so the last time I made a video about breaking into Venture Capital it was very oriented
towards students and this is a more general advice and B just FAQs that I've gotten since
okay so the most common question is of course how do I break into VC that is the real problem so
I've now updated the my strategy part of the last video into three things that I think are the best
things that you could possibly do if you want to break into especially early stage venture capital
the first thing which follows this saying of essentially if you want to prove that you can
do the job you should do the job and the closest thing to that in the world of early stage Venture
is Angel Investing if you Angel invest your own money no matter how small that amount is that
is the best way to prove to yourself and others that you have good taste that you can Source Etc
because you are effectively doing the entire job of an early stage VC now let's say you can't Angel
invest this might be because you don't have the money this might also be because you're in a job
that restricts you from doing that what can you do the second best thing you can do is to offer
free value-add services of literally anything any skill that you have two early stage startups
as a way to again Network to source and expand essentially your involvement in the early stage
startup scene that you want to be part of so an example of literally any skill that you might have
that is useful you might have a marketing Rock background you might understand product and be a
PM right now you might be an investment banker and therefore know how to financial model you might be
an influencer and know how to make tick tocks the point being that any skill that you possibly have
you can offer it for free to startups that you want to be involved in who are cash constraint
Etc and then you can get a great review from them you can also use this at experience as a way to be
more involved with the startup ecosystem generally which is how people hear about Venture Capital
jobs and then my last suggestion which is the same as the one I said for is that the third best thing
you can do is get to be the 80th percentile good of literally any Niche topic within startups and
build a brand around that and then you'll get inbound either from startups or even from VC so
for example you might become an expert at Boston based robotic startups or you could be the go-to
person for Indian startups in America or you can you know find all sorts of weird niches like some
Founders that have a Canadian on the team like just pick a topic or a demographic and really
own it in the sense of become an expert in it and become very involved in it and then people will
find you that way as well you can do all of these three things which I think are the best ways to
break into venture capital or you can do any one of the that works for you another question that I
get very commonly along with how do I break into venture capital is how do I start sourcing like
what does that even mean so the best source of dual flow is from a really quality Network which
means that you have to go meet quality people and by quality I mean specifically in terms of
startups like people who are really good Founders or people who are really good experts in their
industry so if I was starting out I would think to myself what are some groups that I Am Naturally
a part of that I can leverage that demographic to try and get this network of sourcing going so for
example I might be part of a Google alumni group I might be part of techies in New York I might
be part of some female Founders group and really contribute to that ecosystem contribute to that
Community as a way to build your network and that is the best way to start sourcing so the second
thing that you can do is host some dinners and events you can actually do this really cheaply you
can say hey I'm going to host a picnic for people who are really interested in talking about this
new AI paper why are dinners and events so good because one you become top of mind so let's say
someone else is starting an AI company then they say oh well I was at a picnic with someone who was
hosting this picnic about this AI paper you should go talk to that person and then my suggestion for
how you do those events is after you do a dinner event make sure you get the actual contact like
direct contact meaning text or telegram or messenger Etc of the people that you thought
were most interesting and after you do bigger dinners you should go find the few people that
you like the most contact them individually and do an intro chat or hang out with them one-on-one the
third method I think that you can use to build up a sourcing engine even when you don't work
in venture capital is write content as a way to get inbound interest so for example let's
say you start a Twitter account and specifically you do analytics for marketing funnels or whatever
eventually it might take a while but eventually startups will start coming to you or people
involved in the startup ecosystem will start coming to you for advice because you're seen
as an expert in this space this is also a way to start sourcing which is ultimately a way to break
into venture capital okay another question that I get asked is what should I read or like what's
the tech newsletters that I should be a part of so generally my advice here is to read none of them
because uh how do I explain it like the like news about tech as an industry is very gossipy knowing
the tech gossip and the tech Zeitgeist is actually not helpful it just makes you part of a crowd and
that information is very derivative you are much better off just going to the original thought and
learning to think for yourself and coming up with your own opinions so I can give examples
of like books I have read in venture capital or in startups that I thought were interesting like
there's lots of really good ones but I think the more relevant piece of advice here is to literally
read anything in canonical in any subject like if you really like literature go read some canonical
literature books if you like history or if you like war or if you like peace if you like the
climate whatever go read those original sources do your original thinking and then ask really good
questions you will probably come up with more interesting investment Theses more interesting
thoughts than those who just read derivative Tech culture blogs so the last question I got
asked um as part of this FAQ is does the location of where you're at matter and to me the answer is
yes if you can help it I would be located in a startup Hub and that's because you'll find
in life it actually matters a lot less what you do and it matters a lot more who you do it with
so the reason why San Francisco for example is so amazing is because for better for worse almost
everyone you meet on the street you probably share some interests and those interests are probably
oriented around technology that is both awesome and horrible in some ways but there is no better
city in the world for increasing the chances that by random luck you meet someone who's doing
something super super fascinating in startups or technology now I would say there's lots of
different hubs for different types of Industries so for example SF is by far the biggest Tech Hub
New York is also a big Tech Hub although you have to be more in it because New York also has a lot
of other Industries if you want to do like pure consumer social Santa Monica has a really big
Hub if you're in Europe London and Paris have really big like AI hubs and like fintech hubs
Etc so there are places around the world like with different options but yeah I actually think you're
really really serious about this being in a city where there's a lot of startup stuff happening
is actually very very important for your career hopefully this updated FAQ video was helpful I
know that breaking into Venture Capital um is really hard and I just want to emphasize that
it's actually much less important to like get this title whatever this title means to you of
like being in BC and it's much more important to develop the qualities which is around like
first principle thinking and having an opinion and taking calculated risks and stuff like that
and you can develop that in a whole variety of ways also if you want to ask me any other
questions feel free to leave them in the message wait in the comment section below okay see you