• 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