1/ Someone emailed me asking how to break into VC, so I wanted to answer on Twitter where others could see and contribute to the conversation.

2/ “Being a VC” can mean a lot of different things, so it’s worth asking:

What actual activities do you want to do?

- Deep market analysis?
- Be in the flow of information and people?
- Make deals?
- Work closely w/ founders over time (e.g take board seats?)
- Manage capital?
3/ It’s worth specifying what type of VC you might like to become — as there are different archetypes. E.g.

- Benchmark (Lead series A/B - couple investments a year)
- First Round (Lead seed rounds, partner w/ a few companies a year)
- SV Angel (Make lots of seed investments)
4/ Continued:

Expa - Incubate companies

YC / Village Global - Build a platform to help entrepreneurs at scale

Do you want to join a firm or start one? There’s a lot to consider.

Different paths will require different skillsets & sets of experiences.
5/ Since the person who wrote the email is a young person trying to break into VC by joining a firm (and who doesn’t want to start a company), I’ll tailor this tweet storm to that goal. There’s some overlap.
6/ If you are looking to join a VC firm, the question the firm needs to be able to answer is:

“Is this person going to help me to invest in companies that I otherwise would not have invested in without him/her?”

How do you do this?
7/ Basically you want to see yourself as having an asset or “portfolio” of assets that make you uniquely valuable—not only next to thousands of other smart, connected, well-branded ppl trying to break into VC—but also to other *existing* angels/VCs.

Why will you see great deals?
8/ Maybe because you own a key network. Examples:

- You worked at Stripe or Palantir and run their alumni group (Company)

- You went to MIT and ran their on campus fund (College)

- You ran Waterloo’s startup community and you know all the great projects (Location)
9/ More examples of key networks:

- You host the signature AR/VR conference (Vertical network)

- You run a community like "Interact"—top technologists under 25 (Horizontal network)

- You’re the best writer in, say, crypto—or more specifically, privacy coins (Legible expertise)
10/ Or you have some unfair advantage:

- You worked at Product Hunt or in journalism (can help startups with distribution/PR)

- You host "The 20 min VC" (can help startups raise money)

- You run a podcast called "The 20 min Blockchain Engineer" (can help startups recruit)
11/ The important thing is to do the work upfront.

Here are other things you can do to add value to VC firms:

1. Send them good deals
2. Send their companies customers or talent
3. Invite partners on your podcast or to your event (or any of the assets mentioned above)
12/ These things, of course, are hard.

How do you get access to customers in the first place? Host a VP of Sales Event once a quarter, or an event for another core buying audience.

Talent? Start a job board site for engineers, or a regular happy hour for top designers.
13/ Deal flow? Have some asset that makes founders come to you — an event series, a valuable network, or a domain expertise — and then send deals to others. The more you send good deals the more you’ll receive.
14/ Quoth Rob Go: “ it’s much less about “how” to find a VC job but more about “being” the kind of person who can get a VC job.”
15/ Getting a job in venture capital is partly less about “who you know” and more about “who you’ve helped.”

Start creating a personal portfolio of projects that allow you to help others, especially around getting into deals, and you may break into VC.

Add any other thoughts.

More from Startups

💪 And we're down to the last 48 hours until the biggest live-streamed startup event hosted by @thepatwalls & @shipstreams kicks off!

With this, let's get motivated with some curated readings & posts by fellow #24hrstartup participants & indie makers. Check them out below!

✍️ Andrew Parrish wrote - "Why I'm Participating in the 24 Hour Startup Challenge".

@makersup's takeaway - Makers love possibilities, the joy of building. Any aspiring maker should experience the end of lurking on forums & reading @wip's to-dos.

Read:

👩‍💻 @anthilemoon created a list of @women_make_ members participating in the #24hrstartup challenge. Do let her know if she missed anyone!

More at:
https://t.co/zYKVZEq8aq


😺 We can't forget one of the key platforms in shipping indie, can we, @ProductHunt?

Check out @ProductHunt's guide to launching at: https://t.co/VB6WgGx6sa.

In addition, it would be wise to prepare for the launch. Fine tune your assets and post at

🚢 Well, we definitely can't leave out the man behind all of this, @thepatwalls!

Launching isn't easy, but know what you'll be facing even before coding. Check out @thepatwalls' "words of shipping" at:

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This is NONSENSE. The people who take photos with their books on instagram are known to be voracious readers who graciously take time to review books and recommend them to their followers. Part of their medium is to take elaborate, beautiful photos of books. Die mad, Guardian.


THEY DO READ THEM, YOU JUDGY, RACOON-PICKED TRASH BIN


If you come for Bookstagram, i will fight you.

In appreciation, here are some of my favourite bookstagrams of my books: (photos by lit_nerd37, mybookacademy, bookswrotemystory, and scorpio_books)
कुंडली में 12 भाव होते हैं। कैसे ज्योतिष द्वारा रोग के आंकलन करते समय कुंडली के विभिन्न भावों से गणना करते हैं आज इस पर चर्चा करेंगे।
कुण्डली को कालपुरुष की संज्ञा देकर इसमें शरीर के अंगों को स्थापित कर उनसे रोग, रोगेश, रोग को बढ़ाने घटाने वाले ग्रह


रोग की स्थिति में उत्प्रेरक का कार्य करने वाले ग्रह, आयुर्वेदिक/ऐलोपैथी/होमियोपैथी में से कौन कारगर होगा इसका आँकलन, रक्त विकार, रक्त और आपरेशन की स्थिति, कौन सा आंतरिक या बाहरी अंग प्रभावित होगा इत्यादि गणना करने में कुंडली का प्रयोग किया जाता है।


मेडिकल ज्योतिष में आज के समय में Dr. K. S. Charak का नाम निर्विवाद रूप से प्रथम स्थान रखता है। उनकी लिखी कई पुस्तकें आज इस क्षेत्र में नए ज्योतिषों का मार्गदर्शन कर रही हैं।
प्रथम भाव -
इस भाव से हम व्यक्ति की रोगप्रतिरोधक क्षमता, सिर, मष्तिस्क का विचार करते हैं।


द्वितीय भाव-
दाहिना नेत्र, मुख, वाणी, नाक, गर्दन व गले के ऊपरी भाग का विचार होता है।
तृतीय भाव-
अस्थि, गला,कान, हाथ, कंधे व छाती के आंतरिक अंगों का शुरुआती भाग इत्यादि।

चतुर्थ भाव- छाती व इसके आंतरिक अंग, जातक की मानसिक स्थिति/प्रकृति, स्तन आदि की गणना की जाती है


पंचम भाव-
जातक की बुद्धि व उसकी तीव्रता,पीठ, पसलियां,पेट, हृदय की स्थिति आंकलन में प्रयोग होता है।

षष्ठ भाव-
रोग भाव कहा जाता है। कुंडली मे इसके तत्कालिक भाव स्वामी, कालपुरुष कुंडली के स्वामी, दृष्टि संबंध, रोगेश की स्थिति, रोगेश के नक्षत्र औऱ रोगेश व भाव की डिग्री इत्यादि।
Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details):
https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.