1 year at Playfair
It has now been a little over a year since I decided to take the plunge and move countries to join Playfair. As I reflected on the journey so far and all the insights I’ve gathered during the past year I thought I’d share some of my key lessons learned and tips.
I have always been a person with strong convictions and ideas about what I wanted to do in the future. Growing up, most kids dreamed about being an astronaut or police man but I was set on being a zoo-keeper. I was the kid who knew the names of all the animals and to whom the most prized Christmas gift was an animal encyclopedia instead of a Playstation 2 (the craze of any child back in the day). Nonetheless I’ve always been quite pragmatic so when at around 14 years old I realised that part of being a zoo-keeper was being involved in everything else besides the fun part of interacting with animals I decided to pivot into being a zoologist instead!
I first stumbled into startups in 2015 when I read about Farfetch becoming the first ever Portuguese unicorn. I was fascinated about the startup world and that took me down a rabbit hole that led to me to being that high-school student that was skipping school to attend Web Summit as a volunteer.
I then realised that my true passion lied with working with startups. During my undergraduate degree I reflected on the skills that I had and started to look for a job that fit that skill set.
I had an incessant curiosity as well as a passion for understanding and solving analytical problems, I was eager to find practical application of concepts and had a strong belief in the importance of fostering great and enduring relationships. Finding a career path that met all of these criteria and that valued these skills seemed like an impossible task.
Until I stumbled upon VC. The job of a VC was to me the embodiment of all that I was looking for.
I have also always had a strong passion for tech and realised that I wanted to understand what I was investing in and be able to dissect a company’s technical product and assess their innovative edge so I went on to study Machine Learning & AI in my Master’s degree as this was the area that fascinated me the most and where I saw the highest potential to disrupt the world as we see it.
Finding your HOME
Finding a team that shares the same values as well as a common understanding on how to work with founders is absolutely key. Without one of these you’ll always feel a certain level of disconnect or discrepancy between what you and your organisation stand for.
Finding such a team is incredibly difficult and you’ll definitely know when you’ve found the right team for you. I was lucky enough to find a team with the same values and work ethic in Playfair.
For example, for me it was very important to find a team that was founder centric to the core and that prioritised founder experience above everything (in a world where still to this day founders have to rely on warm-intros to be seen by VC’s and almost all inbound is totally disregarded). At Playfair we look at every single submission that comes through our website and commit to coming back to founders in less than 5 working days.
The day to day
By far the most common question I get from people that are looking to break into VC is “What does a day in the life of a VC look like?”.
Well, the answer can vary a lot depending on which fund you are in. Most funds and particularly the biggest ones tend to have a very hierarchical culture with clearly defined roles and tasks according to how senior you are.
Usually the analysts and associates tend to do all the sourcing of new investment opportunities and then hand them over to a partner who will lead the deal and build the relationship with the founder. Quite often analysts spend most of their day sourcing new investment opportunities and taking first calls. Once the first call is done they’ll usually hand over to more senior team members.
At Playfair one of our main defining aspects is exactly how our structure represents the opposite approach and is instead marked by a completely flat hierarchy where all team members source new investment opportunities, take 1st calls, participate in the due diligence process, write investment memos and are part of the investment committee regardless of seniority.
With that being said a typical week for me is usually focused on looking for new investment opportunities, taking first calls with founders and then discussing these companies with the Playfair Team for us to decide if we should progress or not.
In case a company moves forward in our process and moves into a second call we will typically focus on certain aspects of the business that particularly spiked our interest on the first call or that we’d like to explore further. Often times I end up being brought into some of the calls particularly when one of of the key focus areas for us is assessing the technological advancement and opportunity potential of the company given my background.
If after this we decide to move forward, we might proceed to write an investment memo and deeply research and get to know the company inside out. This is quite particular of Playfair’s approach given that the typical early-stage VC fund tends to write a 3-page investment memo whereas we usually end up writing an investment memo of 30–40 pages. We do this because even though we know that we’ll never know as much about the company as the founders we aim to get as close as possible to their level of understanding. It is also a process that helps us refine our decision making and be best placed post-investment to support the founders.
In essence, my typical week can vary depending on the opportunities we are currently looking at. In a week where we have a company going to investment committee I will be fully focused on deep diving into the company’s market opportunity, product, competition and other relevant areas to work on an investment memo with the deal team as well as preparing to present and discuss the relevant topics during the investment committee.
On another week I might be fully focused on finding and meeting great new founder teams.
Key Learnings
After a year in the team there are some key insights that have been instrumental to my understanding of what the VC job is about that I’d like to share with anyone looking to build a career in the industry.
- A VC’s scarcest resource is their time ⏰
In the beginning you will most likely always feel like you’re getting behind on work and sense that there’s always more that you could be doing. In fact you can always spend more time trying to find the next best founder team out there. VC is also one of the most proactive and initiative-driven jobs that exist so for good and for bad you’re going to have a lot of control on where you choose to focus and invest your time.
With so much happening on the day-to-day and unforeseeable opportunities that might pop-up you can easily feel overwhelmed and tempted into “motion paralysis”.
Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that “worrying is like paying a debt that you don’t owe”.
2. Sourcing 🔎
When you start your journey in VC one of your key responsibilities will no doubt be sourcing. Often the case, sourcing will actually be your main focus so you are expected to spend most of your time out there finding inspiring founders and companies that might be onto something great.
This might seem daunting at first but there are definitely great ways to help you find remarkable founders wether it be through accelerators, pitch events, LinkedIn outreach or via databases like Crunchbase or Dealroom.
Nonetheless the venture industry is among one of the most relationship-driven industries on the planet. The whole startup ecosystem is based on relationships so you should definitely start by reaching out to your peers in other venture funds and building your network.
In junior roles it is very common for people to come into VC with no prior experience or a network in the industry so you’ll find that juniors in other firms are quite open to meeting peers and grow together in the industry.
The first investment that I ever sourced at Playfair was a company that was referred to me by two people at different funds that I had met and built a connection with. On the second investment that I was involved in at Playfair we ended up co-leading the round with another fund that I had known from my Master’s in Switzerland.
3. Being a generalist
In the beginning of your VC career being a generalist is a privilege. As a generalist you’ll get exposure to lots of different sectors which will provide you with a steep learning curve and it will allow you to experiment and find out which sectors you’re most drawn to.
4. Being T-shaped
In VC you’ll need to be a T-shaped individual. You’ll need to have a good grasp and proficiency in many different areas and tasks but also have a spiky edge/an area that you are known for/are an expert on.
My background in Machine Learning and AI has led to me being able to hone into my technical knowledge and have the chance to get a deeper understanding into the companies that we meet and assess their technological edge or lack thereof.
5. Learning by doing
VC, especially at the early stage, is not about theoretical knowledge. The only way to do your job well and become a good investor is to optimise for learning by doing and maximizing exposure to founders. In the beginning you should be focused on taking as many pitch calls as possible and get exposure to as many entrepreneurs as possible — only then will you be able to start seeing the invisible thread that connects all great teams that you end up investing in and develop a sense of pattern recognition.
6. The importance of mentors
There still is no university degree or course that prepares you for VC. It is also a very subjective industry where there is no silver bullet for how to do your work or which decisions to take. Being a good VC investor is far from objective and at the end of the day it is about finding alpha and being not only contrarian but also right.
With this in mind, in my opinion the most important source of learning and development as a junior VC comes from finding great mentors in the industry that you can learn from. Your job above everything is to be an eternal sponge and never cease to take an opportunity to learn from great role models that you can look up to.
More than that, your first few years at a VC firm are your formative years and the people and the environment around you will eventually shape you into the investor you’ll become.
If you find a team that you look up to and from whom you would want to learn from you should never shy away from an opportunity to receive feedback. When offered in a constructive way by a peer who believes in you and wants you to succeed, feedback is the single best source of learning and development for a junior VC.
At Playfair we’ve been very deliberate about fostering a culture with continuous feedback loops and since my start at the firm I’ve been lucky to have a consistent weekly 1:1 with Henrik where we go over how the past week went and a monthly catch-up with Chris where we focus on L&D and career development.
Overall it’s been an incredible year packed with learnings, personal developments and life-events:
- Moved to a new country 🇵🇹 ➡🇬🇧
- Sourced my 1st investment on the team
- Was lucky enough to work on 4 investments
- Moved apartments 3 times 🏠
- Was sick 5 times (the weather in the UK does take some time to get used to 😆)
- Learned a whole lot and genuinely feel like I’ve evolved so much
I’m very much looking forward to and excited for the journey ahead!!
