The career path of a venture capitalist

I am attracted to the career path of a venture capitalist for many reasons. The first thing that went through my mind when trying to find my dream career was freedom. Being free to do whatever you want and to be your own boss is definitely the main reason I choose this career. For example choosing where you want to live is a privilege. I also thought that working with the same people every day would be boring and make me feel unsatisfied. I would like to be able to meet new people from diverse backgrounds, and to learn from them every day. It is also a profession in which you can make a lot money, allowing you to choose your lifestyle.

            To find out more, I interviewed Polina Chebotareva and Tim Mudrick, who both work together to raise money from investors and invest into companies. Let’s say I own a business and I want to make it grow, but I don’t have the money to do so. I am going to go find a venture capitalist and ask them if they can give me the money that I need, but in return I will have to give them a percentage of my company/ business. The person owning the venture capital is going to investigate to see if my company has a good history and if they think that I am good enough to make it grow to make money out of it. At the end of this interview  was much more attracted to pursuing it as a future career option.

      In order to have this career you need to have any business degree with a focus in finance, as well as doing internships in wealth management, financial institutions, or private equity firm. In addition, doing some analytics – i.e. evaluating the team’s ability to make the company grow – would contribute to training that one would need to undertake in order to work in this field. In terms of technological skills, there is only a need to know the basics, such as operating PowerPoint, word, and drop box for emails. Higher education that would be a benefit for me and that I would love to attend in order to pursue the career of a venture capitalist is the Harvard business school or London business school.

    A typical day would be: in the morning catch up with everything and answer emails, meeting clients, meet companies that you would want to invest in, due diligence – which means to research and analyze a company or an organization – done in preparation for a business transaction, researching competition, testing products, and sometimes  business trips to trade shows, and media appearances. There is a lot to do, but a typical work day is 5 – 6 flexible working hours, though work can always pop up at any moment even weekends.

 The overall goals you are working towards in this job are to raise capital, raise bigger funds, make more money, and finding mature companies. Your salary is usually dependent on how good you are at finding reliable investments and ventures. For example, if you have a 20% stake in a company worth $1 million, the sale of the company will make you $200,000. The difficulties of this job would be when work responsibilities cut into  family time,  you always need to negotiate and raise money for companies and investors, there is also a lot of pressure and responsibilities

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