PS#015: A VC’s Weekly Schedule
As promised, I’m going to walk through a typical week (for me) as a venture capitalist.
I’m going to sound like a broken record, but…
For myself and most venture capitalists, this job is all about time management.
Let’s take a look at a week in the life of a venture capitalist.
Monday: partnership meetings, internal meetings, and startup communication.
Monday’s are focused on meeting with the broader partnership, meeting with my internal team, and responding to startups (in a timely manner).
The goal is to get everyone aligned and start executing.
Partnership Meeting
For the partnership meeting, we discuss the top priorities for the firm as well as the most pressing deals for the week.
Since I work at a firm with multiple funds and several internal teams, this meeting is used to provide insight into activities happening across the firm. These discussions could include deals advancing into diligence, term sheets being submitted, investments being closed, market conditions, new funds launching, and/or other important topics for the firm.
For some firms, this may be where they hold their investment committee meetings (“IC”). For other firms, the IC meetings may be scheduled separately so as not to include the entire firm.
It all depends on the firm’s preferences.
Internal Meetings
In addition to the partnership meeting, I’ll have meetings with my specific fund’s team.
Similar to the partnership meeting, we’ll use this time to align on top priorities for the week. A typical fund specific meeting will include some combination of the following…
Top priorities
Review KPIs (i.e., number of leads, first calls, VC meetings, etc.)
Preparing for the startup meetings we have for the week (i.e., first calls, demos, etc.)
Reviewing deals in progress and deciding on next steps (i.e., move forward, pass, etc.)
Working through structuring, diligence, or closing processes for in-progress deals
Venture capital and ecosystem conversations
Trading thoughts on investment theses and market conditions
We may not have time to cover all of this in one meeting, but we try to make sure we are hitting on all these topics regularly.
These conversations help us synthesize the information collected from all of these activities and allow us to develop insights that inform our investment decisions.
Startup Communication
After we’ve had our partnership and internal meetings, we’ll have agreed upon next steps with the opportunities in progress.
This means communicating with startups.
We may be passing, tracking, or moving the deal further in diligence. Whatever the case may be, we try to be quick with our decision-making process.
One of the worst things you can do is fail to communicate with a startup. This leaves them in the dark on how you feel about the opportunity. Don’t ghost startups. They are doing the hardest work of all in this ecosystem – be respectful of their time and attention.
After all of this, any remaining time in the day is spent preparing for the week, deep work, and any external calls that may have been scheduled.
Tuesdays – Thursdays: meetings, meetings, meetings.
Tuesdays through Thursdays are for meetings.
This may include calls with…
Startups
Limited partners
Venture investors
Portfolio companies
Bankers & acquirers
Subject matter experts
Ecosystem relationships
This is how we collect our intel on the market.
If you’re making your investment decisions simply based on internet research, you’re missing out on the most important information needed to make venture capital investments.
I’m usually scheduling 15-30 minute calls for the conversations that can flex up to an hour (depending on the conversation). I recommend starting with 15-30 minutes and then scheduling more time if necessary.
Depending on the week, these days will often include 4-8 hours worth of calls with remaining time being used to review and synthesize the information.
If possible, I’ll try to create themes for each day (i.e., startup meetings, VC meetings, ecosystem calls, etc.). It helps me stay in one frame of mind and reduce context switching. Of course, this isn’t always possible, especially when coordinating with external parties, so you need to be flexible.
Fridays: review, plan, and outline next steps.
On Fridays, I try to review all the information I’ve gathered over the course of this week (and prior weeks), while planning my next steps.
I’m trying to see if there is anything that will help me prioritize my efforts, inform my theses, and drive my investment due diligence / decision-making processes.
This will often result in deciding on the…
outreach I’d like to make (i.e., to startups, VCs, ecosystem players, etc.), and
my recommended next steps for opportunities we’ll review in our partnership meeting on Monday (i.e., moving a deal forward, passing on it, or tracking it for a future round)
I’ll work through this in detail for each opportunity.
Usually, I’ll schedule the outreach for different points throughout the week. Friday afternoons don’t tend to be a great time to reach out to people.
Everything I do during the week is designed to help me find great deals, support my portfolio, and ultimately return capital.
Disclaimers.
A few disclaimers for the schedule above…
Weekends: I do work weekends – often a lot – I think you get as much out of this job as you put into it and so I am trying to give it everything I’ve got.
Scheduling chaos: This is my overarching scheduling framework, but it’s often thrown into chaos by other people’s schedules, Board meetings, deals, etc. That’s just a part of the game.
Thinking time: Carving out time to think and process is really important. You’re collecting a lot of information on a weekly basis if you’re doing this right, but you need time to synthesize.
While it may not look exactly like this for every investor, this is generally what it will look like for most, especially when you’re just starting out in your career. As you progress in your career, your focus will change along with your schedule.
That's all for today. Now, you can skip the “day in the life” questions and use that time to show them that you can do this job.
Good luck.
