I’ve gotten multiple questions now about how to “break into” the VC world and eventually become one. Apparently, I am not alone. Still, I figure ignore your readers at your own peril, so here goes.
I’m not exactly sure why they’re asking me about this, since I’m not a VC. If it were me, I’d ask somebody who would know, instead of of somebody who would know who would know. 😉
I do know a bunch of VCs, and I can see why you’d ask. The guys I watch doing this sure seem to have a bunch of fun while making multi-million dollar decisions and working 100+ hours a week.
One of the VCs I know is Seth Levine who got tired enough of answering this question that he blurted out a (rather funny, at first) answer.
Playing with all that money really sounds like fun. I watched Wall Street 20 times before I was 20 years old. But it wasn’t so glamorous for Gordon Gekko’s protege Bud Fox in the end, was it? Maybe being a VC isn’t all corporate jets and glamour either.*
If you really think this is what you were born to do, it sounds to me like the odds are long, and tons of passion and persistence are must-haves.
Other than that, I bet it’s pretty easy to get to be a VC.
*Strangely, it just occured to me that my password that everybody knows was “greed” for the longest time. This comes directly from the movie Wall Street when Gekko taught Bud the eternal lesson that “Greed is good.”
