entrepreneur in residence. Investing titles are rare and usually attached to a fund the studio also runs.
The equity question, and ask it before you sign. You are often being hired into a company that does not exist yet, with equity in that company rather than in the studio. Which entity your shares are in, and what happens if that company is shut down, are the two questions that matter and neither is on the job board.
Titles do not travel. Venture Designer, Talent Investor, Founding GTM, Entrepreneur in Residence. Two studios using the same words rarely mean the same job.
Accelerator
What the job is. Cohorts. So the hiring is programme delivery, community, partnerships and mentor networks, with a small investment team on top.
Good for. People who like running things and being around a lot of founders at once. It is one of the better places to learn breadth quickly.
Less good for. Anyone who wants to develop as an investor. The cheque sizes are small and standardised, so there is little judgment being exercised per deal.
Corporate VC
What the job is. Investing a parent company's balance sheet, usually with a strategic mandate as well as a financial one. Sector depth matters more here than anywhere else.
Why you rarely see one advertised. Corporate arms post internally first and go public late. Across the whole live corpus, organisations typed corporate venture capital accounted for two open roles. That is not a coverage gap so much as how the sector hires.
The compensation is different in kind. Corporate salary bands, corporate bonus, and usually no carry. More predictable, lower ceiling.
Family office
What the job is. Investing one family's capital, directly, with a small team and no fundraising cycle. Quiet, long horizons, and the widest brief per person of any kind on this list.
Who it suits. Finance and legal backgrounds, and people who are comfortable with discretion and without a public profile. There is no brand-building here.
The catch. A team of four means no ladder and no obvious next seat.
Fund of funds
What the job is. Backing other managers rather than companies. The most finance-heavy corner of the market: diligence on funds, LP reporting, portfolio construction, secondaries.
Why it is underrated as an entry point. You see the economics of the entire industry from the inside, which is an education you cannot get at a single fund. It is also a genuinely open door for people with audit, banking or fund accounting backgrounds. Read moving into venture from banking.
How to pick
Three questions, in order.
Do you want to build or to judge? Studios and accelerators build. Funds, corporate arms, family offices and funds of funds judge. This is the fork, and it matters more than any other consideration.
What currency do you want to be paid in? Salary, carry in a fund, or equity in one company. They behave completely differently and only one of them is predictable. Carry, explained.
How much ladder do you need? A four-person family office has none. A large fund has one that most junior people do not climb anyway.
Related
Compare the kinds by what they have open now, what each level does, or why most of these roles are never posted.