What I learned as an intern at Cofounders Capital
Takeaways, reflections and advice for those looking for an internship in VC.
The How and Why 🧐
I was particularly excited to work with Cofounders Capital because of their incredibly empathetic and effective thesis.
On their website, you’ll find that CFC invests in B2B software companies in NC providing solutions with measurable ROI. What really sets them apart is their intentionally founder-friendly approach to VC: they take a low-equity approach to investments, have a team-centric evaluation structure and no company is ever “too early” for them to see.
How I Got the Job 🏂
A small note on securing an internship in VC. As anyone who has researched the industry knows, VCs oftentimes work in incredible small teams (probably as a product of the “2/20” rule for management fee/carry). For this reason, internships in VC are hard to come by, and even harder to lock down. I’m hesitant to say that there’s a silver bullet to finding a way to break into VC or grab an internship, but I’ll detail a few applicable lessons about finding an internship.
Lesson 1: Do the legwork.
If you take away anything from this section, let it be this: finding a job with a VC is all about demonstrating the value you provide. Perhaps your value is demonstrated through writing about product + markets on Medium (see Gaby Goldberg for an incredible example of this), submitting potential investments to the firm or being a consistent source of dealflow. My point is, you can do the work of a VC without working with one.
Now, these are not the only ways you can demonstrate your value. In fact, I took a completely different approach. In my last article, I detailed how I got involved with building a VC fund on campus at UNC. This was my exhibit of “value.” A takeaway here is that even if you feel like you lack experience, you should compensate in enthusiasm.
Lesson 2: Your network is your net worth.
Network. No, seriously, network as much as you can. Cold email, connect on LinkedIn, ask friends. VCs are small teams, and everyone is busy, so don’t feel offended by the low response rate. It’s somewhat of a numbers game, and you should continue to reach out to people in your network until you find and in.
This also goes back to finding a way to provide value. If you’ve been consistently providing value somewhere, people will notice. These are the same people that you should lean on to vouch for you as you reach out to VCs. In fact, I was advocated for by a friend who was working with me on our on campus fund and was previously acquainted with Tim at Cofounders.
The What (Experience/Daily Tasks) 🤓
Something I loved about my role at Cofounders Capital was how involved it was. As an intern at CFC, you’re tasked with responsibilities and action items that are significant—deals you source you lead to conversations with founders (where you’re included), due diligence you help conduct may be the foundation for the next investment, and ideas you bring to the table (product for portfolio companies or investments) will be seriously considered and potentially implemented.
Day to day work over the summer involved a lot of the same things mentioned above:
- Deal Scoring/Review: CFC has the benefit of being the amongst the most active VC funds in North Carolina. Consequently, we saw almost 85% of all NC-native B2B SaaS deals. One of the interns’ primary responsibilities was to review these deals through multiple lenses—market size, thesis fit, etc.
- Portfolio Company Support: Early-stage VCs typically serve as investors-cum-advisors. An exciting part of the job was being able to support portfolio companies in various operational areas—think finding board members, LPs, employees or even putting together recruiting and marketing resources.
- Investment Due-Diligence: One of the more exciting things in my personal opinion, this involved doing literature review, market sizing, competition analysis and exit modeling. Really cool opportunity to delve into the nitty-gritty of exciting SaaS companies.
This piece was meant to be a basic intro to the day-to-day life as a VC intern. Admittedly, the nature of VC is dynamic and non-linear, so take this with a grain of salt.
As always, if you, the reader, are more experienced in these regards, have something fun you’d like to talk about, or have critical feedback, please send it my way.
Thanks for reading,
Shri