My Summer in Venture Capital
I. Getting Started
Even before I got to business school, I was warned about the “three-fold pivot”: switching countries, industries, and roles all at once is said to be too much. Stick to two at most, is the conventional wisdom. But embracing big changes and dispensing with conventional wisdom were exactly why I wanted to go to business school in the first place: I wanted to break into Venture Capital in the place that’s shaped how the world thinks about entrepreneurship. Besides, the thrill of uncertainty and the challenge of adapting to change have always energized me. There’s joy in the process for me, not just in the end result.
Landing an internship in U.S. venture capital as an international, Latina woman was hard, but a combination of factors made it possible. I won’t go into too much detail, but I will name a few things:
- Luck: definitely the most important factor, though it’s certainly true that in order to get lucky, I had to be able to identify an opportunity when it arose. In a few words: luck is where timing meets preparation.
- Introspection: multiple conversations with myself trying to figure out, what am I intellectually curious about? What am I whole-heartedly passionate about? What am I good at? Finding the intersection of those three was definitely not an easy task.
- Extrospection: what does the ecosystem around me look like? Who are the relevant students, professors and alumni at Cal (and beyond) I can reach out to? What are my classmates working on and how can I be helpful? Finally, once I found Bee Partners, I scraped every resource I could find to get clarity on their investment thesis, the types of companies they invested in, and who they were as people.
During this process, networking in a way that felt genuine to me helped tremendously. I’m definitely someone who prefers depth over breadth, which though a slower process can add a lot of value in the end. More importantly, I see meeting new people and helping them out as an end on its own; not as a means to “something”. I’m energized by meeting new people, especially those who have a compelling story and a clear vision and mission of what they want to do, regardless of what that might be. I thoroughly enjoy those conversations and don’t necessarily look for something more at the outset.
II. Bee Partners
I met Kira Noodleman during the fall of 2020. She was one of three panelists at a conference I co-organized with the Berkeley Female Founder and Funder’s leadership team. We were split into breakout rooms and I ended up with her and a third person who had to drop early on. Kira immediately impressed me with her clever thinking and sharp insights, so well combined with her warmth and approachableness. She encouraged me to apply as Bee Partners’ summer intern, and to look past the “strong preference towards CS bachelor degree” box I didn’t feel I checked, as women so often fail to do.
There were many things that got me excited about Bee even before I got started. Just as founders and investors look for culture fit, so should you. There are multiple differentiations between VC funds, many of them a lot more subtle than industry, stage, and geography and it’s up to you to decide what to figure out and how to figure it out.
Bee caught my attention for several reasons: their provocative Machines Will Win thesis, translated into the different vectors, which in turn mapped really well on the frontier curve of innovation. By digging through this material in depth, I got to know the team’s ethos before meeting them. This idea of being able to peek not just into their industry insights, but also into their investment analysis framework was refreshing. Rather than just another broad-visioned fund, I saw depth of thought and a structured and data-driven team.
I had heard that venture capital can be a lonely path and that there’s little hand-holding in the process. While I think it’s true that proactive thinking is necessary in any role, it becomes particularly important in Venture Capital, where time is everyone’s worst enemy. The moment I understood that an investor’s opportunity cost can be measured by a startup’s potential, I realized why it was so important to figure out things on my own. Having said that, the Bee Team made sure from the start that I felt part of the team, and as the summer progressed and trust was gained, my responsibilities expanded throughout the diligence process, into portfolio support, and other longer-term projects and publications.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned when thinking about my next career move it’s to always optimize for people. Brand names and a good compensation are definitely important, but it’s the team you work closely with that ultimately determines career success and growth. I can’t stress this enough, and I’m thankful for my previous managers and employers who showed me how important this is. This is exactly why I applied for the Bee internship, and my expectations in this regard were spot on.
Kira has been an incredible friend and mentor, pulling me into every strategic project she thought might pique my interest: a pricing strategy for a new product in a new market, ways to finance a startup’s thin-margined customers, and others. Tim, an eight-time founder with insatiable curiosity, brought me into some of his projects: supporting a founder with international market-entry strategy and brainstorming and building a faster, better way to handle top-of-funnel deal flow. Garrett encouraged me to be an active participant in the investment team. He pulled me into important founder meetings and supported my involvement throughout the diligence process, regarding me as a true partner. I wrote multiple investment memos, spent many hours doing market research, and met several experts thanks to the tasks he asked me to lead. Michael, as busy as he is, met with me weekly to answer my questions. I built an agenda throughout the week as things came up and we tackled them during our conversations. Overall, the team’s strong orientation towards detail, their deep and expansive networks, but most of all the passion with which they do their work and roll up their sleeves with entrepreneurs is what makes the Bee Partners model a true Founder-investor partnership.
III. DRF Female Investor Track
In addition to my Bee Partners’ internship, I’m eternally grateful for the opportunity to have been part of Dorm Room Fund’s Female Investor Track, a three-week masterclass to help women who are starting their careers in venture transition and grow in the industry. As of 2021, fewer than 13% of decision makers in VC are women and though this represents a material increase since the 8–9% we had seen in previous years, we’re still a long way from parity. Bringing more women into VC is not a matter of us against them: it’s a matter of incorporating different perspectives to make better decisions. Ever since I was very young, I was drawn to books in which a female protagonist overcomes improbable odds. In my career, I’ve ridden that childhood interest into joining industries where women are underrepresented. I’m driven to think beyond myself and I want to break into Venture to add my share to the cause, and build a future more equitable for female founders and funders.
Beyond the tangible investment analysis framework I built during the FIT program, I was gifted with the introduction to an outstanding community of female investors across the country, both seasoned and amateurs, all with the same purpose at heart: opening the doors to more passionate, eager, and driven female investors, who can raise the bar in VC. I want to highlight Sreya Parakala’s hard work organizing the program and Claire Smilow, my DRF mentor, for her detailed insights and support. I’m sure we’ll continue to exchange ideas, deal flow, and a great conversation. Once again, the value I walk away with after participating in this program is the people and the human connections that will remain.
I can’t wait to see what this second year of my MBA at Berkeley Haas has to offer and what I can make of these opportunities. I will continue to work with Bee Partners throughout the semester and be actively involved in giving back, sharing the opportunities and experiences lived thanks to Berkeley’s student-led groups, its wonderful professors, and amazing student and alumni community.
