Introduction to Venture Upward

The Inside Scoop on Getting Ahead in VC

Much ink has been spilled on how to get into venture. It’s an important accomplishment for sure, but only the first step in building a venture career. A successful career in this industry is a long-term game, which is ironic given there isn’t much of a map on how to navigate it. Whereas a whole content industry written by VCs has emerged over the last decade advising and supporting first-time founders on fundraising and startup building, there is a complete dearth of content for early-career VCs.

Of course, the fabled wildly successful entrepreneur turned immediately successful VC won’t benefit from a long-time insider’s deep dive. Rare and glorious as that experience must be, many successful career venture capitalists have built themselves up brick-by-brick. We (Rob and Dave) are part of this later cohort — having entered VC as entry-level non-partner investment professionals at branded established firms, where we quickly recognized that this self-proclaimed “apprenticeship business” didn’t offer much structured support. 

We learned by doing, and now we want to share some of our hard-earned lessons. Consider this substack site a mini field guide for surviving, getting ahead, and succeeding as venture capitalists — written for the audience of junior VCs working their way through the ranks. Our goal is to share some advice your partners wish you knew (but aren't likely to tell you) and perhaps some that they wish you didn’t. We’re not claiming to have all of the answers or that we are the most successful venture capitalists. What we do have is direct firsthand experience working at our previous established firms, as well as starting our own firm together (which now counts five unicorns in its portfolio), along with the countless private conversations with peers about these exact issues over the past decade plus. We hope that participating in this discussion will be constructive to the ecosystem and serve as a path to foster more transparent conversations about what it means to succeed in VC.