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if you want to start your career in VC, here are some of the best opportunities: 1. @a16z — Frontier Research Intern, NYC ($3.5K–$4.5K/week). deadline: Nov 20 jobs.a16z.com/jobs/andreesse… 2. @PrecursorVC — AI & Investment Operations Intern (paid, part-time, no VC experience required). deadline: Nov 29 precursorvc.com/internship-a… 3. @BessemerVP — Summer Analyst 2028, NYC ($2.2K/week + $5K housing). deadline: Nov 30 job-boards.greenhouse.io/bvp… 4. RootedIn VC — Fellowship (Stanford students, 10 weeks). deadline: Dec 13 cresca.ai/apply/fi_cc764f67b… 5. @kleinerperkins — 2027 Engineering Fellow. deadline: Jan 31 jobs.ashbyhq.com/kleinerperk… 6. @kleinerperkins — 2027 Design Fellow. deadline: Jan 31 jobs.ashbyhq.com/kleinerperk… 7. @TrueBridgeCP — 2027 Summer Analyst, Chapel Hill (10 weeks, rising seniors) truebridgecapital.applytojob… 8. DRW Venture Capital — VC Analyst Intern, Chicago ($80K annualized + housing) job-boards.greenhouse.io/drw… 9. @EqualVentures — Analyst/Associate, NYC ($75K–$200K + fund carry) jobs.ashbyhq.com/equal-ventu… 10. Cross Creek — Investment Analyst/Associate, Salt Lake City (0–2 years experience) crosscreek.vc/careerposts/in… 11. @galaxyhq — Associate, Venture Investor, NYC ($150K–$175K + bonus/equity) job-boards.greenhouse.io/gal… 12. @pillar_vc — Investing Analyst, Boston (seed-stage investing) pillar.vc/careers/investing-… 13. @pillar_vc — Venture Associate, Deep-Tech, London pillar.vc/careers/venture-as… 14. TheVentureCity — Investment Team Intern, Madrid (paid, 6 months) theventurecity.typeform.com/… what did i miss?

best vc content formats based on my experience - deep research into specific niches and market shifts. for example, @gregisenberg wrote an excellent article, "$5T Opportunity: AI Roll Ups," which we probably should've written ourselves, considering how early we invested in Dwelly. this is a great format because you help readers understand the reasoning behind a particular opportunity, backed by data and experience. it could also be research into a broader market shift, like @kwharrison13's article "The Death of Venture Capital's Short Kings." the key to making this format work is having real expertise and being able to explain complex things in a way people can easily understand. - investment theses. this is similar to the first format, but it's more actionable because you're actually putting your own money behind the thesis. you explain where you see opportunities and market inefficiencies, then show how you're acting on them. a great example is @GEVS94's article "Rise of the Borderless Founder," which explains the reasoning and data behind the thesis while also showing what they're doing about it: hosting dinners for these founders, recruiting them, and investing in them. - breakdowns of recent deals. calculate who made how much money, what multiples investors achieved, and so on. this is @PaulBonnet's signature format, and it consistently gets great views. most people either can't be bothered to do the math or don't know how. seeing the actual numbers when someone has already done the work for you is always interesting and genuinely useful for understanding what's happening in the market. - interesting early-stage artifacts. what a unicorn looked like when you first invested in it. an interesting story about a portfolio company's founder. @a16z posted "Cursor, 4 years ago," featuring a Hacker News screenshot where the founder described the project as an email extension. it got 1.4M views. they've also posted what SpaceX's first reactor looked like, Airbnb's website in 2008, and so on. all of these posts performed extremely well. - lists and maps of startups or people. curated lists and rankings almost always get great engagement. there are two main reasons. first, you tag people and appeal to their egos. people naturally want to react to and share content that features them. second, you've done the research and created something that solves a real problem for someone. say someone wants to learn about VC. here's a list of the best creators covering the venture capital industry. that same list is also useful for GPs and CMOs at other funds who are building their own content strategies. this is one of @cosign's main growth strategies, and it works extremely well because of the obvious network effect. - interpreting research data. take an interesting statistic and explain what it actually means, or challenge a well-known investor's or founder's opinion using data. this format is particularly effective. @credistick is great at it, and his content consistently gets strong views. not everyone can connect the dots and draw conclusions from numbers, and plenty of people don't even look at the data. presenting it this way gives your arguments real evidence. - podcasts and clips. this is becoming especially relevant following the recent announcement from @XCreators, and @HarryStebbings has really nailed this format. but you can't just start another podcast because everyone else is doing it. the space is genuinely overcrowded. you need to understand exactly what problem you're solving and for whom. before launching, check whether someone else is already solving that problem better than you could. there's not much point in starting yet another podcast unless you can get someone like @elonmusk on it. you need to know who's going to watch and why. - educational content. how to fundraise, how venture capital works, and so on. @harris has been publishing some good articles in this format recently. there are two things to keep in mind. first, who's reading it? if your goal is to attract LPs, they obviously already know the basics, and so do experienced founders. this type of content usually attracts beginners and tends to work well on TikTok, Instagram, and similar platforms. second, check whether someone has already explained the topic better than you plan to. writing the hundredth explanation of how venture capital works isn't going to add much value if you have nothing new to say. - personal reflections. just observations from your own life and work. which types of founders tend to perform better, something non-obvious you've learned about relationships, whatever. anything you think could be useful that comes from your personal experience. sometimes it's just a thought worth sharing. - digests of what happened over the past week or month. a great format when you focus on a specific niche. @pavelprata is perfect with his monthly VC/LP debrief. if you don't have a large audience yet, don't try to cover every piece of news. pick a smaller segment you know really well and become the best and most popular source in that niche first. - nostalgia. what happened in VC over the past year? this isn't a regular format, but it can be amazing if you put real effort into it. some friends of mine who ran a large football media account used to create incredible illustrations capturing the year's biggest and most memorable moments through tiny details. they'd then build a list around those illustrations. - interactive content. recently, all kinds of vibe-coded websites featuring memes have gone viral. @vkleban made a cool game where both players are controlled by Jev models. others have built websites that calculate how much your X account is worth, and so on. if you execute the idea well and make people curious enough to try it, this format almost always performs extremely well. lower-quality formats that still work - announcing that you're investing and asking people to drop their pitch decks, websites, or startup descriptions in the comments. it's engagement farming and tends to attract a lower-quality audience, but it works for generating views. - memes about recent events. just look at @TurnerNovak's most popular posts. almost all of them are memes. maybe one in ten really takes off, and the audience isn't always that relevant, but the format clearly works. - shitposting and short takes. i'm not a fan of this format, and frankly, i'm not very good at it. still, these posts can occasionally get incredible traction. @chiefofautism has built a great audience with this approach.

best character traits for founders who are about to fundraise - childhood trauma. as we know, some of the most successful people are also the most traumatized. someone with a healthy work-life balance and everything going well in their life doesn't have much reason to dedicate their entire life to building a billion-dollar company. childhood trauma can create incredibly strong, long-term motivation. for some founders, building a company becomes a way to prove something to themselves or the world, and that motivation can last for decades. - disagreeableness. as an entrepreneur, you can't agree with everyone. you need focus and clear priorities. at some point, you'll have to fire a friend, replace your CEO, turn down a major client, and make plenty of other difficult decisions. you need to be comfortable making those calls, even when people are unhappy with you. if you're constantly trying to please everyone, you'll end up making decisions that are bad for the company. - heretical thinking. the biggest opportunities often exist where something widely accepted turns out to be wrong or simply not the best solution. most people never even question those assumptions, let alone try to prove them wrong or build something better. it takes a certain type of person to challenge conventional wisdom. people will laugh at them, dismiss their ideas, and tell them they're wasting their time. they don't particularly care because they genuinely believe they're right and are determined to prove it. - neurodivergence. ASD, ADHD, etc. you've probably noticed that a lot of founders are pretty unusual people. there's a reason for that. building something extraordinary often requires a mindset that most people don't have. the pressure is enormous, the uncertainty never really goes away, and most people wouldn't want to live like that. some neurodivergent founders can turn traits like intense focus, unconventional thinking, and obsessive interest in a particular problem into a serious advantage. they can spend years working on something that other people would have given up on long ago. - speed. focus, focus, focus, and speed of execution. that's what makes the difference. everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, yet one person can accomplish in a day what takes someone else a week. the best founders move incredibly fast, make decisions without overthinking every detail, and dedicate themselves completely to what they're building. work smart, work hard, and keep moving. the faster you execute, the faster you learn, and the harder it becomes for competitors to catch up. - technical talent. people with exceptional technical ability are rare, and unlike the other traits on this list, this is a hard skill. in my experience, it often comes with at least some of the characteristics mentioned above. these people can be difficult to communicate with, incredibly demanding, and obsessed with details that most people don't even notice. but when someone has exceptional technical ability and the ambition to build a company, they can create products that would be almost impossible for an average team to replicate. that's an enormous advantage, especially at the earliest stages.

the fundraising market is practically closed to most emerging managers right now. which raises an important question: when should you actually start raising Fund II? and what should trigger that decision? the median time to raise Fund II was approximately 12 months for 2019–2024 cohorts, measured from first sale to the reported near-final amount. and median Fund II fundraising targets were $32M in Q3 2024, $23M in Q3 2025, and $28M in Q3 2026. so should you start fundraising once you've deployed a certain percentage of Fund I? once you have strong performance metrics? or when your portfolio has the most momentum and LP interest is strongest? 1. start preparing for Fund II almost as soon as Fund I closes. start building LP relationships early, tracking the metrics they'll care about, understanding which existing LPs are likely to re-up, and figuring out what needs to happen before you're ready to launch. LP fundraising is slow. institutional LPs may want to know a manager for 2–3 years before investing, and a fundraise can easily take 12–18 months or longer. waiting until you're almost out of capital is like waiting until your startup has three months of runway before starting to raise a Series A. 2. did you do what you said you were going to do? if you said you'd invest a $25M fund across 25 companies, did you? are those companies performing? who followed on? do several have a realistic path to returning the fund? what do founders say about working with you? these are much more useful signals than waiting for DPI, because most seed portfolios simply aren't mature enough to have meaningful exits by the time Fund II needs to be raised. think of it as the VC equivalent of a startup hitting its Series A milestones. you've proven your strategy. you're getting into the deals you said you could. several portfolio companies are breaking out. founders and co-investors can validate your edge. existing LPs want to re-up, and the size of your next fund makes sense. once those things are in place, you should be ready to start raising.

one PR crisis can cost your company millions. the right person can turn it into an advantage here are top 8 PR experts worth knowing (save this list) - @lulumeservey (founder of Rostra, former CCO at Activision during its $69B Microsoft deal. works with Anduril, Suno, and Cognition) - @CristinCulver (former Opendoor comms lead, now advising Base Power and Nominal) - @cplangfo (former comms at Palantir and Epic Games) - @thatcurtis (co-founder of Bospar, former Emmy-winning TV news producer. clients include PayPal and Unisys) - @eagerber (founder of sixeastern, which has worked with 100+ tech companies. previously at Uber and Box.) - @samanthawyap (founder of YAP Global, advising Coinbase, Lido, NEAR, and Arbitrum. specializes in crypto PR and crisis response.) - @brooke (founder of Brew PR and The New New Thing) - @edzitron (founder of EZPR and a prominent critic of Big Tech, with a newsletter reaching 50K+ subscribers)

want to understand what great investor-market fit actually looks like? i picked 3 investors whose careers and results show exactly what you should be working toward 1. @mitchlasky, @benchmark Mitch Lasky spent years building and running gaming businesses before becoming an investor. he led Activision's worldwide studios, became CEO of JAMDAT in 2000, took it public in 2004, and sold it to EA for $680M in 2006. after running EA's mobile and online games business, he joined Benchmark in 2007. by then, he understood how consumer products attract users, what keeps people engaged, how mobile distribution works, and what separates great product teams from average ones. he'd spent years making those decisions himself. in February 2013, he led Benchmark's $13.5M Series A investment in Snapchat at a reported $60–70M valuation. by Snapchat's IPO, Benchmark still held around 121M shares worth $2.9B, with a reported paper return of roughly 220x on its early investment. Snapchat wasn't a gaming company, but Lasky's experience in mobile products, consumer behavior, and engagement gave him a strong foundation for recognizing its potential. he also served on Riot Games' board, where his gaming experience was directly relevant. this is how operating expertise becomes an investing advantage. you understand the product, the people building it, and the market well enough to recognize opportunities before they're obvious to everyone else. 2. @traestephens, @foundersfund Trae Stephens started as a computational linguist building name-matching tools for the US intelligence community. he then joined Palantir when it had fewer than 100 employees and helped grow its intelligence and defense business. by the time he joined Founders Fund in 2014, he'd spent years working with government customers, understanding procurement, and seeing firsthand why selling technology to the defense industry is so difficult. that experience gave him an advantage in evaluating defense startups. he understood the customers, knew how purchasing decisions were made, and could recognize which companies had a realistic chance of getting their technology deployed. in 2017, he went a step further and co-founded @anduriltech, where he remains executive chairman. @anduriltech raised $5B at a reported $61B valuation in May 2026, after doubling revenue to $2.2B in 2025. an employee tender in October reportedly valued the company at around $90B. his experience gave him the industry knowledge, customer relationships, and credibility to recognize the opportunity in defense technology and help build Anduril into a $61B company. 3. @BradUSV and @fredwilson, @usv Brad Burnham started his career in IT at AT&T in 1979, spun Echo Logic out of Bell Labs in 1989, joined AT&T Ventures in 1993, and co-founded TACODA in 2001. he'd spent more than two decades working with communications technology and network-based businesses before starting Union Square Ventures with Fred Wilson in 2003. Fred had been investing since 1987 and had managed Flatiron Partners through the dot-com collapse. together, they brought deep experience in internet businesses, network economics, and venture investing. that background helped them recognize the value of businesses built around networks, user participation, and the increasing returns that come from connecting more people. and the fund-level results are exceptional. according to Oregon's public pension disclosures, its investment in USV's 2004 fund had reached a 13.82x net multiple, while its investment in USV's 2012 fund reached 23.78x as of September 30, 2025. the latter had a reported 23.02x DPI, meaning almost all that value had already been returned in distributions. what can you learn from these examples? all three had spent years developing expertise that translated into a clear investing advantage. Lasky understood consumer products and mobile engagement because he'd built businesses around them. Stephens knew defense customers and procurement because he'd worked directly with them. Burnham and Wilson understood network economics and internet businesses through decades of operating and investing experience. each had a strong foundation for accessing opportunities, evaluating companies, and helping founders succeed. and each has results that demonstrate the value of that expertise.

if you're thinking about launching your first VC fund, i'd start preparing long before you're ready to raise. the median time to close a US VC fund increased from 9.7 months in 2022 to 15.6 months in 2025. and in 2024, first-time managers took an average of 18.1 months to raise, compared to 12.6 months for established firms. that's a lot of time to spend fundraising, especially when you're also supposed to be finding and investing in great companies. i think there are two things you can start doing right now that will make a huge difference when you eventually launch your fund. 1. find your investor-market fit before thinking about your fund size, deck, or LP list, ask yourself a few questions. why would you be a good investor? why venture capital specifically? what are you genuinely better at than other people? being a successful founder or asset manager is a great starting point, but it doesn't automatically make you a good VC. investing requires a different set of skills, and you need to understand where your actual advantage comes from. i'd start by coming up with a few hypotheses about your strengths and testing them. talk to founders, other investors, and potential LPs. see what they find compelling, where they think you have an edge, and whether that edge could realistically help you access better deals and generate stronger returns. and if you can afford to, start angel investing with your own money. you'll learn more about your investment judgment by making real decisions, following those companies, and seeing where you were right or wrong than you will by writing a perfect investment thesis. you don't need dozens of investments. even a small portfolio, backed by clear reasoning and documented decisions, can help you understand whether your strategy works. just remember that early markups aren't the same as realized returns. what matters is building evidence that you can consistently make good investment decisions. 2. start building relationships with LPs and founders this is probably the biggest advantage you can create before launching a fund. raising capital is much easier when potential LPs have known you for years, followed your work, and seen how you think and execute. you can start building those relationships while you're still working as a founder, operator, or investor. share what you're learning, discuss opportunities, ask for feedback, and keep people updated on your progress. over time, they'll get a much better sense of your strengths, how you approach investing, and whether you're someone they'd trust with their capital. i'd put just as much effort into building relationships with founders. find people working in industries you genuinely understand. get to know them early, help where you can, and follow their progress over time. this gives you something that's hard to get during a typical fundraising process: context. you see how founders respond when things go wrong, how quickly they learn, whether they deliver on their promises, and how their businesses develop. by the time you have capital to deploy, you can make decisions based on much more than a pitch deck and a few meetings. there's another benefit here that i think people underestimate: you can start building a pipeline before you have a fund. if you've already developed strong founder relationships and a clear view of the market, you won't be starting from zero when your first close happens. you'll have a much better idea of where your initial investments could come from. you should also understand the practical side early: fund formation, legal costs, management fees, operating expenses, and how much capital you need at first close to start investing. these things can take longer and cost more than first-time managers expect. the best part is that you can start doing most of this right now, alongside your current job, without neglecting your main responsibilities. by the time you're ready to raise Fund I, you could already have years of relationships, investment experience, and a clear strategy behind you. and even if you eventually decide not to launch a fund, you'll still have built a stronger network, developed your investment judgment, and learned a lot about an industry you're interested in.

raising Fund II has never been harder. only 12% of first-time VC funds from the 2022 vintage have raised a second fund so far. here are 7 reasons i think so many struggle 1. they're better at fundraising than investing some managers are great at telling LPs what they want to hear. they have a compelling story, a convincing deck, and a thesis that sounds amazing. but can they actually pick companies that will generate returns? that's a very different skill. 50 out of 99 VC funds failed to return invested capital after fees, while 62 out of 100 failed to outperform public markets after fees and carry. the problem is that you won't know the final results for years. by the time Fund II fundraising comes around, LPs are already judging you on early portfolio performance, the quality of your decisions, and whether your original thesis is playing out. you need to show progress before the exits happen. 2. they have no real edge in deal flow venture returns are driven by a tiny number of exceptional companies. less than 4% of invested capital in its dataset of venture-backed exits generated returns of 10x or more. everyone wants those winners. but how are you actually going to find them and get onto their cap tables? if your strategy is just going to events, asking for intros, and competing for the same deals as everyone else, you're going to have a hard time. you need a real reason why the best founders would come to you, ideally before everyone else knows about them. otherwise, you're often left competing for deals that stronger investors have already passed on. 3. they don't have a plan for their winners finding a great company is only half the job. you also need enough ownership for that company to make a meaningful difference to your fund. i think this is where follow-on strategy becomes really important. as an existing investor, you get to see how founders execute, how the team works, and whether the business is actually delivering on its promises. that information can give you a real advantage when deciding where to put more capital. of course, doubling down doesn't always make sense. valuation, dilution, and concentration risk still matter. but if you've found an exceptional company, you should have a plan for how to benefit from being right. 4. they can't explain why LPs should choose them this one is pretty funny. VCs constantly ask founders what makes their startup different, why they'll win, and why anyone should invest. then some of those same investors go out to raise their own funds and struggle to answer exactly those questions. what's your investor-market fit? what's your edge? why should an LP trust you instead of giving that money to an established manager? especially when you're starting out, you need a convincing answer. and the fundraising environment isn't making things easier. only 81 first-time US VC funds closed through Q3 2026. 5. they're competing in a market where capital keeps concentrating this is probably the toughest part because even good managers can't control it. through Q3 2026, US funds of $500M+ captured 78.1% of all VC capital raised, despite representing just 6% of funds closed. firms raising their fourth fund or later took 88.2% of the capital, while the median fund size fell to $10M. think about that. huge amounts of money are flowing into venture, but most of it is going to a relatively small group of established firms. a new manager can have a strong thesis, good founders, and a promising portfolio and still struggle to raise the next fund. 6. they underestimate how much LP relationships matter i've seen how important this is. some managers only start building LP relationships when they're ready to raise, but by that point, they're already behind. LPs want to know how you think, how you make decisions, how you handle problems, and whether they can trust you over the long term. regular updates, honest reporting, and actually understanding what matters to each LP can make a huge difference. ideally, by the time you start raising Fund II, your existing LPs already know exactly why they want to invest again. and if they don't, you should understand why long before fundraising starts. 7. they don't think enough about liquidity this one is becoming increasingly important. a fund can have impressive paper returns, but LPs can't reinvest unrealized gains. TVPI matters, especially early on, but DPI tells a different story. at some point, investors want to see actual distributions. and when exits slow down, even funds with strong portfolios can struggle to return capital. that doesn't mean every Fund I needs substantial DPI before raising Fund II. but managers should understand their portfolio's path to liquidity and be able to explain it clearly to LPs. here are a few investors who recently raised their second funds and are worth following: @JedBreed, @jakobdiepen, @brettcalhounn, @yoheinakajima, @jamoses92, @kola_aina

最近の投稿をきっかけに、日本の方がたくさんフォローしてくれたり、リプをくれたりしていて、すごく嬉しいです！ もっと日本の皆さんとつながって、日本の市場についてもいろいろ学びたいです。ぜひ仲良くしてください！