The VC / GE Recruiting Guide.
Everything you need to know about venture and growth equity recruiting — how funds operate when there's no LBO to lean on, what early-stage modeling actually looks like, and the SaaS metrics that anchor every investment thesis.
Section 01
The Associate Role.
You're the junior — but VC is the one sector where there's real room to take initiative and source your own deals.
VC / GE Associate Responsibilities
Writing Investment Memos
(Making pretty powerpoints & word docs)
Modeling Investments
(Simple 3-statement models)
Taking Notes on Company Calls
(how is this not fully automated!!!)
Sourcing
(cold-calling, messaging, going to events)
Low on the totem pole — more room to run.
Once again, you're the lowest person on the totem pole putting together material for seniors to use to assist their decision making. However, unlike the other strategies mentioned, there is often more room for an associate to take initiative and source deals. After all, you might be closer in age to many of the founders you'll be investing in.
VC and GE is known for having pretty chill hours. However, relative to other buyside roles, you'll always be thinking about ways you can find the next Mark Zuckerberg. Conferences, events, social outings, demo days, etc will all consume your schedule.
So, instead of sweating in excel all day, you might find yourself sweating at the Salt Lake City Tech Derby!
Seniors are largely focused on sourcing better deals and structuring terms of investments. You'll be slapping together a deck to show how ‘Freak.AI’ has the same run-rate user statistics as 2009 Airbnb.
Section 02
A little about VC / GE.
Brief by design — anything you can Google, we'll keep tight.
The business model
Venture capital involves investing in early-stage, growth-oriented businesses. Anything from pre-Seed → Series C may fall within the realm of venture capital. These businesses may have no revenue or true stand-alone business model. Naturally, there is a skew towards investing in tech companies since these companies have the best odds of selling a big dream + need substantial funding to materialize an idea.
Growth equity is basically late-stage VC. Investing anywhere from Series B → pre-IPO may fall within a growth equity mandate. GE investments are typically made in companies with revenue and mostly post-product market fit. These are companies that have largely ‘solved’ their business model and are now looking to scale their businesses to enhance value. These businesses are still largely un-fundable by lenders because the cash flows are not predictable or substantial enough to repay debt.
VC and GE funds rarely look to make control investments in companies. Therefore, there is not a tremendous emphasis on portco work. Instead, VC and GE funds make many smaller bets with the hope that 1-2 investments “returns the fund.”
VC and GE funds operate similarly to PE or PC funds as they use LP capital to make investments. Their LP base is mostly the same, although VC funds tend to have a greater influence from ultra-high net worth individuals because the fund sizes are often in the millions, not billions. They operate on a similar 2/20 model (2% AUM and 20% outperformance).
Since the companies are riskier, IRR hurdles are often north of 30%.
Section 03
Different types of VC / GE.
Segmented by AUM, then by strategy.
Fund sizes
Mega-Fund
$10bn+ AUM
Middle Market
$1bn – $5bn AUM
Small
Less than $1bn AUM
Different strategies
- 1Pre-Seed (similar to angel investing)
- 2Pre-Money (investing in companies before institutional capital comes in) — most VC jobs
- 3Post-Money (investing after or alongside other institutional capital) — also plenty of VC jobs
- 4Growth Equity (investing in companies after significant institutional capital, but before substantial cash flow generation)
- 5Secondaries (investing in other funds)
- 6Tech (investing only in tech companies)
- 7Founder-focused (investing only in good founders)
Section 04
The VC modeling lens.
What your model actually does when there's no LBO to anchor it — and the customer cohort analysis that drives every B2B SaaS thesis.
The general framing
You're building a standard 3-statement model and baking in key investment assumptions like the multiple paid on the investment, total dollars invested, and any investment structures (preferred equity, liquidation preferences, etc).
Top-line / customer cohort analysis (B2B SaaS)
- 1Using vintages of customer data, you want to assess the average contract value for each customer across each vintage. Then, you want to segment the customers according to their size and industry they conduct business in
- 2With this data, you can calculate key SAAS metrics like LTV, Churn, Logo Retention, ACL, CAC, and ultimately ARR. The goal is to paint a picture of how the business compounds over time without drastically increasing costs as a means of achieving profitability
The best way to visualize this is by opening up a model and tracing back the formulas to get a picture of what each metric is trying to achieve.
Section 05
Key SaaS metrics.
The 12 metrics every VC / GE associate needs to know cold. Tap any tile to reveal the definition.
Practice on real cases
Real VC / GE case studies and SaaS modeling tests.
Real VC and growth equity case studies from actual recruiting processes — each with a complete answer key. Available to Premium subscribers.
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