Road2VC — Asking for Help
Hello VCs and Aspiring VCs! Hope you all are doing well and crushing all your goals that you’ve set for yourself this past new year. I know it’s been about a month since my last post, but I can assure you that I’ve been busy and really am excited to share status updates on my goals and accomplishments from the past month.
One thing I realized early on is that asking for help is never a bad thing. Since the beginning of my search and this blog, that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing on daily basis to get into Venture Capital. That humility has opened opportunities for me, not only in my VC search, but also in my personal life as well. However, for the purposes of this blog we’ll keep it strictly professional.
For those of you that have been following, you’ll have noticed that I’ve started to become a lot more active on LinkedIn and really pushing myself out of my comfort zone to engage with my network. This could be anywhere from sending out cold connection requests, to reaching out to Partners to see if I could get on their calendar, to finding people that are similar to me or that have been in a similar position as I am currently. This is where LinkedIn comes in handy but can also be a dangerous thing as well and could really kill your brand.
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From my last post, you’ll recall that I’ve been trying to get into contact with the partner from the Venture Capital firm, whom I originally met at a conference here in Chicago. You’ll be happy to know, after much persistence (and maybe 30 follow-up emails) I was finally able to get some time on the calendar. It got bad enough that even I found myself to be annoying. But hey, I got the result that I wanted, which was getting on his calendar. Even though it really pushed me out of my comfort zone, I accomplished one of the earliest goals that I set for myself! I’ll keep you all engaged with how that conversation goes and will share any learnings that come out of it.
As part of my normal research routine, I have a set group of keywords that I search on LinkedIn to find people that might have the same aspirations or have already made their way into VC in a particular space that I’m passionate about. From last post, I came across one of the most helpful people that I have met to this day, Leandro I Bedolla from M25 ventures. He’s helped me learn more about VC in the past month than I have learned on my own in the past year and I couldn’t be more excited to continue working with him in the future. After looking into Leandro’s profile, I quickly noticed that he had filled his LinkedIn profile with different things that he did to establish himself within the venture space and was continuing to crush his goals with the opportunities he was able to find. Including a stint with TechStars as well as Venture Capital Analyst volunteer to get his hands dirty and some important exposure to the venture deals. Luckily, Leandro wanted to be found, and even posted on his LinkedIn profile to reach out to him with any questions and included his personal email. So, I did just that. It took a few follow ups with him but we eventually were able to get connected. Our first phone call was supposed to be an hour call, but everything he was saying was hitting the nail right on the head for me. We ended talking for about an hour and a half, easily. It was probably one of the easiest and smoothest conversation that I’ve had with anyone within the venture space. Eventually, from that conversation Leandro helped me realize that I was reaching out to the wrong level within Venture. I’ve been reaching out to partners who are generally the busiest at the firm. No wonder why I haven’t really had solid engagement. Leandro went into detail about how reaching out to analyst who have been in similar situations as they would be the ones who have been in similar situations as me during a similar period. It immediately struck a chord and a light bulb went off in my brain. I’ve been approaching this all wrong. Why should I be fighting for time with partners when the analysts have been the ones who have most recently went through the process? So, going forward I’ll be looking to change my approach, and having a mentor like Leandro or someone that may have some specific industry insight to bounce ideas off is key in the search. They can tell you things that you may not have thought of. For example, I recently posted a comment on request from a partner at another VC firm in Chicago nudging them for a response to my cold email. Leandro immediately texted me saying that I should delete that comment since I sounded like I’m desperate and that it would hurt my branding. I immediately deleted the comment and worked with Leandro to come up with a new strategy to see how I could add value to this partner. Although the partner didn’t respond, I did have some engagement from the person that I was recommending the partner to reach out to, so not the result that I was expecting but a step in the right direction, for sure.
For my next post, a couple take aways that I want to set for myself is to find some more hands-on opportunities to perform analyst level tasks such as due diligence, market research, capitalization table reviews, etc. I’ll continue to work with Leandro to see how I could level up prior to my conversation with the Partner from the Venture Capital firm in Chicago. Hoping to just start building a relationship with this individual to see how I could stay engaged and ultimately add value to them as well as the firm. Keep in mind that asking for help isn’t a bad thing. It’s about the most genuine thing that you can do as a human that is deeply passionate about something. No matter what the field or industry is, always ask for help and ask questions even if they’ve been answered before.
In the meantime, if there is anything else that you all can think of, feel free to reach out. I’m all ears, always. And as always, I appreciate you all for sticking around and following me on this journey down the Road2VC!
