How to get a job at a venture capital firm

There is a version of this question that has no useful answer. "How do I get into VC" is like asking how to get into medicine: the honest reply is another question, which is what part of it do you actually want to do.

So this guide is a sequence rather than a list of tips. Five decisions, in the order they matter. Get the first one right and the rest gets considerably easier.

1. Decide which job you actually want

Most people say venture capital and mean one specific thing: sitting in a partner meeting, arguing for a company they found. That is the investing track, and it is roughly five percent of what a firm hires for. Of 298 roles open across 63 firms on the capital side, 22 are investing roles.

The rest are operations, finance, engineering, marketing, legal, design and platform. Inside a fund. Same building, same Monday meeting, different job.

Neither is the correct answer. But they are different careers with different doors, and the single most common mistake is spending a year applying to the narrow one without ever asking whether the wide one is what you wanted.

A rough test. If the part you want is being right about companies, you want the investing track and you should read why most of those roles are never posted before you plan anything. If the part you want is being close to founders early, in a small team, with real ownership of something, the operating seats do that too, and they are hiring now.

2. Pick the kind of firm, not the logo

"Venture firm" covers organisations that do genuinely different work and hire genuinely different people.

A classic fund raises from limited partners and writes cheques. Its hires are investors, platform and finance. A venture studio starts companies itself and staffs them, so it hires operators and founding engineers, and the equity you are offered is usually in one of its companies rather than in the studio. An accelerator runs cohorts, so it hires programme, community and partnerships people. A fund of funds backs other managers and is the most finance heavy corner of the market. A family office invests one family's money, quietly, with a small team.

On our list, venture studios held more open roles than classic funds did. If you have been applying only to firms whose names you recognise from the news, you have been applying to the smallest and most competitive slice of the market.

Read the kinds side by side before you pick.

3. Build the evidence before you need it

Venture hires on demonstrated judgment, and judgment is hard to assert. The people who get in have usually done something before they applied that a partner can look at.

That thing is not a cover letter. It is one of:

• A track record. Angel cheques, a syndicate, a scout position. Small amounts are fine. Elad Gil↗ puts the incentive plainly: if you want to eventually work at a venture fund, the VC partners will look at your scout track record. He also warns that a bad early record is worse than none, so take it seriously from the first cheque.
• Public thinking. A market map, a thesis, a newsletter that a partner in that sector would actually read. This is the cheapest and slowest of the three.
• Operating proximity. You built or ran something. Kate Stern↗ of Homebrew is worth reading on what changes when you cross over, including the part people do not expect: venture can be pretty lonely compared with working at a startup, where most of your success is a function of your contribution to a team.

Whatever you pick, it needs to be adjacent to the fund you want. Generic evidence of being smart is not scarce. Evidence that you already think about the thing they invest in is.

4. Get in front of the right person

Roles get filled through people. That is not gatekeeping, it is arithmetic: a team of twelve filling one seat starts with the people they trust and usually stops there.

Lotti Siniscalco↗ of Emergence Capital gives the practical version. If you want to work at a particular fund and do not know anyone who can introduce you to a partner, go and build a relationship with someone who can. That is a project measured in months.

Two things make this less grim than it sounds. Small firms read their own email, and many firms hiring on our list have exactly one role open, which means no talent team stands between you and the person deciding. And a specific, useful, unsolicited piece of work lands far better than a request for coffee.

5. Survive a process that has no shape

Venture recruiting is off-cycle and unstructured. There is no equivalent of the banking calendar. A process can take a month if the firm is under pressure or drift for a quarter if it is not.

What you will usually meet: a screen, a case or market map exercise, two or three partner conversations, and references that often include founders you have worked with. Claire Biernacki↗ of BBG Ventures sets a fair bar for the technical part: she is not looking for candidates to nail it, but expects a basic understanding of management fees, MOIC, and how carried interest is calculated. If those words are unfamiliar, start here.

Then the part nobody warns you about. Tunde Adekeye↗ landed a fund role after three years, more than thirty interview processes, two internships and moving country three times. That is not a cautionary tale. It is a fairly typical successful outcome, and it is worth knowing the shape of it before you are six months in and reading your own progress as failure.

Before you commit, know what the job is

Two things about venture careers are widely known inside the industry and rarely said to candidates.

Junior seats often do not lead anywhere inside the same firm. Mark Suster↗ of Upfront Ventures describes the associate role as usually a two to three years and out type of job. Fred Wilson↗ has been saying the same about Union Square Ventures for over a decade: the job gets stale after a few years and, since they do not have a career path, people leave after a couple of years. Clay Norris↗ puts it bluntly: partner track roles are not as popular as you are led to believe.

This is not a reason to avoid the job. It is a reason to take it for the reps and the network rather than for a promotion that may not exist, and to ask what the last three people in the seat went on to do.

The wins are rarer than the outside view suggests. Kate Stern again, on the least discussed part of the work: many portfolio companies do not become runaway successes, and everyone spends more time talking about the wins than the losses.

What to do this week

Pick one of these and do it properly rather than doing all four badly.

1. Look at which firms have a seat open right now and notice how many are firms you had not heard of.
2. Read what each level actually means, including how few roles state one.
3. If you are on the operating side already, look at what funds hire outside the investing track.
4. If you run a firm and want your roles read by people who came here on purpose, add your board. It costs nothing.