how to break into VC?

I’ve had a few friends reach out to me asking for advice on how to break into VC recently and I figured I would write out my POV so I can get back to work growing the Spice Family.

I’m not sure why people are asking me because I never properly “broke in” to Venture Capital. I didn’t come from a Tier-1 VC firm and didn’t climb my way up the finance ladder. I was so turned off by the junior VC culture that I took the “break vc” approach instead and started my own fund.

Regardless, these are my tips if I was to start brand new to the industry today.

Some caveats:

1. My experiences are mostly around early stage investing (pre-seed/seed/series A) so this is catered for those looking to break into early-stage investing.

2. I wasn’t looking at VC as a chill 9-5 job. There may be a better strategy to secure that lifestyle than I took. To me being an investor is funding and supporting the best founders that build generational companies.

Venture is a really strange world. It is filled with entitled people.

Their entitlement is your opportunity.

Because so many people are coasting on management fees they don’t necessarily have a pulse on what’s happening on the ground floor of innovation.

Enter opportunity 1:

BECOME A DEAL FLOW MACHINE.

I built trust by sending over high quality companies to investors. It forced me to articulate an argument on why the founder was special, and why the opportunity was big. A mini-memo so to speak.

Most investors have their dm’s open/have their emails public. Send them opportunities you think fit into their thesis. It’s their job to review.

If you send them a deal and they invest, you’ve now earned trust. Hopefully the company pops off too…

opportunity 2:

BE INDISPENSABLE TO FOUNDERS

If you worked for a founder, or have friends that are founders - nourish those relationships. Figure out ways to be the most helpful person to them.

Here are tangible examples of things I have done for early-stage founders that put me in the “helpful vc” bucket that aren’t rocket science:

• Raise money for them/offer your money

• Hype them up on social media via tweets, deep-dives, tiktoks

• Read their investor update “Asks” section and execute on the asks

• If they are hiring - cold dm candidates you think would be a good fit for the founder and become their “recruiter”

• Introduce them to other founders in their category two stages up so they can share pain points/best practices

HAVE A REAL POINT OF VIEW

This one is harder.

If you haven’t started a business yourself or worked at a startup - it will be harder to develop - but it is possible. Some people are naturally gifted at processing lots of information and developing a point of view/vision for where the world is going.

I didn’t do this - but in today’s world where VC is so hot - probably makes sense to share your POV in a blog on Beehiiv (shameless plug).

Later stage VC seems more data-driven and pedigree based (normally folks are EX-Bain/Banking/B-School) + the investment decisions seem reactive after the tech has hit the zeitgeist vs. early stage is more proactive so you need to be early on trends!!

The way I developed this muscle was by talking to hundreds of founders. I first offered my services, in exchange I got to become friends with founders and hear their perspective in their respective industries, and after hours rinse and repeating combined with the magic of internet stalking, you start to figure out problem sets, pain points, and areas of opportunity for innovation.

Pretty painful chatting with junior VC’s at large funds. I can literally predict their exact take on any given tech-related topic. Boring!! But I think you can get away with this if you’re doing late-stage investing / are in the 9-5 lifestyle role.

SIMULATED PORTFOLIO

If I was hiring someone I would want their track record. I would also optimize for someone who knows how to make money since that’s my job as a fund manager. I had to make my own money to invest into Spice for my GP commit.

If you don’t know how to make your own money to invest in startups - I think this is fine but I would create a simulated portfolio.

Everytime you come across an interesting company, even if you can’t invest - write a memo on why you would, what the early traction is, and date it.

It would be cool to see a list of 20 startups that you WOULD invest in.

ANGELLIST IS YOUR BEST FRIEND

Angellist is literally amazing. They democratized access to startup investing. I’m very grateful to them.

Start a syndicate on Angellist

This is a great way to pool together checks from friends into startups.

This is a deal by deal finesse, but you can essentially have a mini-fund and it forces you to learn the selling side of VC.

I got started this way. My first SPV was into female fertility startup Kindbody alongside Hannah Bronfman. We pitched an all-female SPV to the founder - Gina and she loved the idea of adding more women to her cap table. We then built a memo, collected checks, and were on our way!

Kindbody is now worth over $1B - our first unicorn 🤍