How to get a job as a Venture capitalist

I get an email or two a week from folks wanting to be a Venture Capitalist. Usually its to ask for introductions to a VC firm or to forward their resume. Most of these folks have a technical background and some have an MBA. Since most people sending the email dont ask me how they could really get a job at a VC firm, I thought I’d outline that for them.

There are broadly 3 operating roles in a VC firm – General Partner (GP), Associate / Principal (AP) and Operating partner (OP). There are other roles such as Venture partner, but those are fairly rare. Limited Partners LP’s) are not part of a VC’s fund’s operating roles, they are investors in a VC fund.

Most VC firms have between 2-5 GP’s, and 2-5 AP’s and 1-2 OP’s. (source: PDF)

GP’s take the most risk, since they raise the fund from institutional investors so they tend to get the highest salaries and profits the firm makes from the investments. To be a GP you should have enough capability to raise funds (the most important aspect) and deploy those funds to provide a better return (which is: invest in startups and ensure they have great exit). Most GP’s (over 60%) I know have a degree from a top notch school (think Harvard MBA, Stanford MBA or in India IIT and IIM). Please see list of VC firms (below) in India. My analysis of GP’s in those firms indicates unless you have been an entrepreneur before with a successful exit OR from a IIT / IIM, with over 10+ years of experience OR you can raise money from other investors, your chances of being a GP are very low (less than 10%). Unless you can raise money to be a fund on your own, you will have to spend 10+ years being an AP and then graduate to being a GP.

AP’s are usually junior folks, and of the 120+ AP’s in the firms (largely Indian) below 69 (over 50%) are from IIT, IIM, McKinsey backgrounds. So if you are a fresh grad or someone with 2-5 years of experience, and not from a top school, your chances of getting into a VC firm as an AP are not high. Its not impossible, but there are only 400+ firms in India and so a max of about 1500 AP positions, which means a best case of about 700 (<50%) positions. The good news is over the last 5-10 years the % of IIT, IIM grads as AP’s has dropped from over 80% to less than 60%.

Operating partners are usually CFO’s or Legal advisors, so your technology background wont qualify you for a role there. More likely a legal degree or a CPA / CA certification is required.

So how do you get a job as a VC if you are not from a top school or you dont have ability to raise money?

1. Be an entrepreneur first: Most VC’s who are not from top schools end up being one because they made money for the VC firm that invested in them. If you are an entrepreneur and you raise money from a VC firm, and then have a successful exit, the chances of you becoming a VC improve dramatically. Surprisingly, even if you dont have a successful exit, your chances of getting into a VC firm improve many fold. If you had a successful exit however, you can possibly raise your own fund, and write your own ticket.

2. Help rich investors make money: As I point out before a key part of being a VC is the ability to raise money. Most folks who I get emails from are like me (15 years ago). I did not have the network to raise funds at that time and neither did I have a lot of money myself to start a VC fund. Raising money from other rich people involves either them trusting and knowing you (they are friends, family, etc.) OR if you have made money for them before. I suspect like me, most of the folks emailing me dont have very rich uncles and aunts, so the best strategy is to help rich folks get richer. This might include introducing them to startups which need investment and then exit to make your investors a profit, or making money for them via the stock market and generating enough returns to both satisfy them and to make a tidy sum for yourself.

3. Work yourself into that role: VC’s dont recruit by going to campus interviews or by posting on job boards. If they do be vary, and run away. Most good VC’s I know only hire from their network or trust a executive search firm to help them get the right AP candidates. Get to know and help executive search (Kornferry or Stanton Chase) recruiters get other candidates (for other roles) and keep your name on the radar. They might come to you when a VC job comes up. The other approach is to network with VC’s so they will let you know when their firm has an opening for an AP. To be on their radar, help them source and talk to great entrepreneurs and send them good quality companies to invest in. Alternately if you have an uncle or aunt at a VC firm, you can get that AP role fairly easily.

Of course the easiest way to be a VC is to bankroll the fund with your own money, if you have that much money, then this post is largely useless for you.

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Sales isn’t just sexy, its smokin’ hot

[Editorial Notes: Zomato has turned 4 today and the team reflects upon the past 4 years and shares some of the key insights.]

We’re turning 4 today (blows candles). Time to go to school now – make the next big leap. We can confidently claim that we have been well brought up by our “parents” – mentors, investors, friends, family and the entire Zomato team. But before we make the next big move, this is the perfect opportunity to reflect upon the past 4 years. Everything we dealt with was very typical to any start-up and we also sorted them the start-up way (by hook or by crook, mostly in the 11^th hour). However, there was one thing that we approached differently and which we are particularly proud of – sales. Based on our approach and experience, we are sharing some of the stuff that will “set the salesmen apart from the salesboys”.

Rocket Singh Salesman of the year

“Now, sales is not a sexy job”

We’ve been hearing this forever from pretty much everyone around us – friends in marketing jobs, our families, interview candidates and investors. We wanted to let them know that Sales, especially in a start-up, couldn’t be sexier. Here’s why.

Good people make Sales sexy

Traditionally, Sales has been a purely commercial job where the product is pretty much standardized and there’s hardly any scope for new ideas, customization or innovation. Even if there is scope, the salesperson is either not trained enough to do so or doesn’t have the authority (true story). The salesperson eats, shoots and leaves… sorry… walks in, negotiates and leaves. Add to that the market’s perception of a typical salesman as an unscrupulous telecom company chap rather than the suave associates from management consulting firms who sell concepts, ideas and hope. Our experience says, hire the latter to make sales sexy. They cost more but ensure that they bring in supernormal returns (revenue) and justify their salaries.

Benefits are sexy, Features are not

Clients don’t buy features of your product – they buy benefits – and that should be the opening and closing sentence of a salesperson’s pitch. The ideal state is to reach a stage where most of your salespeople become agony aunts for their clients! They should talk stuff that solves clients’ problems. They should be able to dissect the industry and market scenario layer by layer to come up with solutions. They should have networks that the clients can tap into at any point in time for any purpose. For your clients, solutions to any of their problems should be a phone-call away. Here, the role of a salesperson changes from a product / services seller to a consultant – and being a consultant is sexy.

Caring about clients is sexy

Clients are constantly under pressure from the customers, investors, government, suppliers while barely anyone in the marketplace appreciates them for the entrepreneurs that they are. They have serious business issues and limited market knowledge (in Zomato’s case, due to the hyper-local nature of their business). Become a partner in their woes and act as agents of market efficiency by acting as warehouses of information. Example: We’ve had clients meet us at midnight over a few beers (beer is sexy) to share their sorrows and we make it a point to listen to their needs and provide our best advice. The message to them should be loud and clear – we care about your business as much as you do.

Problem solving is sexy

A good salesperson asks the right questions, identifies the problem, dissects it, validates it, proposes possible solutions, discusses them and executes them. If he fails, he admits it and works on another solution. If he succeeds, he has a customer for life, a relationship built on results and trust. If he fails, they still remain friends – still a phone call away.

#salestip: Litmus test of a good client relationship is whether the client stores your number in his cellphone and picks up your calls / returns missed calls consistently.

You want to make Sales in your organization sexy? Turn the concept of traditional sales on its head. Hire stars. Train them on decision-making, not only skills. If you are giving them responsibility, give them authority as well. Make them industry experts. Turn them into problem-solvers. Feel free to write anything on the contract – in spirit, charge your consulting fee.

I repeat, Sales isn’t just sexy, its smokin’ hot (cuts the cake)

[Guest article contributed by Saurabh Sengupta, Head of India Operations for Zomato.]

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Ecommerce Startup, Bewakoof wants to make ‘Bewakoof’ thoughts a fashion statement

Two happy-go-lucky guys start a company just after college and within a few months the venture does very well for itself. Infact it achieves a break-even in no time. They are on cloud 9 and work towards expanding their business line.

Sounds like a scenario just out of a Bollywood flick? Nah! This isn’t so. It’s the story of Bewakoof.com and its founders Prabkiran Singh and Siddharth Munot. Bewakoof.com is an ecommerce platform that aims to bring some humour into our boring lives with their witty line of Tees and posters. Basically Bewakoof.com is dedicated to glorify humour among youth and bring a change to their lives.

Both civil engineering graduates from IIT Bombay, these young lads always wanted to do something of their own…the seed was sown during college days itself and they started printing bulk t-shirts for college fests and managed to get in a few corporate orders too! (Infact Prabkiran also started a venture called khadke gLASSI, a lassi outlet outside IIT Bombay, but it failed and had to be closed down). This was good to begin with but not something they really wanted to do. Once out of college they drilled their brains to different ideas and thus Bewakoof.com was incepted.

We got a chance to speak these cool, humorous, happy-go-lucky guys (Bewakoof) on their venture with a strange name and the roadmap for the future. Here is what they had to say.

Pi: Why the name Bewakoof? What made you choose something so strange as a name of a company?

Bewakoof: Well, to begin with we wanted something that was witty, cool, humorous and had a recall value. When we sat down to book a domain…this was around the same time I (Siddharth) was learning web designing and was booking every other domain name that sounded great. Suddenly we realised we were close to April Fool’s day and we tried putting that into domains. Both of us agreed on Bewakoof and we booked the domain.

And it worked! The name attracted everyone’s attention and forced them to visit our site. It created an inquisitiveness and people wanted to know what we did.

Pi: How much time did it take from inception to execution?

Bewakoof: Though the domain name was booked long time back around April 2010 we never went ahead to do anything about it. We really started thinking about Bewakoof post our engineering. We started work on the site around December 2011 and launched it in end January 2012. Since then there has been no looking back.

Pi: What are the categories you deal in on the website? What are the to-be launched sections?

Bewakoof: As of now we cater to only 2 categories – Wacky quote/ one-liner/ illustrative T-shirts for men and wall posters. We aim to grow our portfolio to include everything that can bring some humour to our lives. However, the next thing we are looking to launch is Tees for women. We are working on the quality of tees and suitable designs as of now.

Pi: Where do you get these quotes/ illustrations/ one-liners from?

Bewakoof: Well, we do a lot of research on trends as to what is adored by the youth, what are they talking about, what they think…so on and so forth. These form the basis of our thought process. We then sit with our creative team and brainstorm. Thereafter various designs are created and then we choose the ones that work.

Pi: How has the response to Bewakoof been?

Bewakoof: The response has been stupendous. We are exhilarated as we had never even dreamt that we could make an impact in such a short span of time. We get orders worth 25-30 thousand per day on an average and growing. Infact we achieved operational break-even last month and expect to continue the good work. In terms of traction we get more than four thousand visitors per day on Bewakoof.com. We are growing 100 per cent month on month.

Pi: How is Bewakoof.com marketed?

Bewakoof: To be frank we have hardly spent on marketing the site. We promote ourselves through Justdial and Facebook. Infact we have been able to garner 75 thousand fans on Facebook in less than a few months.

Apart from that we run extensive college campaigns where we ask students to spread Beewakoofy around their college campus. When they write to us, we send them five Bewakoof posters and they need to put them up in their in their college. Once done, they need to send us a picture of the same and we ship them a free Tee.

Also, we have tied up with Snapdeal, Indiatimes shopping and Seventymm wherein our tees are sold on their sites too.

Pi: There are existing sites like Inkfruit, Teesort.com who have the early mover advantage. Where do you see yourself among them?

Bewakoof: We agree that these sites have an early mover advantage but we are a little different in the league. We are more into the humour space. They are made keeping the youth in mind, as we do a lot of research, so there are less chances of error. Our tees are wacky and have a different approach. Also unlike others we promise a 24 hour dispatch so our deliveries are quicker.

Pi: What does the future behold?

Bewakoof: Well, we have just begun and there is a lot to achieve. We are working diligently towards our goal and the future looks bright. At one hand where we are looking to expand our portfolio which includes new categories and more alliances, we are also working on improving the user experience on the website. Also we are looking for investments and are looking to initiate talks with a few VC’s and angel investors. Let’s hope for the best.

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clickTRUE Funded by Nusantara Ventures, Expands to Indonesia

ClickTRUE, a startup based in Singapore focusing on helping brand owners with online strategy such as design, experience, search, and conversion, has just raised series A funding from Nusantara Ventures. The startup recently expanded into Indonesia, setting up its clickTRUE Indonesia subsidiary. The locally-sourced funding will differentiate the digital agency from its rivals, said CEO Jackie Lee today.

It is an obvious move for a Singapore startup to expand to neighboring Indonesia. Indonesia has most of the wishlist ticked for any internet company – moreover a digital agency – in that it has a young and social population, internet usage is increasing, and digital ad spending will reach US$10 billion this year. It explains why Google has presence here now too.

With this investment, Shinta W. Dhanuwardoyo, founder of Bubu.com and managing partner of Nusantara Ventures, will sit on the board of directors of clickTRUE Indonesia. With years of experience in the digital industry, this will only aid the expansion of clickTRUE. Shinta said in an announcement this morning:

There is so much potential for growth in Indonesia. clickTRUE has the expertise and tools to help businesses in Indonesia click their way to success. With the evolving internet landscape, it’s still very exciting for me to be a part of this even though I’ve been doing this for years. This is exactly what we need for Indonesia to move forward in terms of performance marketing in the digital space

With the rise of internet literacy, usage, and spending, Indonesia’s definitely a place to expand. We have seen JWT expanding through acquisition, and I believe these moves are just the start of the capital inflows. At the same time, this also marks the first series A investment by a local venture capital group in Indonesia, and I definitely hope to see more local startups get investment from them too.

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Asia on the Edge 2012 – Pitch It!

To all up-and-coming entrepreneurs of Asia’s creative industry! Asia on the Edge 2012 is featuring an open pitch – Pitch It! – specially for you! The second edition continues to look for fresh idea(s) in Asia’s creative industries. Winner gets SGD$10,000 and a chance to be incubated by potential investors.

Register Now @ Asia on the Edge

Submission: 4 June – 17 August 2012
Discount: Enjoy an early bird discount of 10% if you register before 31st July 2012.

About Pitch It!:

It is a platform to uncover the best idea(s) in Asia’s creative industry for funding. Pitch It! looks for ideas or concepts which have yet to be realised/concept stage/in prototype or early development stage, and have the potential to be further developed.

About Asia on the Edge:

Asia on the Edge is a regional platform aggregating creative entrepreneurs and arts practitioners with the aim of incubating new ideas and trends of Asia and Asian origins. AOTE 2012 will gather 300 creative entrepreneurs from Singapore and Asia for a 3-day conference in Singapore from 7th to 9th September.

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Equinix Completes $230 Million Acquisition of Hong Kong Data Center Provider

Global data center provider Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX) has just announced the completion of its acquisition of Hong Kong’s Asia Tone for $230.5 million.

Asia Tone is a prominent data center provider in the Asia Pacific region, with reportedly a third of its customers also being existing Equinix customers. The Hong Kong company has a notice to customers regarding the acquisition and also explaining the renaming of its data centers.

The acquisition agreement was announced back in early May, with Equinox’s CEO and president, Steve Smith, noting at the time that the move would be a big help in expanding into China, helping to serve its multi-national customers who want to grow in that market. Smith added in today’s announcement:

With the acquisition of Asia Tone, Equinix is in a strong position to establish market leadership in Asia-Pacific. […] As our fastest growing region and one in high demand by customers, we see a tremendous opportunity to continue our track record of growth in Asia-Pacific.

Our readers may recall that earlier this month Equinix announced it would be investing $28.5 million into its second Singapore International Business Exchange (IBX) data center, in order to accommodate demand from cloud and finance service providers. The company also has IBXs in places like Hong Kong, Sydney, and Tokyo.

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It’s Sina Weibo’s Turn to Hats off to Path

We’re written Path clone, then we’ve written Path clone again, and then we’ve written them again and again. And now its Sina Weibo, the most popular Chinese SNS’s turn to pay tribute to the Valley-based private SNS community.

Sina Weibo just launched its own approach to Path, dubbed Meyou, (translates to Close Friends in Chinese). Meyou also lets people keep in close touch with close friends by sharing “location, photos, posts” and so on. You can log in directly with your Weibo account, and all your connections on Weibo will be automatically transferred to the app, though you need to add them one by one again as “close friends” in Meyou because all these connections are open on Sina Weibo for its one-way follow mechanism.

photo credit: TechWOM

In addition to the sharing feature, Meyou enhanced weibo’s private messaging feature, you can message your Weibo friends from the app, just like what you can do with the official Sina Weibo mobile app.

It seems to many that, just like Twitter will never make a Facebook, Sina Weibo will never make a QZone or Tencent Pengyou because of its rooted openness. So Sina Weibo now comes up with a “hypercorrection”, making an app like Path that is even more closed than Facebook.

Prior to the launch of Meyou, Sina Weibo debuted another new product called Weiba as the latest addition to the grand Weibo product arsenal. Just like we said before, Sina Weibo is heavily leveraging on the platform to produce a flurry of products to ramp up user stickiness and, probably potential revenue sources.

Related posts:

1. Global Mobile Game Awards at GMIC2011 – Submit Your Mobile Game!
2. Microsoft China Director: Windows Phone Has Chance To Win in 3–5 Years in Mobile
3. Over 65% Chinese App Developers Are Newcomers To The Business

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China’s SARFT to Censor Original Internet Video, Criminalize Rainbows, Ban All Fun

Here come the fun police.

Grab another drink, everyone, because it sounds like the party is nearly over. SARFT, China’s fun police film censorship bureau is finally extending its black, dead hand warm embrace to online video sites, wrapping up their heretofore-uncensored films and series in a fun-smothering bearhug of censorship an embrace of harmony.

A SARFT spokesman announced yesterday that original drama series and films on video websites like Youku and Tudou are mostly great, but that some don’t live up to government quality standards, citing violations such as repeated curse words, violence, sexuality, and excessive enjoyability (OK, they didn’t really say that last one). SARFT will thus step in and begin to regulate original productions that are broadcast online. In the future, original productions destined for the internet will need to be approved by SARFT before they can be broadcast just like everything else.

SARFT explained the move as response to “outcry from internet users” and “industry needs.” I have a feeling the latter played a larger role than the former, primarily because the former doesn’t seem to exist. (Yes, I’m sure there a few crazies out there, but there’s certainly no great love for SARFT on China’s internet, nor any deep-seated desire to see even more of the internet censored).

This is bad news for all video sites, but it’s potentially especially bad news for Youku (NYSE:YOKU), which has had thus far had more success than any of its competitors in producing interesting original programming. Presumably this SARFT announcement means we can look forward to online programming quickly becoming as dull and lifeless as most television programming, which SARFT has been doing its damnedest to suck the fun out of for quite some time now.

We contacted Youku for this story; the company declined to comment.

The only possible silver lining is that it’s not entirely clear how SARFT plans to evaluate the productions. There’s some chance it will merely be tweaking the existant self-review system, and it also could implement different standards for online productions that allow a little more leeway. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though.

It’s also not clear exactly how far SARFT could eventually take this. Obviously original productions from all the major video sites will be affected immediately, but what about user-submitted content? At what level of production will videos officially need to be cleared with SARFT before they can be broadcast? It doesn’t seem like SARFT has its eye on user-generated content just yet, but that seems like the next step in SARFT’s eternal quest to suck the joy out of clean up Chinese entertainment.

[QQ News via Sinocism]

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