A day in the life of Jack, Venture Capital Analyst
What does a VC intern, analyst or associate do everyday? Following my articles about top questions and answers for a VC intern / analyst interview, here is a more fun and sarcastic deep dive into the (real) VC life. Enjoy.
Episode I: A day with Jack, VC analyst
Wednesday, 8am.
Jack wakes up. He dreamt all night about this amazing entrepreneur he zoomed yesterday (skype is so 2010’s). Jack thinks this one will be THE one. The one deal to finally become Associate. The entrepreneur is building an awesome SaaS startup which enables companies to automate everything, from refilling the paper in the toilets to sending ***** (comment below with your guess!). After 1 month as an Analyst, Jack projects himself as a Partner in the next few years. Before he will be turning 30 of course (to lower the industry average). But in the meantime, he is drinking the coffee his iPhone prepared automatically for 8.07am. Contrary to his best friend who is working as an analyst for JPMorgan, Jack does not care about his outfit. Short, T-shirt, Nike, EarPods, all good. Go.
Today he cannot work from home, because it is Wednesday. Big day. Aka investment committee day. He will try to get his first proposal through the day to submit a termshit. So he takes his electric scooter to reach the office. On his way, he is listening to this amazing podcast “How to become a Silicon Valley guru?”.
8.58am.
He reached the office before everyone else, but Jack still does not understand that no one cares about him being on time at the office. He should be on time for his meetings. Poor Jack. Internship time is over man, do not forget.
9.01am.
Jack is rehearsing his pitch in front of the startup panel list on The Wall (=the place where you find all the startups in which his firm invested). It is a way to motivate himself. It is his morning routine. Indeed, he really wants this deal to move further. He knows that one of his friend is also on the coup, but for another VC. BTW they cannot be friends anymore. NDA requirement. Sorry. Jack spent the last night refining his cohort analysis and market validation so that it is a NO brainer. The intern, Alfred (or Ben maybe?) helped him but his bottom up approach about 1% was not convincing at all. Jack had to do it all over again. Unit Economics looks great. x8. Jack is confident.
Quick look at Google calendar: 3am, investment committee meeting. Jack has less than 6 hours to refine his pitch and find experts to support the product, because Jack actually did not understand what the startup was doing. Yet, the pitch was great. He also needs to look up this co-founder who left his previous startup for a $10M package, why would he leave WeWalkDogs?
10.33am.
Jack finishes reading Morning Brew, one of his daily newsletter (well at least this one is a bit fun).
1.32pm.
After his 3rd Zoom of the day with an incredible entrepreneur (again, yes), Jack can finally head up to Creator, this new awesome automatic burger manufacturer. Well. After being served by a human (disappointing), Jack eats the burger while doing nothing special. He was supposed to eat with this Linkedin friend who works in M&A. He met him during one of the portfolio company exit. They promised to stay in touch. Well at least they tried. That’s HIW, « let’s stay in touch ». You know this feeling, do you?
2.17pm.
Time flies, Jack has to go back to polish his slides, VC is a Sales job after all. “Hey Siri, can you tell me how is Tesla’s marketcap compared to other big automakers?”
I am sorry. I am afraid I do not have the answer to that.
Thanks Siri. Looser.
3pm. Sharp.
Investment committee meeting. Jack did not have time to check the fonts and colours on all the slides. Let’s hope the GPs won’t see anything. Actually, the first one to present his investment opportunities is Jack. He did not have time to talk about his amazing cohort analysis, LTV, UE, and market analysis. The GP stops him “Jack, can you explain us what does this AI exactly do with dogs?”. (Well it put a dog photo on this article, so what?). Jack is having a hard time. He only got a few classes on AI during his Master in Global and Huge Economic Technology Transformation for Hype Omission (GETTHO) and he still does not understand the difference between AI and ML. “Jack, numbers are great, but start by understanding what these guys are doing. Next is Jacob”.
4.37pm.
Investment committee is over. That was a tough one. Jack is down. Really down. Not to mention that now he has nothing to do for the rest of the day. Well he could still scratch and analyse startups. But to get another NO, he does not feel really motivated. He remembers his time at the business school when he was dreaming about a VC job… Handling money, signing termshits, trying new tech, $$, going to TechCrunch… Well for now, Jack is mainly experiencing the loneliness, humbleness, and depressing mindset of working as a VC. It is not so fun after all. Poor Jack.
6pm.
Jack gets a vocal message inviting him for a dinner. But he won’t be able to make it. He has a meetup @7 followed by a networking event @8 with some of the best investors from the Valley: Sequoia, a16z, FF, Accel… and then he was invited as a host in a podcast #HowtoBreakIntoVC (Yes the link is a book). He plans to talk about how subscription based business models can disrupt the mobility industry and why Uber is not called Youbeurre (hope my French fellows will at least smile). All classic, all good.
9.44pm
Jack is home. Hopefully UberEats is still ON for a Wednesday. Poke-bowl or Veggie Burger? Jack finally falls in love with this new insect concept and is ready to try it.
10.23pm
The driver is late. As usual. And the insects are cold (well at least it means they are dead, right?). But Jack did not notice it because he is focusing now on his own startup. He wants to enter YC winter batch. He is sick of VCs. Until tomorrow at least.
Let’s stay in touch on LinkedIn.
BBB
Episode 2: A day in the lockdown life of Jack
Top Venture Capital intern/analyst interview questions.
Top Venture Capital intern/analyst interview answers.
(Photo by Victor Grabarczyk on Unsplash)
