Converting an intern role to full-time in VC with Abby Lyall (Quake Capital)
This week, we had the opportunity to talk with Abby Lyall, a senior associate at Quake Capital Partners. Quake is a seed-stage VC fund and accelerator program based in New York, LA, and Austin. The Quake team recently raised its second fund, and portfolio companies include DataGran, SwineTech, BabyQuip, and Abraxas Technologies.
Abby is a recent graduate from NYU’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, where she was captain of the Triathlon Club and worked with the Investment Analysis Group. While in college, Abby founded and ran MyDrop, an app to connect students to non-profits, and interned at Morgan Stanley and BlackRock. She started working for Quake during her junior year.
We talked to Abby about her experience interning in VC while in college, how she added value to the Quake team, and how she converted her internship to a full-time opportunity.
Can you tell us about what you were involved with in college, and how you developed an interest in startups and VC?
I’m from Ohio originally, and applied to NYU because I had wanted to live in New York my whole life! I ended up at NYU Stern for my undergraduate degree, and the culture there is very focused on getting into traditional finance roles — there weren’t many people exploring other paths. This was shocking for me. Coming from a small town in Ohio, I thought a business was running a store! I got sucked into the culture and was totally brainwashed by the investment banking thing, so I did all of the finance and investment clubs and went through the recruiting process.
To pad my resume, I entered the Stern Social Venture Competition, where I pitched a business idea for a $20k grand prize. My team ended up winning, and I started the business since we had that grant. It was a digital platform to connect high school students with volunteer opportunities. I ran it for two years, and we entered into some more competitions to get funding to do pilots with Long Island schools. It was such a great learning experience—I wouldn’t trade it for all the classes and degrees in the world.
Two years later, I was winding down the business but found I had become part of this great entrepreneurship community at NYU. I had previously met Brandon Maier through mutual connections at NYU, and he was starting a VC fund, Quake Capital — he was looking for interns for the coming year. He had been an entrepreneur and exited a company, and was now building this firm with three co-founders. I was really excited and jumped on board right away.
What was your time like working at Quake while also at NYU?
I started there when I was a junior, and spent a lot of time that year helping to build Quake from the ground up. I was the second employee, so I had tons of responsibility and was basically helping to build the accelerator from scratch. We didn’t even have an office yet, so I signed the Quake team into the NYU student center and we worked from there.
As the company grew, my role did also. I started off mostly doing university-focused things, like recruiting interns and running the social media. I gradually moved into more of a full-time role on the deals side. Now, I run operations, as well as source deal flow, bring on mentors, help our companies fundraise, and run events and demo day.
I did take three months off during my junior summer to do an internship at BlackRock. It’s a great company but I am not a corporate person, so it wasn’t a good cultural fit. Quake asked me if I wanted to come back, and I said yes right away. Some things are right for you and some things aren’t, and there is value in figuring that out and following it regardless of what everyone else around you is doing.
You work with a lot of students — what is your advice for young people looking to get into VC?
There’s a lot of obscurity around what VC is and what a VC does every day. A lot of intern candidates come in to interview in a suit talking about how much they want to be an investment banker. When you’re on the outside, it’s hard to understand that there are huge cultural differences between stages and industry verticals of VC. I love working with super high-growth, early stage, risky companies. There are a lot of investors who don’t love that risk and are more excited about building financial models and financing someone’s Series B round. The pathways to getting into that are very different.
I still believe that starting a company is the best way to do it. When you are out there fundraising for yourself, you are interfacing with a lot of investors, and many VCs only hire from within their own network. My job is 99% people — it’s phone, coffee, and emails. If you can get out to events and get to know people, that’s a great way to work your way into the industry. I was almost a founder in how early I got into Quake. If I had approached them later with my resume, it probably wouldn’t have worked out that well.
For students who are able to get an internship at a VC — what are your tips for adding value?
It really depends how committed you are to the internship. I didn’t have to get involved in Quake the way I did — I could have done the weekly tasks, posted some stuff on social media, and had a cool learning experience. But my goal was to really dig in, start some new initiatives, and get entrenched in every aspect of the day-to-day processes of running the accelerator. This ended up making me pretty valuable. When you’re a young person, you don’t always come with a lot of value, but you don’t need age and experience to be creative, reliable, work hard, and execute well.
This can work at a bigger company too, even though it’s a little bit harder. You just had to make your own mark and create things that are unique to you but valuable to others. It can be something as small and basic as an office process you make more efficient — even that can make an impact.
You organize several programs geared towards college students and recent grads (e.g. Collegiate Venture Program and University Investor Series). Why is it important to stay engaged with this demographic?
The University Investor Series is actually a great deal pipeline for us — two great deals from our last accelerator program came out of there. As a VC, I also think it’s important to have brand recognition among the younger generation, since they are the future. When we meet college entrepreneurs, they are already in the top tier of their peer group, since most people wouldn’t have the motivation to start a company. The odds are good that even if the company fails, they will end up doing something interesting later, and we hope to get the Quake name established with them.
It’s also important to make yourself a thought leader, regardless of what you are doing and how old you are. Because I’m young, the people I can inspire or influence in a big way are students. Being able to go to campuses and speak at clubs, or mentor university startups, is awesome because I get experience as a leader at a young age. Having a forum to be a mentor when I’m only 22 is really powerful, and I learn a lot from the people I work with.
We’d love your feedback on this post and other career questions we should cover — you can reach us on email at twins@crv.com or on Twitter @venturetwins.
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