Meet the 21 year old venture capitalist
Kevin Lu has been interning in venture capital over the last year, in one of Australia’s top corporate venture capital firms, Reinventure Group. We spoke to him about what it’s like working in VC and the day-to-day tasks of a young VC.
Reinventure Group, Westpac’s corporate venturing arm, launched in 2014 and has $150 million to invest in FinTech and its adjacent industries. Companies in its portfolio include the likes of Coinbase, HyperAnna, BrickX and Hey You. The fund is focused on investing in the third horizon of growth and nurturing early scalable businesses.
Entering the world of VC
Q: What sparked your interest in venture capital and entrepreneurship, and how did you find yourself at Reinventure?
Going back to Year 11 English class, my English teacher at the time showed us Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement address. After watching this, I became really curious about people launching their own companies and building empires.
This was coupled by my strong interest in investing which I developed when I naively threw my third Centrelink cheque into penny stocks, made $200 within that week, and immediately quit my retail job. Realising that investing could generate real returns, I started to seek more investment experience through university.
Not only did I invest personally, I also actively sought out Finance internships. I interned at an investment bank in LA, but found that this experience taught me more about selling than investing. I subsequently found myself in a small-cap asset management fund in Sydney where I properly learned the art of investing which was much more intriguing, detective-like work.
The combination of these two things led me to learn more about VC, and it was this video I came across of Chamath Palihapitiya (founder of Social Capital) that really spurred my excitement in the space. He talks you through his journey with Facebook as a VP and his personal approach to investing. This had a profound impact on me. Chamath taught me that investing shouldn’t be a passive activity where you throw your money at a business and hope for the best.
Finally, I first came across Reinventure at an event called Fintern Fever hosted by Ribit. A friend of mine mentioned that this VC firm had an open internship opportunity so I had the chance to talk to an analyst and intern to learn more about the role. The rest is history!
The VC work experience
Q: What has been your favourite deal or project experience while working in VC?
There are too many to name! VC exposes you to a highly diverse range of experiences from high-level deal analysis to ground-level work with portfolio companies across marketing, growth and product management. I’ve also been lucky enough to be part of seven deals throughout my time at Reinventure, which are always very exciting.
However, more recently, I flew to Melbourne to support one of our portfolio companies with a market-entry strategy. This required me to help the team triangulate where best to launch their business in the US and identify potential channel partners. This would be a highlight project experience for me as I was fully immersed in the team and had a hand in changing their trajectory.
Q: How would you describe your role at Reinventure?
I’d best describe my role at Reinventure in three buckets.
- Investment analysis
This includes anything from deal origination, identifying opportunities in our deal flow with investment potential, and analysis across a company’s financial position, commercial, background and the market. Industries we look at include fintech sectors like neobanks to parametric weather insurance. On top of this, we assess any information which helps us investigate whether the founders of these companies are people we want to work alongside.
2. Strategy
The strategic component of my role requires me to work closely with our portfolio companies on specific projects. These projects are dependent on the stage, industry and specialty of the company. Things I’ve worked on in the past include supporting capital raising, market-entry, product or marketing strategies, as well as best practices for the key aspects of its operations.
3. Internal Support
As well as working on deals or spending time with our portfolio companies, I also provide internal support for the team. For instance, if the Reinventure partners need to present at ecosystem events or to our limited partners, I would assist in preparing the investment deck and overall presentation.
Q: What do you find to be the most challenging thing about working in VC and what has this taught you?
The pace.
Multiple deals come through the office every single day, and I need to quickly become a market expert so I can analyse all the companies. I’ve learned to adopt several investment frameworks which have allowed me to compare these companies on an apples to apples basis.
In practice, this has given me a bird’s-eye view of management science — the roles of executive leadership in start-ups and their key operations. From a ground-level, this has taught me best practices in the industry across marketing, engineering/tech, framing, product management, sales and operations.
Q: Do you have advice for other students who want to work in VC in future?
Be passionate about the space you want to be involved in. Don’t shy away because you don’t have a finance background, but try to get start-up or investing experience so you have a first-hand account of what it's like to be within a start-up or put your money in the hands of someone else.
Read a lot about investing, start-ups and blogs, write and produce material to consolidate your learnings so you have something to discuss when you’re approaching or interviewing for a VC firm. This is important to demonstrate you have experience in analysing and researching within tangential industries.
Being a part of the Reinventure family
Q: What do you love about working at Reinventure? What are some key takeaways from your experience?
For starters, the people I work with are very open-minded yet forthright. The team knows how to think outside the box and are empathetic, treating people as people and not numbers. This has helped me to stretch my ideas and ultimately become more cognitively flexible.
Reinventure has redefined what investing means to me. It’s more than just hunting penny stocks and passively waiting for returns to generate, it’s the ability to change the course of your investments.
Q: What was your most recent public investment and why is your team excited about it?
We recently invested in a co-living operator called Hmlet alongside Sequoia India. This company aims to revolutionise how young professionals rent, leasing out entire apartment blocks and converting it into common workspaces and rooms.
Hmlet has developed technology for its millennial renters to order on-demand services for anything from dry cleaning to personal trainers, completely re-inventing current rental models through its optimised convenience factor. Hmlet currently operates across Hong Kong, Sydney and Singapore.
This piece was written by Audrey Thehamihardja— Textbook Ventures organises startup events, writes newsletters, and shares tech jobs for student entrepreneurs across NSW.
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