Is here anybody with contacts and experience to VCs in the US as we would be highly interested for some projects to place them at us VCs.

I'm looking ahead to recruit for VC internships and am wondering what is the metric to evaluate VC tiers. Is it AUM, portfolio companies, returns etc? Is an 800m AUM VC considered large?

Kevin O’Leary is on CNN right now threatening students who are protesting in the US campuses. He is trash.

Building a fintech app and looking to get some honest review/feedback or potentially leads for what I'm building.

App is live since a few weeks and is profitable, aiming for rapid growth.

feel free to DM or just leave a comment, will share the deck and link to the app.

Yeah, I know AI is the thing right now, but I want to know what you think are the other industries VCs are specifically looking at? What's getting a lot of the investment right now?

Hi all. Apologies if I make any mistake in the post as i am new to this space.

Im a senior associate with an MD in life sciences consulting based in London. Recently, I've been approached by multiple recruiters for PE and VC for life science associate roles.

I am working 50-55 hrs a week at the moment. I heard that some VC WLB is pretty good (logging off at 6pm) but also heard that biotech/healthcare-focused ones tend to be the worst? Is that true?

I am thinking of starting a family soon so would not want to have worse hours than what I have at the moment.

Can you describe to me what your day-to-day looks like at a biotech/healthcare focused VC firm and how you find the WLB?

Thank you

Hi guys, for context I'm applying for a VC analyst role at a climate tech fund which focuses on Series A/B.

What types of financial modelling should I be aware of / know?

I did a start up 15 years ago that I sold. Back then, the pitch competitions and tech meetups were AWESOME.

Want to pitch to a room of accredited investors? Free.

Yes they would screen you and not accept everyone, but it wasn’t predatory.

Now?? I’m back out there going to events and sending my deck out and holy crap things have changed.

Pay a “investor” thousands of dollars to help you get an investment? They’re taking advantage of all these poor schmucks who shouldn’t even try to start a business.

I had a guy call me every day for the last week trying to sell me on how his event is amazing and presenting for $1500 was a great deal because normally it’s $2500! I asked for a list of investors that would be there (oh I haven’t started marketing to investors yet)… ok- are they accredited investors? (Crickets)

Maybe I’m lucky that I got to experience the times where you could actually meet early investors in Google (or people that turned down investing in Google).

Just wanted to share a quick thought and get some reactions.

"We invest in outliers" is a common VC trope.

When founders hear that, they understand "We invest in atypical founders, innovative tech, and/or new markets."

Actually, what VCs mean is closer to "We invest in statistical outliers that will generate outsized returns."

Is that right or did I miss sthg?

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What are the details and nuances in using a SPV by a VC in investing into a company/investment, is the only benefit having more funding into the company whilst having less ownership of the thing you're investing in? And what kind of situations should it be used in, best?

Here is what I'm talking about:

https://preview.redd.it/dwhqf8y4i9xc1.jpg?width=1988&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=35e48620b69567acba1d8c1de717a9030becf015

The SPV focusing on e.g. a Medical-related products/services potential portfolio company.

The Investors on the top right are separate from the VC/Mangement.

The VC sub-entity is seemingly meant to be some kind of separation with the VC to supposedly enable or protect it from some kind of financial or regulatory hurdles, as an SPV is supposedly a share - more information needed.

The benefits are supposedly exponentially higher funding than would be done by a VC. But, if the Investment was so worthwhile, couldn't a VC simply fundraise just as much?

What are the drawbacks of the whole architecture of this?

Why shouldn't a VC just fundraise by themselves to invest directly and simply into a portfolio company, rather than use this?

Is it because they make it easier for the portfolio company to more easily get more funds?

How will this affect the VC company's 1. Prestige/Relevance; 2. Financial History/Performance (to raise for Fund 2, etc).

Am I missing something here? This is quite new to me, so being detailed would be very much appreciated.

I am working through some of the old Bessemer memo's in order to prepare for a Growth Equity interview where I expect they'll want me to do a venture method valuation table (like the ones Bessemer do at the bottom of most of their investment memos), build out a cap table, and perhaps do the waterfall method as well. Does anyone have a resource they particularly like that they could point me to for this?

Who else has seen the buzz in investment around Circular Production businesses? Circular production businesses will be the D2C brands (with much bigger profits) of 2010.

…it’s too important to ignore given global manufacturing sanctions. And the Americas Act proves America see the profit opp, too.

If there are impact forward VCs and/or Angels here, would love to hear what you’re looking at in the industry—and at what stage.

There's a lot of companies in the beauty/consumer space that are marketed to purposely mislead the customer, and if customers do any research (thank you Reddit!), they will realize that the company is either a scam or that they are wayyy overpaying for a product. I'll give you two examples:

Brilliant Earth, an "ethical" jewelry company that charges you more for their jewelry because they only use "ethical" gemstones. This is bs. They use the same diamonds and gemstones as every other big jewelry company does, like Blue Nile, but charge you way more. No big company truly knows where a gemstone comes from, unless they work with artisanal miners (which they don't). For example, many rubies are mined in Myanmar (a blacklisted country) but then are smuggled into Thailand to be cut and polished.

The beauty space is extremely rife with misleading marketing info. For example, Qure says that their water softener for the sink softens hard water, but it doesn't. It actually just filters it (it won't soften your water but will filter out some chlorine). They also claim to have better "technology" and thus charge you an arm and a leg, when you can just buy the same filter on Amazon for 1/10th the price. It's just good marketing with a lot of VC money. I can see this being a huge PR nightmare if anybody with an audience actually does some research on the company.

So my question is, I'm sure VC's are smart and do their due diligence, but why invest in companies who purposely mislead consumers? Is the end goal to dump their shares onto the next sucker or am I missing something? Sorry to be cynical but am just genuinely curious.

So, the US and China are both starting their respective logistics mega projects in subsharan Africa with the goal of exploiting critical minerals in the so called “mineral belt”. Demand for Nickel and Cobalt is expected to rise 20 times, Graphite 20 times and Lithium more than 40 times. This infrastructure projects will pass through mainly the DRC, Angola, Zambia and they will finally untap previously unaccessible resources.

How would one tap into this wealth? Traveling to Africa would not be a problem as I know the local languages and have military experience in the area.

Thanks.

Asking for a friend who's a deep tech founder. They've been having trouble raising money because it's hard to validate novel technology like this. After a lot of work the research is now at the point where it's being confirmed as sound by all the AIs. No specific flaw is found, nor is any fraudulence detected.

The work is also going through slow human peer review, but do VC people trust AI to evaluate new technology (patent pending) that you can't do yourself?

Thanks

Basically the title. What do you like to see when getting a cold pitch?

I own a small company that deals in the sales of high profit margin collectibles and associated products. I also bought out an established small business that owned the IP to collector related materials and had a website with incredible search engine placement and daily orders.

The problem is capitalization. I am currently a one man shop doing 250-300K in sales a year. Expenses are mostly fixed (i.e. servers, supporting our proprietary software and annual fees for trade memberships, etc) and if I were able to hire two people, had a revolving line of credit to pay for short term inventory needs and were able to expand office space the sales would increase by close to if not more than 10x current sales in the first year. (Minimum gross profit is roughly 30-50% of sales)

What is the best way of finding a VC firm that would work with us and realistically what terms would they want to work with us? (Equity vs percentage of sales)

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for an investor interested in backing an online marketplace app. We've recently uploaded our app to iOS and Android stores. The app is able to function as it should but is missing a design and "feel" that makes the app feel more complete and professional. We need additional funding to expand our tech team and to enhance these app features.

Our app is a platform that connects customers with rental shops, allowing them to rent a variety of products directly from our merchant partners. Rental shop merchants have a separate app to list their products and services. The merchant app has the correct features implemented but lacks that same design and "feel".

Here's the business model: • Revenue Streams: We generate income through a commission-based system. Both customers and rental shop merchants pay a percentage of each transaction, creating a steady revenue stream for the app. • Growth Plans: With the funds, we plan to add new features, improve user experience, and expand our marketing efforts. This will help attract more users and merchants, driving more revenue.

If you're an investor looking for an opportunity to support a unique marketplace app with a clear monetization strategy, l'd love to connect. Let's discuss how we can work together to take this app to the next level.

Feel free to reach out via PM if you're interested in learning more about the app!

Thank you!

Hey, guys,

I'm an associate in a corporate fund. Management asks me what I want to study to be better at my job? They can pay for it. Not sure how much they can provide but a few thousand $ shouldn't be a problem. I'm thinking that the VC cources would be about LPs and ROI calculations, which I think would be a waste of time. Product/growth/marketing courses would make me better at helping our portfolio in their operations. Or maybe I should ask for money for books? But I can probably download them anyway. In this regard, what books do you recommend?

Cheers and may the power law be with you!

I'm apart of a two-man team that needs help choosing a CRM for our new fund. Without giving away too many details, our fund is made up of federal dollars that have heavy parameters on where we can invest that capital.

We're wanting an inbound deal flow management system, with a heavy need on being able to customize an upfront application for founders to fill out. This will help us weed out the founders/companies that don't match our requirements for funding.

We're reviewing HubSpot currently, but have heard great things about Affinity. I've used Dealum previously and do love the customization that comes with it (bonus that founders can apply via Dealum for funding). Can anyone provide more details around their use of HubSpot, Affinity, or any other tool for Deal Flow? We'll also be using TacTyc for portfolio management. TIA!

Is it a significant career edge to have some technical knowledge/background on AI, Machine Learning, and some programming/software dev related to it (i.e. Python)?

Especially if your VC invests in AI and SaaS companies. And AI companies are trending among VCs too.

I've got a case study with a growth equity firm coming up and would love any insight on good metrics to make sure to include, or a guide that folks have found useful in the past for acing their case study technicals. I'm a fresh college grad with little to no mentorship so I'm trying to cast a wide net of advice.

FWIW, I did try to comb the sub for previous similar questions, and I've found two good examples from a few years back. Hoping to drum up some new insights, though! TIA

I just want to know more about venture capitalist and investment banking. If there is any VCs who are on the tech side to talk with,it would be great !!

I'm in my early 20s, and I want to become a venture capitalist as a career. I'm going to switch my majors in college to try and follow that path. Do you have any advice? What should I major in?

Hey VC's what do you think of nocode MVPs? With a technical co founder who is an engineering manager with a massive company, but chose it for speed as opposed to necessity,

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Anyone have benchmarks for midsize firms (~$300-500M)? I've come across these two WSO threads but datapoints vary:

1. https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/venture-capital/offer-pls-help-london-senior-associate-vc-comp
2. https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/venture-capital/vc-london-pay

Also, found a breakdown on John Gannon's blog (excl. UK)

https://preview.redd.it/i8onm008mivc1.png?width=1404&format=png&auto=webp&s=08dd71b36cc55c3ab3ceb48bee35fcbd5e6c7fb5