Currently working as a Product Manager and enjoy my job quite a bit. It fits my personality and dual skillset, because I like “translating” between TPMs, Dev, and the business and owning the successful launch of a new product. Until recently, I only thought about growing till I could reach a VP Product/CPO role one day (4 YOE currently). A number of my friends are now finishing up their MBAs keep hyping up how VC/PE is the place to be, because it has better earning potential and $ return for your time vs running a piece of a company. I would definitely like to try out a VC role at some point, but am I wrong for thinking it should be something done at the end of one’s career? If you’ve only ever worked in finance, what actual useful advice could you give to a founder? Also, it seems like a lot of VC funds should blow up in the future, because so many are invested in bad companies with no path to profitability (and then you’re left with a niche, not really transferrable skillset). Is VC really what it’s hyped up to be and should I actually try to get in early in my career? TC: 140k
Would recommend this video on the personal sides of VC. Talks about how much of the time it is very lonely and the incredibly long payback period of your investments. https://youtu.be/HPfEsYlkZow
Lol I met this guy, he’s a douche
Go look on team pages and you will see the patterns. Former ops people who are senior investment deal team members (not to be confused with operators or eirs) typically have had extremely successful careers leading operating companies. The rest have all been investors for a while. In PE, there are few operators who turn into senior deal team members. In terms of what advice can they give, they cycle through 15+ deals every 4 years, and have seen multiples of that in their deal selection process. So what they have seen is hundreds of winners, losers, and the in betweens. The pattern recognition, network, and repository of business models/data goes a pretty long way.