What does an investing job entail?

  • What I asked
    • Random question: when you think about your job what do you think you spend the biggest chunks of your time doing? And have I missed anything below?
      • Researching signal for new companies to chase (Product Hunt, Hacker News, LinkedIn FTE growth)
      • Networking with companies
      • Sending emails / getting introductions
      • Researching a specific company
      • Researching a broad category
      • Market due diligence
      • Product due diligence
      • Financial due diligence
      • Administrative work (fund stuff, call notes, etc.)
      • Writing (memos or decks)
  • What I added after they responded
    • Public writing (blogs, twitter, etc.)
    • Portfolio work
  • People I Asked
    • Sydnie Keddington
      • Diligence, memo writing, admin-related stuff (case specific with rebrand)
      • 15% deal sourcing
      • 10% networking with other investors
      • 20% diligence
        • Most of the time spent on understanding a market
      • 10% memo writing
      • 15% sending emails (sort of makes me barf but true)
      • 20% admin (internal data, dashboard management, organizing notes, etc.)
      • 10% managing junior people
    • Christian Stewart
    • Brandon Beck
    • Dallin Bills
      • Customer due diligence (customer calls and surveys)
      • Training associates and analysts
      • Networking (both entrepreneurs and investors)
    • Scott Nielsen
      • 30% financial due diligence with new opportunities
      • 30% market due diligence with new opportunities
      • 20% financial due diligence with portfolio companies
      • 5% admin stuff
      • 5% sourcing: sending emails, networking, research new ideas
    • Rikhil Patel
    • Thabet Mahanyi
      • Lots of time networking with industry leaders (heads of product, BizDev, etc.)
    • Clarey Zhu
    • Nick Clearwater
      • Networking
        • With companies (cold email, calls)
        • Meetings / Events
    • Zak Kukoff
      • Throwing events
      • Building relationships with other investors
      • Building relationships with subject matter experts (sourcing, diligence, etc.)
    • James Kuklinski
      • Hour long pitch meetings with the entire team
      • 10-20% of time on portfolio work
      • Typical split
        • 40% diligence
        • 40% deal work
        • 20% sourcing (top of funnel, VC networking)
    • Kutay Muslu
      • Raising debt financing
      • Negotiating deal terms
      • Modeling a view on a company's future
      • Portfolio work (M&A, operational initiatives, etc.)
      • Majority of time understanding the market, product, finnancials
      • Forecasting the future wit hthe model, operational changes, etc.
      • Advocating / communicating that view through memos and decks
    • Shomik Ghosh
      • Talking with industry experts, founders, advisors, other VCs, potential talent, and LPs
      • Building a network
        • Leveraging existing groups of people for introductions
        • Twitter
        • Cold outreach to an open source maintainer or someone writing a blog
        • Chance conversations where the ask is can you introduce me to the most interesting or technical person you know
      • Reading specific articles and books and podcasts on specific. topics
      • Brainstorming with the team
      • Focused on being a "central node" of a network so that you're top of mind for companies
    • Roy Luo
      • Portfolio work
      • Spending time with executive teams
      • Board meetings
    • Mehul Mehta
      • Market due diligence
      • Financial due diligence
      • Writing
      • Researching a broad category
    • Jack Moshkovich
      • Portfolio work
      • Biggest chunk is due diligence and research
    • Anoushka Vaswani
      • Writing, blogging, tweeting
      • Networking with other investors
    • Caitlin Bolnick
      • Networking with other investors and operators
      • Tracking signal (e.g. GitHub)
      • Biggest chunk of time is finding companies and reaching out to companies
    • Sharla Grass
      • Sending emails
      • Getting introductions
      • Market research
      • Competitive research
      • Financial due diligence
      • Small piece is running cap tables, building operating models, and writing memos
      • Networking with other investors
      • Attending board meetings
      • Ad hoc portfolio support
    • Bryan Subijano
    • Avery Rosen
      • Managing / supporting junior team members
      • Working with LP base and executives
      • Portfolio company support (often networking to help them connect to people)
    • Andrew Ng
    • Christian Thatcher
      • Youtube rabbit holes
      • Internal meetings (review of active and new deals)
      • Preparing memos for live deals (research, writing, founding team calls, etc.)
    • David Cahn
      • 50% meetings
      • 20% admin and notes
      • 20% research and diligence and building decks
      • 10% sourcing
    • Saanya Ojha
    • Scott Shi
    • Landon Jaussi
      • Portfolio stuff
    • Nick Calla
      • Working with / helping portfolio companies
        • Fundraising
        • Modeling
        • Pricing strategy
        • GTM
      • Networking with other investors
      • Following / analyzing public markets to keep track of cloud index, etc. (mostly qualitative research)
    • Nick Kerr
      • 30% researching a specific company
      • 5% researching a broad category
      • 5% market due diligence
      • 20% financial due diligence
      • 25% writing
        • Lots of time synthesizing information in powerpoint
      • 15% admin
        • Catch all for things like:
          • Synthesizing portfolio company quarterly updates
          • Company valuations on portfolio
          • Processing email, scheduling, etc.
    • Sachin Patel
      • Portfolio work (benchmarking, competitive intelligence, etc.)
      • Biggest time spent on market / financial due diligence
    • Andrew Lumley
      • Working with LPs (decks, deal summaries, etc.)
      • Networking with other investors
    • Payam Vadi
      • Majority of time on diligence and creating decks
        • Split between financial due diligence (heavier here when there is a data room and a live deal)
        • And market work (takes longer and a lot of forward investing / time up front)
      • Portfolio work
        • Financial review and decks, quarterly updates
    • Caroline Chen
      • Responding to random requests from VPs (portfolio tuck ins, etc.)
      • Other portfolio support (M&A sourcing and evaluation, resource allocation for projects, etc.)
      • Networking with companies (calls)
      • Relies on internal system for tracking signal, so doesn't do that a lot
      • Sending emails to new companies
      • Summarizing why a company is interesting for internal team and drafting notes for them
      • Customer calls and summarizing key takeaways
      • Writing internal memos
      • Biggest chunk of time is market diligence (understanding market structure, product strengths / weaknesses, competitive positioning
      • Financial diligence is pretty straghtforward
      • Sourcing takes time because you don't know when a deal will happen so you have to be stopping and starting and constantly nurturing
    • Nate Quinn
      • Tracking signal to look for new companies
      • Financial due diligence
      • Market diligence (includes researching broad industry)
      • Networking with other investors
    • John Mayfield
      • Fundraising from LPs (generally 10% unless they're actively fundraising)
      • Portfolio work (40%)
        • Talent
        • Fundraising strategy
        • General feedback and help
        • Intros within / outside of portfolio
      • New deals (40%)
      • Admin stuff (10%)
    • Erik Popaja
    • Ben Waxman
      • Finding companies
      • Customer and product calls
      • Writing memos (very important given senior team was detail oriented)
    • Howard Sobel
      • Networking with bankers / other investors
      • Processing lists of companies to find interesting new names
    • Nikita Singareddy
      • Lots of writing
      • Having lots of calls to manage a network (and texting)
      • Managing specific groups of people around interest areas (e.g. fintech, healthcare, etc.)
      • Talks to specific people every Friday because they have the best intel
    • Mac Cordrey
      • Lots of emails but not for intros
      • Internal work
      • Research is probably the most