August 29th, 2009
Not Exactly "Wet Hot American Summer", But Close: My Summer as a VC Intern
School starts up again in ten days.
Despite the fact that this is more than likely my last “first day of school” EVER (scary thought) I am still dreading the “OMG how was your summer?!” bombarding that one gets at the beginning of the school year. Here’s my summary for your consumption. I’ll try to include more than the required sound byte: “I was in NYC working here, and it was great.” Cause I was, and it was.
So what did I get out of a summer working in VC?
Three main take-aways:
1. A summer is just long enough to figure out that you’ve got a lot to learn
Ten weeks go by, and right at the moment when you feel like you’re starting to “get it” it’s over. I am pumped for the class “Early Stage Capital” this fall where I’ll continue to chip away at the intricacies of term sheet math and excel models. For someone whose finance experience before school was exactly zero, this sort of thing excites me. Perhaps I should not admit to such things in a public forum.
2. New York Startup Forecast: Rosy
If the launch of the First Growth Venture Network wasn’t a huge give-away that there’s a lot of excitement around the NYC startup scene let me say it again: THERE IS.
After starting off the summer at Internet Week, I went to one packed-house event after another all summer until it was beat into my nay-saying little head that yes, people DO want to start companies in one of the most expensive cities in the whole world.
While New York lacks the informal advising/hacking culture of the Valley, it makes up for this through the fact that every other industry has solid representation in NYC. A clothing startup that wants to do deals with designers? You can just trot down to their studios. An art website that wants to feature gallery work? The subway to Chelsea will get you there.
Ultimately, startups need something that will provide momentum. I think – contrary to the popular Valley-centric belief that it’s “here or nowhere” – there are a lot of different ways to create momentum and one is having access to the best + biggest players in many, many different industries. No place better than NYC for that.
3. Early-Stage Investing is about People
What I found so heinously unattractive about finance jobs (for the 2.5 seconds that I was considering working at a bank) is that I saw it as high-class paper pushing. You don’t get to really know people. It’s about excel and ratios and presentations and deals, but not really about people. Early-stage investing is mostly people-focused. It’s about getting to know a team and assessing not only what they’re building but how they will build a successful company.
I believe this is what separates really good VCs from the rest – the ability to not only spot a market-crushing business model or technology but the ability to pick out a winning team.
This is not something one can learn in a summer.
So that was my summer. There were some other key moments, but I need to leave some items for the first-day-of-school excitement. I even got a new haircut.