A few weeks ago, I tweeted about how some founders act on calls with me. There are those who instantly disengage when I mention my Senior Associate title. Others refuse to share anything about their company and focus the entire conversation on partnerships with Intuit, where I work as a VC. Heck, some even refuse to take the call with me because my MD won’t be on it!
Thankfully this is not how the majority of my founder conversations go. But it was quite interesting to read the responses to my tweet. I didn’t realize how often founders are told to only take VC Partner calls vs taking “junior VC” calls. I truly empathize with how busy founders are and understand their focus on ROI, particularly if conversations with junior VCs feel one-sided and extractive. I also empathize with those junior VCs who are just trying to do their jobs and please their Partners.
I have a lot of opinions here. For starters, I don’t like the term “junior VC” which is a blanket term for Analysts, Associates, and Senior Associates. There is a huge range of capabilities, maturity, and seniority in these three titles. Many of my Associate & Senior Associate peers have a decade+ of work experience and graduate degrees. I also don’t like the advice I got to simply remove my title from my LinkedIn and email signatures. I’m not ashamed of my title or embarrassed by it — I am where I am in my career and it feels silly to pretend otherwise.
Instead, I am reflecting a lot on the importance of your brand and reputation in this space. As I am seeing very clearly, people make snap judgements about you based on your title. But they also make snap judgements about you based on the fund you work at, which partner you report up to, what they’ve heard about you, what you tweeted about, and so much more. It’s overwhelming and frankly impossible to please everyone — but what you can do is make sure you always put your best foot forward.
All of which brings me to this post: how to establish credibility as a VC or, if you will, a “junior VC”. Much of the (well-deserved) respect established VCs get is a result of their successful investments or previous experience building/scaling companies. But when you’re net new, what can you do? Here’s what I’ve found helpful so far — and if you’ve got any other tips or things that have worked for you, I’d love to hear it!
Note: none of these tips are a replacement for hard work, grinding, and making a name for yourself through good deals. But hopefully they help you make that happen!
1. Have a Snappy Introduction
The way you introduce yourself is so important. Period. If people make snap judgements based on your title or fund — best believe they’ll make similar snap judgements based on your background.
In general, I’d suggest keeping your intro quick and precise at around 30–45 seconds. Focus your time on the key startups or VCs you’ve worked with in the past — these experiences seem to build the most credibility with founders and VCs alike. Tailor your intro based on anything you may know about the person you’re speaking with (e.g. if they mention they used to be a consultant I’ll usually talk about my consulting background). If you’re taking the call solo and representing your fund, spend some time talking about your fund — who is your fund, why should someone take your money, and how do you help your companies?
Feel free to experiment and try out different versions of your intro with different groups to see what resonates most. I’ve found that sharing my consulting and MBA background doesn’t seem to establish much credibility with founders, for example. This is sad because they both taught me so much and helped me get to where I am. But that’s the thing about your intro — it’s not about what is important to you as much as it’s about what quickly establishes a rapport with your counterpart.
At the same time, stay true to yourself. Your background is your background and you will not be able to impress everyone. Get crisp and intentional with your intro but don’t lie or embellish heavily.
2. Prepare for Every Meeting
This feels so basic I almost feel silly mentioning it. But I’m always shocked at the amount of times founders tell me VCs did not look at their website or pitch deck in advance of their meeting. This is poor form in my opinion. Moreover, I’ve noticed how much better calls with founders go when I spend even 5 minutes looking through their materials and prepping a few tailored questions.
If you have a day packed with pitches, I recommend spending 30–40 min in the morning prepping questions for all of them so you have something to work from as you knock them out. If you’re on a pitch call with your partner, prioritize your questions. You’ll likely only have the opportunity to ask one or two questions so make them good! You’re not just trying to diligence the founder on these calls; they’re also opportunities to impress your partner.
The same goes for internal calls with your team: Monday morning syncs, investment committee meetings, etc. Prepare a few speaking points for companies on the docket to discuss and rehearse what you’ll say. Show your initiative by thinking through how your network and resources can help and bring those ideas to the call (or better yet, tap those resources in advance of the call and bring relevant takeaways to the meeting).
Ditto when you’re talking to another investor — come to the call with some relevant learnings you’ve recently seen, companies you think they may be interested in, or areas where you’d like to pick their brain. It will make for a much more productive conversation and establish yourself in their eyes.
3. When You’re in the Room, Say Something!
There have been many a meeting where I get off the call and realize I said absolutely nothing. It’s always an interesting reflection to understand why — was I not prepared, was I distracted, was I scared?
It’s incredibly important it is to come into every space you take up in venture with a point of view (aka ALWAYS PREP). You have to insert yourself into the conversation. Nobody will invite you to it or constantly ask for your opinion — it’s on you to speak up and have a clear perspective you bring. If not, you’ll continuously miss opportunities to establish yourself.
This is not to say you should speak for the sake of speaking. While it’s essential to speak up in order to build credibility, it’s equally important to know when to just shut up and listen. I often reflect that I’d rather be forgotten vs remembered for something stupid. Alls to say — your metric for success here should be quality over quantity. You don’t need to speak up in every single meeting or call, but understand which ones are important and make sure you show up with something of value to say.
4. Offer to Help — but Have Boundaries
I am often told that to build credibility in venture I should immediately share something of value to the other person. It feels a bit like dangling a carrot in front of them to show why I’m worth their time. If I’m honest, I don’t find that doing this always builds credibility. Many times it feels transactional and I see myself using my social capital to help folks that still don’t take me seriously or won’t end up helping me back. With this in mind, I’ve created my own mental system and boundaries that I try to stick to. I think about this as 2 tiers of help and access I can provide to folks.
Tier 1, Information
Venture is an information game. Every fund and investor gets access to insider information that could potentially help the person you’re speaking with. Keep a running tab of insights you’re seeing from your work/your firm’s work that you can share. Even the simple ones can be impactful e.g. I recently shared with a proptech founder that many insurance CVCs invest in proptech as they’re thinking about their next raise. Another example — I work at Intuit and we’re rolling out Intuit Assist which incorporates AI into our products. Even sharing what we, as an incumbent, are doing is useful to founders and other VCs.
Sharing information is a quick and easy way to build credibility. It doesn’t take much effort on your end and creates value for the other person. The trick here is to be intentional about which information nuggets you share and which ones you shouldn’t.
Tier 2, Introductions
When folks ask me for intros, I try not to immediately commit. Usually, I like to reflect a bit — is their ask reasonable? Do I like this product and think it’s a compelling business? Do I like this person and have they been respectful to me? If the answer to either of these is no, I politely decline to make intros. If the answer is yes, I give the founder or VC some homework: please send me an off-the-shelf 1-pager you have or a blurb about you and what you want. I recommend you do this because it puts some work on the other person and better arms you with information to make the ask. In my role at Intuit, I get a ton of asks to connect to internal BUs. If this is what folks want, I make it a point to ask for existing sales materials to help me make the ask. 90% of the time I never receive anything. I know folks are busy but to me this also signals they aren’t really serious about the intros they want. Of course there will always be the “hot” deals and VIPs who you know aren’t going to do this — and in those scenarios it’s per your discretion whether you want to make an intro to build goodwill or not.
While making intros and sharing your access is a key way to build credibility, I encourage folks to be intentional about who you use your access for. No matter what someone makes you feel on a call, your job is not to help them. Your job is to help yourself. Be careful about what you ask from your network as it becomes an extension of you and your brand. Save your social capital for the asks that really matter. And just because someone asks for something doesn’t mean you have to provide it.
5. Keep Your Chin Up
Venture can be a weird career path that is unlike most others. You’re going to deal with crappy opinions from a lot of people who will tell you that you’re a cog in the VC machine, you shouldn’t expect to get respect from founders or other folks in this space, and that your job is to disregard how you’re treated all in search of good deals.
My (apparently hot) take: it doesn’t matter what level you are — you should be respected. If someone wants something from you, it’s their job to build rapport with you (and if not, they’re always welcome to decline your call and look for an intro to your partner if that’s how they’d like to operate). Let go of the voices in the space that tell you otherwise and in particular let go of the one in the back of your head that keeps thinking “maybe they’re right”. They’re not.
I hope you enjoyed this post! For more content, check out my post on Settling Down into Your VC Role and/or my 3-part Guide to VC Recruiting.
