A typical day in the life of a VC

Photo credit: Pixabay

Clairine is a TIA Star Contributor and publishes exclusive, high-value content that serves the Asian tech community. Read more from TIA Star Contributors here.

Though many startup founders have experience dealing with VCs, I can imagine that most have never been on the buy side and are probably unfamiliar with what actually happens behind the scenes.

In order to give you some idea of how we operate, I want to share with you what a typical day in the life of an investor really looks like. Hopefully, this will give you more ways to relate to your potential investors rather than simply see them as a source of capital.

The most delightful thing about my job is meeting inspiring entrepreneurs. However, that probably only makes up 10 to 20 percent of my working hours. Surprised? The vast majority of my day goes into delving into various research, analyzing due diligence data, reporting and presenting to my partners and LPs, and attending board meetings, while making some room for coffee and networking events.

8:30 am

Get to work and respond to important emails while looking at global and local news. This usually happens while I get the kettle boiling for my first cup of coffee.

9:30 am

Every Monday morning, we do an all-hands meeting at our firm. Leaders of the investment, business development, human resources, and venture operation teams go through what their teams will be focusing on for the week and discuss how we can help each other.

10:30 am

The investment team proceeds with our weekly meetings, where we review the new startups we found and entrepreneurs we met the week prior. This weekly meeting is an opportunity for us to exchange ideas, brainstorm, sharpen our investment rationale, and decide where to allocate more of our resources.

With so many early-stage investment opportunities, we have to be diligent at deciding which company we need to keep an eye on. At the end of the day, most venture capital firms are also startups size-wise!

12 pm

Have a quick bite with some colleagues or sometimes with a fellow VC from another firm. Many early-stage VCs co-invest with other VCs, so establishing good rapport and relationships is vital. I usually catch up with other investors regarding market/industry/sector knowledge-sharing, portfolio companies, and about their personal lives outside of work. We always expect a mutual understanding regarding any sensitive or confidential information.

1 pm

Based off the results of our earlier investment review, we get into a final huddle where we discuss current and upcoming initial reviews (potential summaries) and deep dive research pieces (investment memos). Our three-strong team can have anywhere between two and eight of these reports to go through on a weekly basis. (This is when the second cup of coffee usually comes in.)

We will delegate work among ourselves, start crunching numbers, and develop segments of the reports. At this time, I also send out emails and arrange meetings for the week.

2 pm

I have my first pitch meeting with an entrepreneur (sometimes it’s back to back). We discuss the sector and the problems their team is trying to solve. I usually ask for preliminary data points and mention that I’ll bring his company up for discussion in our next weekly meeting (which is up to five working days away).

5 pm

Time for me to dial in for a conference call with one of our founders who is about to fundraise again. (We advise founders these days to have, at the very least, six months to complete fundraising.) During the call, we discuss the company’s milestones in the past year, where the founder envisions the company to be in the next 24 months, and the overall fundraising strategy.

6 pm

8 pm

10 pm