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Asking for a Talent #1: Learning Venture Capital

Asking for a Talent #1: Learning Venture Capital

An uncommon but powerful way to grow as a startup employee

Giammarco Pacifico
April 17, 2024

A few weeks ago, I announced a new series and asked you to share your thorniest questions about careers in the startup world.

In today’s first issue of Asking for a Talent, we will talk about why startup employees should be familiar with Venture Capital.

In my opinion, if you want to build a startup career (no matter your role), learning the basics of venture capital is one of the best investments you could make, much more than taking another online coding course.

Demystifying Venture Capital investors

Venture Capitalists are often considered magical creatures in the startup world. Their role is to bless companies with capital and bring them to success in ways that most people, especially employees are not supposed to know.

For this reason, a veil of mystery and reverence often scares individual employees from interacting with investors and board members.

In my career, I’ve seen countless times talented employees being fearful to share their work and their opinions with VCs, much like a student fears sharing their Master's Thesis with a Nobel Prize winner.

The reality could not be further from the truth.

No investor has the magic formula to make your company win. There is no secret plan they know to turn a prototype into a unicorn.

Many of them are so busy looking for new investments, managing current portfolios and raising funds that they won’t even spend much time with your company.

What they bring to the table is the experience of having seen and worked with many companies in your space and beyond. After years of pattern recognition, they might have valuable advice about what has worked and what hasn’t.

In the end, though, it’s the CEO’s job to decide what to do with that advice and the ultimate responsibility lies with him, not the investors.

Why is everyone fearful of VCs then?

Because they are usually very vocal, both inside and outside the boardroom.

On top of that, we regularly hear stories of investors who fired the CEO or took very strong positions against management decisions.

In reality, these fights are extremely rare in early-stage startups because investors and founders know that they need each other to succeed.

In simple words, founders need current investors to raise more capital and investors need founders to make their investment a huge financial success.

Think about it this way:

An early-stage startup where a current investor leaves the Board, sells his shares or worse sues the company is a dead startup
An early-stage startup where investors fire the founder is also doomed to fail without that unique energy, passion and authority that no professional CEO can replace

Such a relationship is more like a dance where both parties have the same long-term goal but have to compromise on short-term decisions to get there.

What does this have to do with startup employees?

Any founder knows that without the right team, they won’t get anywhere.

Startup employees have more power than they realize in making a company successful if they know how to use such power.

The first thing to realize is that your role goes beyond your tasks.

If you joined a startup hoping to be left alone and do your work in a lab 24/7 while the world moves around you, you should have joined a large company instead.

Specialists are not made for early-stage startups, especially in health & bio.

What’s the best way to contribute beyond your tasks?

Understanding the incentives and reasons behind the company’s decisions!

Once you know what founders and investors are REALLY looking for, you’ll stop being frustrated with directions changing all the time, last-minute pressure to deliver and projects being killed midway.

Instead, you’ll be able to have thoughtful conversations with both founders and investors where you are not just treated as a skilled workforce but as someone who understands the big picture as well as the scientific details.

That is a powerful place to be.

❝

You don’t have to be on the Board to be influential

How to learn about Venture Capital

Beginner: if you don’t have a clear idea about Venture Capital and how VC deals work, here is a good place to start.

Intermediate: The Venture Deals Course is a free program taught by some of the best in the industry. You also get to work in teams and learn about the nuances of this industry from real-world examples.
(I took this course myself many years ago and it’s packed with value)

Advanced: get an internship/fellowship at a VC firm. Even if it’s part-time and only for a few months there is no better way to learn than doing the work, making mistakes and being around experts.
(Most European VC firms offer internships so don’t get discouraged and reach out to them. It will be worth it even if you don’t see yourself as a full-time investor)

Do you have a question about startup careers?

Share it anonymously by filling out the form and I’ll give you my honest answer in the next issue of Asking for a Talent.

If you enjoyed this issue, share it with someone who should learn about Venture Capital.

This week's top scientific reads

Is Medical AI Unfair? (ArXiv)
Neuromodulation for GI Disorders (Science)
Engineered Babies (Wired)
Cancer Resistance in Large Mammals (BioRxiv)
InstaDeep's SegmentNT for Genome Annotation (BioRxiv)

Read the highlights of these articles here.

Latest European funding rounds in health & bio

Kepler Vision Technologies raised €1.5M for their platform which uses computer vision and AI to monitor healthcare settings 🇳🇱
Calcivis closed a €5.7M Series A for their medtech device that focuses on the treatment of tooth decay while enabling preventive care 🇬🇧
Reshape Biotech raised €18.8M to help R&D teams automate lab experiments that require visual inspections 🇩🇰
Prothea Technologies raised €12M to develop medical devices to condense lung cancer biopsy and treatment into a single hospital visit 🇮🇪
Gaia Biomaterials raised €4.7M to further develop Biodolomer: a material with plastic-like qualities but without the disadvantages 🇸🇪
Log my Care raised €3.5M for its app that lets caregivers record patient notes and access medical records 🇬🇧
Onego Bio raised €26.3M to produce and commercialize animal-free egg protein using a fermentation-based process 🇮🇸
Sparxell closed a €2.8M round to develop sustainable plant-based pigments 🇬🇧