How to get a job in Venture Capital

The most common question I got after I joined a VC firm was “how do I get a job in venture capital?” Here is an almost certainly disappointing attempt at an answer.

Update; These days I am working as an independent founder coach. Think of me as an executive coach before the founders have grown their companies big enough to really warrant the ‘executive’ coaching. See haje.me for more information — I’m always happy to chat!

About six months ago I started a new job as Director of Portfolio at Bolt. I’m not gonna lie — it’s the most challenging, most interesting, and most fun job I’ve ever had. I’ve been pretty vocal about my happiness on various social media, and I was surprised about quite how many people reached out to ask me how I got a job in VC, and how they, too, could go down the same path.

It turns out a warm introduction and a weirder-than-hell resume was my way in.

A bit of background.

Bolt is an unusual VC firm: We invest at the intersection of hardware and software, and we have a 7-man strong engineering team. Which makes sense. If you think about it, investing, in general, is a high-risk activity, and investing in hardware is especially risky. There are even more things that can go wrong than in ‘regular’ Venture Capital.

At Bolt, we de-risk our hardware-focused investments in three ways:

1. Only make the best investments possible. That one’s probably true for every VC firm, but we have an edge: We’re one of only a handful of firms willing to touch pre-seed hardware-related startups.
2. Invite our portfolio companies into our workspace (free rent to help extend the companies’ runway). We also give our startups access to a fully specced prototyping/machine shop: 3D printers, machine shop, wood shop, electronics shop, and workspace optimized for building products. Spoiler alert: being able to use the workshop is my favorite perk about working at Bolt.
3. Give our startups access to a top-shelf engineering team to help them build the prototypes they need to go on to test with early…