What is work for a venture capitalist?

This is part of a week(-ish) blog series where I deep-dive on a cool technology. I am an investor at Dell Technologies Capital in Silicon Valley, and occasionally reminisce about my previous life in academia. Follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

In lieu of my normal blog post, I will discuss “work” as a venture capitalist. I was inspired by my friend Jean Yang, who wrote an interesting post about her “evolution on work” where she described her transition from PhD to professor to startup founder.

In the past, I blogged about what “work” is for a PhD student. As a computer scientist and former PhD student, I’m trained to think of work as producing tangible output like writing a computer program or writing a paper. However, most work as a VC can be boiled to down to three main categories: meetings, emails, and creative time.

Meetings

This takes up 80–90 percent of my week.

Startups: This is pretty self-explanatory. We listen to pitches from companies needing to raise money as well as do diligence (understand product, sales, market, etc.) on companies we’re seriously considering.

Board Meetings: My board meeting docket is not that full yet. We take large ownership stakes in companies, so we also take board seats. These meetings happen 3–4 times a year and are a good way for us to get a pulse check on the company.

Portfolio Support: We are active board members and try to add value to our companies outside of our capital investment. I introduce our companies to customers, advisors, potential hires, etc. I also help them with brainstorming, go-to-market, and technical strategy (because of my PhD).

Networking: In order to provide effective portfolio support, we need to have a strong network to make connections and better understand market trends. I spend a good amount of time networking with executives at companies as well as subject experts like professors and engineers. Ideally, if a company wants to talk to someone about a particular topic, we can easily create that connection.

Partner Sync-up: Most of the work I described above is pretty individualistic, so communication and coordination are key. We meet to sync up on both Mondays and Fridays to discuss deals and action items. We have to force this communication because we, otherwise, don’t spend too much time as a group, and it’s easy to work in isolation. It’s important to know how others think about deals as well as receive feedback and help on companies, both existing and future. We also use these meetings to discuss and work on administrative and logistical matters for the firm.

Emails

When I started in VC, one key piece of advice is that “you have to be good at email.” It is our main form of communication outside of calls. Calls are usually reserved for urgent or in-depth matters, but emails are a good way to get in touch with VCs or send a non-urgent note over for us to read. On a slow day, I write about 20 emails, but I can write and respond up to 100 emails a day.

Creative Time

As a PhD student, I had way more creative time, and I think this time is very underappreciated. As a VC, I have to force myself to have this time because otherwise, I would be dragged into another meeting.

Reading: I read a fair amount of blog posts and market research, but I also read Hacker News and research papers. I also find that reading fiction or non-fiction sparks creativity. I keep my scope of reading broad because I think it’s important to read and consider various perspectives.

Blog posts: The PhD forced writing upon me, but I find that many times, writing helps me find gaps in my reasoning and helps me focus and prioritize my thoughts. I find blog posts are a nice, quick way to do writing because they tend to be short and easy to find later on.

In conclusion, most of my time is spent in meetings, but I really enjoy interacting with entrepreneurs and learning about new topics. I have learned that having more creative time allows me to become more efficient in meetings and provide better feedback as I am able to ask more relevant questions.

If you have questions, comments, future topic suggestions, or just want to say hi, please send me a note at frank.y.wang@dell.com.