A look into fundraising for aspiring venture capitalists
0A look into fundraising for aspiring venture capitalists.
Think it’s hard to fundraise for a startup? Try raising money for a venture fund. Without an ivy league diploma, a hot startup behind your name and a proven track record of managing a venture capital fund, it’s downright difficult.
Aspiring venture capitalists spend years climbing the corporate ladder within established VC firms with the hope that someday they may earn the coveted status of “General Partner” — and that’s after having gotten a foot in the door with an MBA from Stanford or Harvard. Others spend years building a hot startup like Twitter, working their way up to Senior VP, after which they decide to try their hand in the venture world. Even then, gaining the trust of LPs can still prove to be a fruitless endeavor.
And let’s face it: most of us don’t have MBAs from Stanford or Harvard, nor the time or desire to run the marathon involved in making partner at a VC firm. That’s not to say we aren’t capable of investing like venture capitalists, though. It’s along this vein that people in the past, particularly in Latin America, have asked me where to start and how to go about raising a venture fund.
The truth is, even without that fancy MBA or startup nameplate, there is opportunity to break into the VC world.