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The One Ingredient Required To Get Into Venture Capital – Semil Shah Blog

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Earlier this week, a super-smart recent college grad pinged me to talk about a potential career in venture. I took the meeting. It was funny to me, in a way, that I myself had those meetings 7-8 years ago. I can’t remember all the advice I got back then. Lots of folks said to work at a larger company, or a company past the Series B stage. Lots of folks wanted me to interview, too, but while those were good conversations, they certainly didn’t proceed in the linear fashion I had hoped for. Now, in 2018, with the tables turned, what would I tell this eager 23-year old whipsmart whiz? Here’s what I told him, as he was mentioning he wanted to get operational experience *in order to* position himself to get into venture: 1/ I fundamentally disagree with the tactic of doing X in order to one day be in venture. It is flawed for many reasons. One, the relevance of X to venture may change; two, it seems like a fantastic misplacement of precious time, energy, and attention; and three, it’s hard

Earlier this week, a super-smart recent college grad pinged me to talk about a potential career in venture. I took the meeting. It was funny to me, in a way, that I myself had those meetings 7-8 years ago. I can’t remember all the advice I got back then. Lots of folks said to work at a larger company, or a company past the Series B stage. Lots of folks wanted me to interview, too, but while those were good conversations, they certainly didn’t proceed in the linear fashion I had hoped for. Now, in 2018, with the tables turned, what would I tell this eager 23-year old whipsmart whiz? Here’s…

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