What it’s Like to Work as a Senior Associate at Touchdown Ventures
Q&A with Mike Devlin on the Senior Associate Role
I recently published interviews to demystify what it’s like to work as an analyst and as an associate at Touchdown Ventures. The idea came from interview candidates who wanted to learn about our culture and what the job really entails.
Continuing the series, I spoke to Mike Devlin, who joined Touchdown as an MBA Intern in 2018, was hired as a Senior Associate upon his graduation from business school in 2019, and was promoted to principal in 2021. This interview aims to provide insight into what it’s like to work as a senior associate at our firm, including a comparison to similar roles in traditional venture capital firms.
Jane: Mike, what was your background before joining Touchdown?
Mike: Before joining Touchdown Ventures, I spent 6+ years working in investment banking and private equity in New York City. I started my career in 2011 at Citibank as a part of the industrials and transportation investment banking group, where I was able to work with large companies like American Airlines and JetBlue. In 2013, I joined Sixpoint Partners, shifting my focus to the middle market with a more generalist role.
I owe a lot of my financial experience to these early roles. Starting my career with the financial crisis still fresh in people’s minds helped shape the way I view companies. Working on different types of transactions — from bankruptcy financings to equity co-investments — helped reinforce the role of structure when making investment decisions.
Jane: What attracted you to join Touchdown?
Mike: There were three key reasons for why I chose Touchdown:
1. Differentiation: When I was pursuing roles in venture capital, I spent a lot of time trying to understand how VCs can differentiate themselves in the market. In my mind, most venture capital firms provide a commodity — money. This was a big piece of the puzzle for me and one where Touchdown really excelled. The ability to provide access to large corporations and Fortune 500 companies is truly different. Now that I’ve worked at Touchdown for over four years, I’ve seen this help our corporate partners’ CVC funds win deals and provide real value to the portfolio.
2. Business model: Touchdown also offered a compelling business model that challenges the norms of venture capital. While most VC firms raise capital on a 3–5 year cycle, Touchdown adds new corporate partners and launches funds on a regular basis. Because we build custom fund mandates for our corporate partners, we can become a critical piece of the parent company’s overall innovation efforts — providing insights into changes in the market, supporting “buy, build, or partner” decisions, and fostering commercial relationships with the startup community. We have the potential to provide mutual value to Fortune 500 companies and startups, which can be a powerful combination.
3. Development: Most importantly, I saw a firm that was willing to invest and develop its people. Touchdown made it clear to me that they were looking to train and develop individuals who can one day run their own funds. In fact, Touchdown’s model depends on developing internal talent to be great investors. As many say, venture capital is supposed to be an apprenticeship industry. Well, at Touchdown, I have had the benefit of learning from multiple experienced VCs how to invest across different stages, industries, and geographies.
Jane: How would you describe the day-to-day of the senior associate job?
Mike: The senior associate position is really an incredible opportunity. In short, you learn to be a “full stack” investor. Your responsibilities will include sourcing, evaluating, managing the deal funnel, diligence, and structuring transactions. As senior associates develop, they take on supporting and managing the portfolio, too.
On a day-to-day basis, a senior associate focuses on maintaining the overall deal funnel for the fund. You are responsible for making sure the fund is seeing enough volume and, simultaneously, enough high quality investment opportunities. This includes sourcing new leads, developing investment theses, speaking with entrepreneurs, and connecting with other VCs. When you find an investment fit, the role shifts to running point on the diligence process, managing the relationship with the entrepreneur, structuring the investment with support & guidance from senior team members, presenting to the investment committee, and ultimately closing the investment.
Personally, this was my dream situation. I learned detailed processes and nuances of making venture capital investments with experienced investors supporting me from start to finish. As I earned the trust of our team and our corporate partner, I was brought in to monitor, manage, and support our portfolio companies.
To be transparent, there is also a lot of work creating materials for our corporate partners. To facilitate all this deal activity, we need to interface with the corporations that have entrusted Touchdown, and that means synthesizing what we’ve learned into materials we can review quickly and convincingly. So great organization skills, plus written and oral communication skills, are essential to the job.
Jane: Having been promoted, what do you think it takes to succeed as a Touchdown senior associate?
Mike: In my opinion, it comes down to ownership mentality.
When I joined Touchdown, my mindset was that I could be responsible for running this fund one day, so I should start acting that way now. Whenever I saw an opportunity to take on more responsibility or support the team, I would remind myself to step up and do it.
In practice, this meant making sure that the deal funnel was robust with quality opportunities, whether that required more sourcing on my end or building out new investment theses. As we entered new markets, we needed to make sure we built and maintained strong relationships with entrepreneurs, investors, and other stakeholders in the ecosystem. When we sourced a good investment opportunity, it was my responsibility to design an efficient but responsible diligence process. Finally, it was critical to make sure we never compromised our high standards.
The more I took an ownership mentality, the more opportunities I was given at Touchdown, and this truly accelerated my growth. As an example, I got the opportunity to teach a course on venture capital at Berkeley, and the senior team at Touchdown encouraged me to do it because they thought it would make me a better, more confident investor and would be good for my career.
Jane: How do you think the senior associate job here is different from your peers in traditional venture capital?
Mike: Senior associates are challenged to think across three different stakeholder groups: startups, other venture capitalists, and the established companies that are our corporate partners. It’s this last constituency that distinguishes us from institutional VCs.
Because of our relationships with our corporate partners, we have a potentially more direct path to build value in the portfolio. With our help, our corporate partners can deliver customer insights to startups, offer product expertise, explore commercial partnership opportunities, in addition to providing capital. Our broad presence in the startup ecosystem allows us to provide data-driven insights for our corporate partners, advise on transaction modalities, and generally inform their innovation efforts. By operating in this intersection of startups and corporations, we can unlock value for both sides that would have otherwise been siloed.
Jane: How would you describe our culture?
Mike: You’ll often hear our founders say that we are a venture capital firm first and a training & development firm as a very close second. I think this really summarizes our team’s culture.
We are a group of people dedicated to learning, developing, and really growing as investors — and as people. Growth mindset is one of our main cultural values. The challenges we face require constant learning. After 4 years at Touchdown, I’m tackling new problems every day. It’s one of the best parts of this firm.
Jane: What do you do for fun outside of Touchdown?
Mike: I’d like to consider myself a bit of an endurance athlete. I enjoy seeing how far I can push myself, whether that be a long trail run, open water distance swim, or something more intense, like an IRONMAN race. For better or worse, I’m also a devoted Washington D.C. sports fan. My fandom has come with a lot of ups and downs over the years, but I stick with them through thick and thin. Most importantly, I love spending quality time with my friends and family. There’s nothing better than getting together with those closest to you.
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Jane Simons is Head of Operations and Mike Devlin is a Principal at Touchdown Ventures, a Registered Investment Adviser that provides “Venture Capital as a Service” to help corporations launch and manage their investment programs.
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