Interviewing for VC Associates at Saison Capital

As Saison Capital started looking for Associates to join the team, we started writing some notes internally about the type of prospective candidates we were looking to hire, as well as the types of conversations we were looking to have, and decided to open up the process to let people get a glimpse into the black box of the VC interviewing process.

There are 5 main things we expect an Associate with Saison Capital to be involved in:

Deal sourcing
Deal Analysis
Thesis Generation
Internal VC Operations
People management (Interns)

These are some of the common questions we tend to ask during an interview

Deal sourcing

How can one gain an unfair advantage in inbound and outbound informational collection?
If you had 1m dollars, which company would you invest into in (geography that candidate may not be familiar in)?
Talk to me about structure and process

Deal Analysis

Discussion about a specific Seed/Series A stage Southeast Asian company suggested by the candidate, and why or why it is not investible
Which Saison Capital portfolio company would you not have invested in?
Talk to me about numbers
Talk to me about assumptions
Talk to me about macro-trends
Talk to me about distribution channels

Thesis Generation

Tell me the deepest thought you have (inside and outside work)
What do you believe in that very few people do, and why?
Discussion about a specific vertical suggested by the candidate, and what opportunities lie in this space
How would you disrupt (insert unicorn name most familiar to candidate)?

Internal VC Operations

Discussion about tactical details of a (previous project accomplished)
Which metric did you track that was most important in (previous project accomplished)
What is the most surprising thing you’ve learnt during (previous project accomplished)
How would you structure solving X, Y, Z operational problems?

Personality

Tell me about your proudest accomplishment (inside and outside work)
Why Venture, Why SEA + India, and what are you looking to get out of it?
Why not pursue other activities?
Tell me about the biggest challenges that come when you work with others?
What is your biggest weakness?

General tips

Research the fund and the partners involved in the company
Understand their investment geography and scope

Who Saison Capital is looking for

Someone who understands how a Venture Capital fund operates, is incentivised, invests, and competes
Someone who can form an opinion, defend it, understand the assumptions/conditions whereby they should stand by their argument, and when they should not
Someone who can quickly build rapport with potential founders and works well in a team
Hungry, self-starter, independent, intelligent, opinionated, hardworking, etc [Include standard buzzwords]
Insanely curious, reads and asks a lot of questions, and looking for something to prove
Hungry to always improve and automate processes

What we offer

Investment exposure globally (Mid-term focus will be India and Southeast Asia)
An environment focused on training — we want our Associates to be smarter and better than us
Unusual exposure to the entire field of the deal responsibilities
Working closely with the small Saison Capital team, while tapping the expertise of a larger Credit Saison corporate entity across multiple geographies across Asia
Culture + Banter — enjoying spending time with the people that you work with daily is important.

Benchmarking

Top candidates so far have sent across research reports, multi-page investment analysis they developed on single target companies, tend to have been introduced via a mutual connection, clearly stated motivations and why they are a precise fit for what Saison Capital is doing (as opposed to another fund), and why they are specifically interested in working with the people in the Saison Capital team.

Common reasons to not progress candidates

Was not competitive in their ability or interest in acquiring hard-to-obtain information
Was not competitive in their ability to analyze trends and companies in a quantitative way (as opposed to purely qualitative)
Was not competitive in their understanding of the focus of the fund
Was not competitive in their ability to synthesize criticism of an argument and to amend or to clarify a particular viewpoint