Venture Capital Careers Panel at Columbia Business School

On Thursday, myself and a bunch of my fellow Columbia Business School young alums (Mark Davis of DFJ Gotham, Eric Wiesen of RRE, and Bronson Lingamfelter of Rose Tech Ventures) sat on a panel sharing our experiences and advice on getting a job in the venture industry. The key takeaways were (in no particular order):

• getting a job in VC is really difficult
• most of us didn’t get our jobs until right around graduation (or soon after)
• the terrible job market will certainly affect the venture job market and make it even tougher than it already is…and this year may not be the year to gamble that you can get a venture job
• if you don’t like networking, VC isn’t the job for you
• if you need a highly structured work environment, VC isn’t the job for you
• finding internships in VC is all about proposing structured projects that don’t require much time commitment from the firm and its partners
• the Kauffman Fellowship program is a good avenue to explore in addition to other VC job search efforts

I really enjoyed the panel and also met some great students afterwards that day and the next day at the VC/PE conference. Hopefully I’ll be able to participate again next year.

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