Tanvi’s Guide to VC Recruiting, Part 2: Applying & Interviewing

16 min readFeb 22, 2023

Not pictured: obsessively checking your email for next steps

Welcome back to Tanvi’s Guide to VC Recruiting! If you missed Part 1 on Setting the Groundwork, make sure to check it out because I’ll be referencing material from there in this post.

Ok — you’ve explored VC and know you want to be an investor; you’ve thought long and hard about what kind of fund you want to work at and feel confident in your goals; and you’ve spent some time actively building a relevant background. Now it’s time to apply and start interviewing. Some overall thoughts on the interview process:

Don’t put your eggs in one basket. You need to play the field, diversify your options, and go for quantity. A big part of landing a job is going through reps and fine-tuning what you want and how you pick up on what the fund wants. Think of this as professional dating.
There’s actually a big interpersonal assessment going on in the interview process. This isn’t directly acknowledged and in fact, I’m not even sure most interviewers know they’re indirectly doing this. Simply being qualified and knowing your sh*t isn’t enough. You need to deliver it with confidence and find ways to signal you are the right fit for the fund. Your overall vibe is important. I’ll touch on this in my next post, but know that showing up as the best version of yourself in interviews is really important.

Alright, let’s get into the nitty gritty of landing and succeeding in interviews. As a reminder, here’s the VC recruiting framework I developed — last week’s post covered Parts 1-3 and today we will be discussing Parts 4 and 5.

4. Applying: Where Do I Find Roles and How Do I Get an Interview?

I’ve split this section up into a few sub-sections as there’s a lot to cover, from finding open roles to referrals and more.

Finding Open Roles

Information is disparate in venture capital, so understanding which funds are hiring can in itself be a struggle. A lot of funds are beginning to post publicly, which is fantastic! Some places I recommend:

Job boards or newsletters: John Gannon, Accelerated, Ali Rhode Jobs, Gen Z VCs, All Raise, and EVCA are the ones I liked.
LinkedIn jobs: I’ve found open roles here and have spent lots of time combing through open JDs. It’s also helpful to follow funds/investors you like on LinkedIn as I’ve seen them share open roles as posts.
Communities: if you identify as BIPOC there are a number of places you can find resources and job postings; including VC Unleashed, VC Familia, Latinx VC, and BLCK VC.
Twitter/Medium: A lot of funds will release JDs on Medium and then plug it out through Twitter — so make sure to follow funds you like on both places. Once you’re in VC Twitter, you’ll see folks posting and re-tweeting open roles. Nicole DeTommaso does a great roundup of weekly open roles on her Twitter as well.

Many funds will use recruiting firms and I’ve talked to a number of recruiting firms with marginal success. Some share me out to the funds and some just ghost me. I tried to keep in touch with the recruiters I had great conversations with and would drop them an email to say hi/send an update every few months. It didn’t get me anywhere but I’d say it’s worth a shot to keep in touch.

There will always be funds that hire through their network and don’t recruit publicly or use recruiting firms. There’s no real solution here — you have to form strong relationships with current investors who will share these roles with you.

Applications

VC job applications will often ask you for a few things: pitch a startup you like, pitch a trend you like, tell us why you’re a good fit, what portfolio company you like, what portfolio company do you not like, etc. I’ve written SO MANY of these, and it gets tedious really fast. At first, I spent tons of time on these applications. I wrote and rewrote, trying very hard to use the best language I could. And in my experience…that doesn’t get you much.

Here’s what I’d recommend you do: write 2 quick blurbs (~200 words or so) on a relevant startup and a relevant market trend (i.e. related to the industry and stage you’re interested in). Talk to the founder of the startup if you can and any current investors who are knowledgeable about the space. Incorporate information from your conversations into the blurbs and indicate you have a relationship with the founder/investors you spoke to. Then lift and shift these blurbs in your apps. You may want to swap out these blurbs for something more topical after a few months and you’ll still have to tweak them here and there depending on the fund/how the question is asked, but hopefully, this will save you some time. Of course, make sure the startup and market trends are relevant to the VC you’re applying for, i.e. don’t pitch a consumer company to a B2B fund or a Series B startup to an early-stage fund. A good rule of thumb to follow: the fund should feasibly be able to invest either in the current or next round of funding for the startup.

Referrals

With all this being said, I would focus less on the application (which you should still put effort into) and more on finding someone to plug your name with the fund. This is, by far, the highest ROI action you can take to get an interview. Look up the funds you are applying to and find their employees on LinkedIn. Hopefully, you have a few common connections and can ask them to plug your name with the fund employee. Founder, operator, and investor referrals are all great. I like to send a check-in note to see if my connection is willing to flag my name (usually accompanied by a general personal update and anything that I think may help them). After an opt-in, I share my resume + tailored blurb for the fund. If you have intel on what kind of background or industry focus the fund is looking for, add that in your note e.g. “Hi Tanvi I know they’re looking for someone with a technical background so I’ve included it in the below blurb but appreciate if you can call that out when you send this over”.

A few considerations here:

Be intentional about how often you ask the same person to refer you. Your relationship with them is also important! Make sure to cycle who you ask and not overload just one person. Also, make sure you genuinely try to support the folks who refer you — even if it’s as simple as hyping them on social media. I tried to send something of value (relevant article they’d like, a live deal I think they’ll be interested in, suggested intro I can make to another investor or founder, etc.) every time I asked for a referral.
Who you ask to plug your name matters, as does their relationship with the person they are reaching out to. For example, a referral from a previous intern is likely not going to be as strong as a referral from a General Partner at a peer fund.
There is no “too much” — if 5 people agree to flag your name to 1 person, GREAT! Look at that, now this investor knows how well-connected and in demand you are.
Prioritize. It takes time and a lot of tracking to make sure you get referrals in and I personally couldn’t manage to do it for every single role I applied for. I tended to apply to roles in batches and prioritized referrals based on how excited I was about the fund’s investment area/how strong my connections to their investors were.

I’ve had a lot of success when I figured out who’s running point on the interview process (usually an Ops or HR person at funds who have that role) and got a referral to them specifically. The more you know about how the fund works, how its process works, and the dynamics at the fund — the more intentional you can be with this step. If you don’t have access to this information, just get connected to whoever you can.

The referrals aren’t a slam dunk and I didn’t hear back from a lot of funds even after a referral. It’s all kind of a crap shoot but I will say that I got most of my interviews after a referral. Think about it: on average a publicly posted role will get close to 300 applications minimum. Funds usually don't have a dedicated HR person and manage the process piecemeal across their team. It’s hard to say if your application will even get looked at and harder still to stand out vs the competition. A referral does more than bring your name up and get a look at your application — it shows your network. This is a huge value add and differentiator.

Offline Work Products

Before you start interviewing, I’d recommend creating offline work products you can send either in advance of connecting with your interviewer or in your follow-up email. This could be a number of things — an investment thesis, blog posts, content you’ve produced, etc. Here’s what I tried:

Blog posts or investment thesis: I personally went the blog post route vs a formal investment thesis and found that it worked for me. The short posts helped me organize thoughts around trends I cared about. After presenting relevant trends to the funds I interviewed with, I’d send a link to the post for their reference. If you’re interested to see more, check out my Fintech in 2023, Expense Management, and Gen Z Fintech posts!
If you want to create an investment thesis, I recommend looking at this blog post and think Cheryl Campos’s investment thesis is a fabulous example of an end product. You don’t have to do as comprehensive of a PPT as Cheryl’s — I’ve seen Notion pages, a 5-slide summary, etc.
Startup tracker: to help demonstrate my sourcing capability, I started tracking all the startups I spoke to on a Google Sheets doc. I indicated on the doc which ones were raising and/or any specific notes I thought VCs would be interested in. Either before or after interviews, I’d share this in an email and indicate which of the startups I thought would be relevant to them specifically. To be totally honest, I can’t say it did too much as I never heard any real feedback on it. However, it gave me some clear stats to discuss my sourcing pipeline; i.e. “I’m tracking 5 fintech startups that I think will raise soon”, “I’ve connected with over 50 founders in the past 3 months”, etc. It was also a helpful organizational tool I referenced whenever I wanted a deal to share. I’d recommend keeping track of the startups you speak to in some way — Notion, Airtable, Excel, etc. — even if you don’t share the list.
Network tracker: at one point in my interview process, I started to feel like the way I sold my network wasn’t resonating with my interviewers. I decided to try a network tracker listing all of the investors, founders, and operators I knew in the space. The way I presented it was “here’s who I can get a hold of to collab on diligence or get feedback on a deal”. My goal was to demonstrate my network really tangibly but alas like the startup tracker, I am not sure it did too much. It was a useful exercise in gleaning stats that I spoke to during interviews; e.g. “I know 150+ investors”, “75% of my network is women or people of color”, “my network spans 12 cities across the US” and more. Like the startup tracker, it also helped me stay organized when I was trying to get feedback for a case study or connect founders. Plus, it was a great confidence booster to see how well-connected I was even if others didn’t believe me. Again, I’d recommend this for your own organization even if you don’t share it.
Personal pitch deck: if you have the time, I’d highly recommend creating a personal pitch deck. One of my friends used a personal pitch deck to sell themselves during their final round interview (+got the job!), and Nicole DeTommaso also did this to snag her role with Harlem Capital.
The deck should introduce yourself, walk through your story, and articulate clearly what your value is. For your reference, I had 3 main sections in my deck: About Me (1 slide introducing myself, 1 slide articulating my VC experience & skillset, and 1 slide about my network), Market Perspectives (3 slides synthesizing the various blog posts I had written), and My Value Add (1 slide on why they should hire me). I got fantastic feedback from the folks I shared this with. It’s most impactful in my experience when you have some context on what they need (e.g. one investor told me before the interview that they were exploring “what’s next for consumer investing”, so I came to our call prepped with a pitch deck that explained my perspective on where to invest in consumer). I’d recommend tailoring your deck specifically to the fund you’re speaking to and adding 1 slide on how you fit in with the team & fund. I created a generic version I passed around but didn’t hear the same kind of positive feedback from it.

Alls to say — I found offline work products to be helpful and would recommend creating something. It doesn’t have to be public or super fancy (but make sure it is clear & organized). Use these work products as a signaling tool to show how much you know and how you’re building your own brand. While some investors will actually read through what you send most will not. Make sure you get the main points across during the actual interview and just supplement with these work products.

5. Interviewing: How Do I Land the Offer?

Expect both behavioral and case interviews in the VC process. Your first few interviews with Senior Associates, Principals, and/or VPs will usually be behavioral. If you pass these sniff tests, they’ll send you a case study which you’ll present in front of the Partners. Similar to the previous section, there’s a lot to cover so this section is also split into 2 sub-sections.

The Initial Interview

The first few interviews you have with a fund will usually be reasonably relaxed. They’ll ask about your background, try to understand what you’re looking for, and generally feel out if you have the skills they want. Some classic questions to prep for include:

Tell me about yourself
Why venture capital?
Tell me about a startup you’d invest in and why?
Tell me about a market trend you think is interesting and why?
What is your favorite and least favorite company from our portfolio?
What is your unique value add?

Questions will vary — and I’m not going to go into detail on how to answer them (check out this guide). There are 4 main parts of the VC role: sourcing, due diligence, thesis development, and portfolio support. I’d recommend having 1 or 2 blurbs prepped on your approach to each of these and/or examples of how you’ve done this in the past.

Lastly, don’t forget to have questions for them! This should be an interview both ways. I usually ask about the following:

Team working style: are they collaborative on deals or individualistic?
Overall market focus areas for the fund going forward: if they’re generalists, what areas are they targeting? If they’re sector-specific, how will they invest in the sector going forward?
Breakdown of what the role looks like across sourcing, diligence, thesis building, and portfolio support: some roles will be balanced across all 4 while some will be more focused on sourcing or diligence. I personally wanted a balanced role and this was an important consideration for me so I made sure to always ask or suss this out.
Any gaps on the team they were trying to fill: a lot of times interviews came down to “oh we already have a fintech person on our team” so I would get rejected. Boo. Eventually, I started asking about gaps they were trying to fill — across the firm network, market focus, or skills to try and feel this out earlier in the process.
If you have time, it’s always good to ask what they are personally working on these days so you can send a follow-up email with something relevant and helpful to them.

After the interview, make sure you send a follow-up thank you email. I tried to send mine within 24h of the chat and would link out offline work products and try to send either a thought piece or startup relevant to an area they were tackling. Sometimes if they seemed iffy after an answer I gave I’d send more information e.g. after one call the Partner wasn’t convinced I had good sourcing channels so I emailed them more detail on how I approached sourcing across content, accelerator relationships, and founder communities.

Finally, make sure you pay attention to how you feel after the interview. Did you enjoy the conversation? Do you like what they’re investing in and their approach to VC? You’re going to be spending all day with these people and your entire working day focused on how they approach venture so it’s important you feel good about both. I once had a Partner absolutely grill me about my theses and ask me really detailed questions on how I’d approach diligence (down to the names of people in my network I’d ask for feedback). I of course wanted to do my best and tried to keep cool under pressure but knew instantly I was no longer interested in this person as a mentor or this firm.

The Case Study

There are multiple types of case studies (here’s a great breakdown) but essentially you will need to evaluate a startup and provide an investment recommendation. Typically you’ll get a pitch deck and some financial information about either a fictional or real startup and will be asked to prepare an investment memo on them. Memos can be PPTs or Word docs — whatever you prefer. If you’ve never seen or heard of a memo, Bessemer has a few great examples. At a high level, here’s what you should have in the memo you prepare for your case in my recommended order:

A summary section with a clear perspective to invest or pass, a short company description, and an outline of strengths and risks
More detailed company description: what is the problem they’re solving, what is their product, who is their target customer, and any traction they’re seeing
Team description and analysis: are they the right folks to solve this problem?
Market size & market dynamics: is this a compelling market that’s growing? What kind of data can you find about how big this problem is?
Competitive landscape: why the company either is differentiated or not
Analysis of financials: what do the financial metrics show you? How does the company compare vs the industry? Are there any anomalies or issues in their financial statements?
Summary of financial modeling or valuation work as applicable (not all cases will need this): what assumptions did you use? Is this company over or undervalued? What happens to revenue and costs in your financial model? It’s always best to share your Excel model as well.
Further questions you’d ask in a formal diligence process

You can play around with the sections and order as you deem fit. Sometimes I included “Investment Strengths” and “Investment Risks” sections as well, or had a “Decision Rationale” section where I outlined why I decided to invest or pass.

If you’re asked to do a valuation, I’d recommend a comps-based valuation. I know valuations are daunting, but in my experience doing a simple valuation and being intentional about my assumptions/being able to speak to the assumptions works well for early and mid-stage funds. If you’re doing a case study for a mid-stage or growth-stage fund I’d recommend doing a few different types of valuations (e.g. comps based and DCF) and using a few different multiples to have a range. Yahoo Finance has updated EV/Rev and EV/EBITDA multiples for public companies and I recently found this fantastic list of EBITDA multiples across industries.

While the overall purpose of the case study is to test your investor skillset, this part of the interview is also subtly testing your network and presentation skills. Nobody will tell you to do this, but VCs expect you to:

Speak to 2–3 relevant folks in the space and incorporate their feedback into your memo. It’s tough because you’ll usually be on a tight deadline but this is what VCs will do when they actually diligence startups. Doing the same thing before the job shows the fund you’re ready to dive into work on Day 1.
Prepare a short 5-minute presentation. Put together a few summary slides on your investment decision that you can pull up on Zoom and talk through vs flipping through your memo. Practice this presentation and be polished on the call.

Lastly, be ready for Q&A. Some VCs will grill you to see how you do under pressure. Others will ask genuine questions. Stay poised as you answer them, and acknowledge if they raise a risk you missed or bring up a point you didn’t consider e.g. “that’s a great point but I still don’t think that changes my recommendation because of XYZ” or “I agree this is a risk, here’s how I would spend some more time thinking about it with regard to this company”.

At this stage of the interview process, you are so close. Everyone at this stage is a strong contender. To nail down the job, you need to be fantastic. Go all out here, trust me. Simply meeting expectations or doing a good job won’t get you the job. You need to absolutely wow the team in order to land the role.

Wrapping it Up

I hope this section of my guide gave you some ideas and is a helpful reference on the various things you can do in your VC interviews. There are so many ways to approach your interviews — and I know a lot of folks who got the job without doing all of the things I did. You certainly don’t need to do everything I did or do it my way. There’s no “right” way. VC interviewing is an iterative process. Try different things and see what sticks and helps you stand out.

Sending you all the good vibes, and don’t forget to read my next post where I’ll share more on the mentality needed to succeed!