Good morning 👋
And welcome back to work.
“Breaking into venture” is one of my least-favorite overplayed topics in our line of work. Today, we’re breaking down what actually works from the best article I’ve found on the subject.
IMO, if you want to work in venture badly enough, you’ll find a way.
Offer something for free before you ask for a favor, build something valuable that can be an asset for you / the firm, become more interesting, stop thinking and acting like everybody else in the resume stack.
Here’s what else you should do …
Today’s highlights
How to actually break into VC
The risk of optionality
Khosla is fundraising
Pre-idea founders?
TOP
So you wanna work in venture?
This is one of the best articles the best article I’ve read on breaking into venture, so here are the main takeaways and advice to any reader still thinking about working in VC:
Everybody wants to work in venture. If you want to break in, your best bet is being able to do one of the following better than the next guy / girl:
Find: How do you have access to better companies than any other applicant?
Decide: Good luck being able to prove this in an interview
Win: How can you win relationships to founders so you can win allocations to their next round? (Being a former founder gives you a huge leg up here.)
Help: What can you provide to companies after they take your money? Are you connected to tons of talented people who you can introduce as potential employees? Do you own an audience that can help you with distribution and customer intros? Have you solved growth channels at a previous company that give you domain knowledge you can share?
Exit: Again, good luck explaining this one in an interview.
So if you’re new to venture and you want to break in, you’re really left to compete on the following: finding better companies (sourcing), winning allocations, and having tangible examples of how you can support companies post-investment.
If you want to be better at sourcing, you have to put yourself in a position where you are interacting with smart, talented people on a daily basis. The best people will stand out, and those are the people you should be investing in (or telling your partners to invest in).
If you want to be better at winning, you should be building a presence online. Timestamp your thoughts, show the world how you think, and you’ll be surprised at a) the types of people that this attracts, b) the improved quality of your thinking, and c) how founders will choose to work with you over other anonymous checkwriters.
If you want to get better at helping, you have to get better at building yourself. Reading blog posts does NOT count as building.
The easiest way to stand out is to niche down. Nobody expects you to be great at everything, but being exceptional at one or two things makes you a way more interesting candidate than somebody who is average at ten things.
Related to this piece, you can just do things. Whether you are employed or not, nobody is stopping you from:
Introducing promising founders in your network to investors in the same industry
Building your own investment portfolio (real or fantasy)
Publishing deep industry research or your unique investment thesis
Using your expertise (e.g. sector or business model experience) to advise startups in your industry
You should be prioritizing meeting more founders than investors. Getting a warm intro to an investor is easier when you have loads of founder connections.
Treating VC as a craft > treating it as a role. Thinking in decades helps with this.
Hiring investors is like making seed investments in people.
STOP TRYING TO BE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.
GP / LP Mastermind
The “anti-conference” for fund managers 🌴
We don’t like conferences, so we created our own version that we would actually look forward to going to.
📆 Dates: April 24-27, 2025
📍 Location: Miami, FL
ℹ️ Other details:
Small group of 6-10 LPs, GPs, and partners
Golf and padel
Boat charter
Private dinners
No outside sponsors
We’ve already confirmed half of the guests, we only have space for a few more, and applications close in under a month.
If you’re interested, we’d recommend letting us know sooner rather than later …
TWEET
HEADLINES
Khosla Ventures Hits Fundraising Trail (WSJ)
Financial Literacy Is A Venture Capital Superpower (Crunchbase)
Pre-seed firm Afore Capital has a fresh $185M fund and a new program to help founders discover ideas (TechCrunch)
Private equity’s steep path to AI (Pitchbook)
How SPVs are helping emerging managers in this tough market (Pitchbook)
MEMOS
Chima: Interoperability for AI agents
Superpower: The all-in-one health membership for elite performers
Documenso: The DocuSign killer
LINKS
🗣️ Everything You Need to Know About Negotiating Tech Offers: ben at next play interviews expert compensation negotiator Josh Doody who helps make sure you are not leaving money on the table (among other things)
🎬 The Entire History of Silicon Valley: Michael Houck breaks down how Silicon Valley became the unique culture that has mixed innovation with risk taking over the last 112 years
🎨 How to Pick the Perfect Color (in 30 Seconds): Marketing Ideas says science discovered 3 properties that affect everyone the same way
🔐 Personal Finance for Startup Founders Part I: Hampton offers this free guide (part 1 of 3) to founders to help turn business wins into lifelong financial security
🗒️ The Blank Sheet—The Note-Taking System You Never Learned: A system that primes your brain for what you’re about to read, offers structure, and reinforces that you’re learning
MEME
BOARDROOM
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Honest take: I’ve made hundreds thousands tens of thousands of mistakes building this business.
GTM mistakes that slow down sales
Marketing / paid advertising mistakes that literally light money on fire
Ignoring platforms or not learning how different algorithms work that results in not getting enough attention
Not delegating or using automation that cost me hundreds of hours of my time
And a thousand others
But after making tweaks for 5+ years, you start to learn what works and what doesn’t.
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- Clay
(Founder @ Confluence.VC | GP @ Outlaw)
