Venture Capital Internships: The Best “Pre-Banking” Role?

With investment banking internship recruiting starting earlier and earlier, you also need to win “pre-banking internships” earlier.

People debate the best options: Search fund internships, private equity internships, boutique bank internships, real estate internships, and even wealth management internships have their pros and cons.

But some argue that venture capital internships beat many of these options or should at least be near the top of the list.

In most cases, you won’t gain significant technical skills from VC internships, but they may be easier to win than other options and let you tell a more convincing story in later interviews:

What Are Venture Capital Internships, and What Do Interns Do?

As in many other fields, there are two main types of venture capital internships:

1. “Summer Camps” – These internships are for early-university students and career changers who want to pivot into finance.
2. Real Internships – These internships are for candidates with finance experience who are expected to “hit the ground running” on day one. These are more common at large, established VC firms and are more likely to result in full-time return offers to interns who perform well.

You should focus on the “summer camp” type of internship if you’re using it to win an IB internship at a large bank eventually.

If you have little-to-no finance experience, you won’t even be competitive for the “real internships.”

As an intern, you can expect to assist the full-timers in the VC hierarchy with the following tasks:

• Reviewing pitch decks from startups trying to raise funds.
• Performing market research and competitive analysis to find interesting companies.
• Writing investment memos and presentations.
• Helping with due diligence on potential investments, such as reviewing a company’s products or financial forecasts.
• Taking notes in meetings and finding information for the full-time staff.
• Maintaining databases that track deal flow, including outreach to companies and their responses.

It’s not that different from what a full-time Analyst or even a VC Associate does. The main differences are:

1. Less involvement in portfolio company review, fundraising, and deal execution.
2. More “support” and less ability to initiate new deals or drive them forward.

You might get to attend a few meetings, but you’re unlikely to have a speaking role.

“Summer Camp” internships tend to feature more work related to sourcing, pitches, and market/competitive research, while “Real Internships” are more geared toward deal processes and a bit of technical work.

Why Recruit for Venture Capital Internships?

Venture capital internships rarely lead to full-time offers after graduation, but there are exceptions for “institutionalized” internships at large firms like Insight and Bessemer.

Also, while there is some technical/modeling work, such as cap table analysis, you are unlikely to be exposed to much of this as an intern.

Instead, the main advantages are:

1. Competition / Ease of Winning – If you’re in an area with a lot of VC activity (SF, Boston, etc.), these internships can be easier to win because many students don’t think about applying to smaller VC firms.
2. Telling Your Story in Later Interviews – When you’re walking through your resume in later interviews, you can credibly explain why you don’t want to return to VC (not much technical work, very simple deals, etc.) and use the experience to position yourself for popular IB groups, such as Tech and Healthcare.

Besides the lack of technical skills, the other big downside is that many VC internships are unpaid or poorly paid.

This might be OK if it’s a part-time internship during the school year, but you probably want to earn some amount of money over the summer.

So, if internship compensation is a deal-breaker, always ask upfront whether it is paid.

If you can’t afford an unpaid internship, consider aiming for less relevant roles at larger companies that can afford to pay their interns.

Yes, a corporate finance or wealth management internship might “look worse” on your resume/CV, but larger companies are a much better bet if you need the money.

Which VC Firms Offer Internships?

The “Summer Camp” internship exists mostly at smaller and startup VC firms, especially at funds focusing on seed and early-stage investments.

Later-stage firms and growth equity firms also offer internships, but they are geared toward candidates who already have finance experience and want to work in VC right after graduation.

Venture capital fund sizes vary over time, but you’ll probably have the most luck targeting funds with a few hundred million in AUM.

Funds with less than $100 million in AUM are less likely to hire interns, and funds with $500 million+ in AUM tend to offer “Real Internships” for candidates with previous experience.

You want to find firms that are “up and coming” but not so small that they’re just 2 Partners sitting in a room taking meetings at Starbucks.

How to Find and Recruit for Venture Capital Internships

If you’ve searched this topic online for more than 2 seconds, you will have already found John Gannon’s VC Internship listing, which can be a great starting point.

If you can find open roles in your region, research them and apply.

Most likely, however, you’ll need to put more effort into finding firms:

• Get Capital IQ access, if possible, and search for VC firms in your area based on the industry classification and business description fields.
• Use Google Maps and search for VC firms with local addresses.
• Search via LinkedIn, including through alumni and other connections.
• Use your school’s alumni network and student clubs to find alumni in VC, even if they’re not in your region.

Once you’ve found an initial set of 10 – 15 VC firms and specific people at each firm, it’s time to start your outreach effort.

We recommend using cold emails to do this, especially if you go to a well-known university, as you’re more likely to get responses and can track the process more easily.

LinkedIn messages can also work, but in my experience, many finance professionals don’t use the site regularly enough for you to get quick responses.

You should attach your resume in your initial cold outreach to save time and reduce the amount of back-and-forth.

Overall, you should expect a 5 – 10% response rate, which means you need to find dozens of people and follow up quite aggressively to get results.

Some people recommend using AI tools to automate the research and outreach, but I would be careful with this.

Always check the information and message contents before you send anything.

Yes, these tools can speed up the process, but they’re also prone to making mistakes that will hurt your chances.

Also, you always want to personalize your messages so that you appear to be a human rather than a chatbot.

Interview Questions in Venture Capital Internship Recruiting

We have an entire article on venture capital interview questions, but you’re highly unlikely to get in-depth technical questions in internship interviews.

Instead, expect them to ask about qualitative topics such as:

• Why venture capital?
• Which markets are interesting to invest in right now?
• What do you think about our portfolio companies?
• How much do you know about the VC investing process? Can you explain it?
• How could you add value as an intern?

These questions either have simple answers you can find in the other VC coverage on this site or require you to research the firm.

You can get ideas for markets and specific startups by reading tech news sites like TechCrunch or Wired.

Preparing for Venture Capital Internships

Even though your VC internship is unlikely to result in a full-time return offer, you still want to do a decent job so that you can get references and referrals in the future.

So, it helps to do some work before you start, even if it’s less intense than the typical investment banking internship prep process.

I would recommend the following:

• Review startup pitch decks – You can find dozens of examples online from quick searches (we even have a simple example in the venture capital case study article). Spend a few minutes reading each one and come up with follow-up questions about the business model, team, and product/market fit.
• Learn/review Excel and PowerPoint – Even if your internship is not that technical, you will still use these programs all the time. And even with automation tools and plugins, you still need to know the fundamentals, such as the keyboard shortcuts. We have many free tutorials and full courses.
• Search for interesting companies – Finally, spend some time reading through online news sources and finding interesting startups. You’ll have more resources to do this on the job, but it helps to practice without access to paid databases.

How to Leverage a VC Internship

You should focus on three main points during your VC internship:

1. Gain Deal Experience – Even if you just contributed to one small part of a deal or an early-stage deal that never progressed, it helps a lot to write “Transaction Experience” on your resume. So, do everything you can to get involved: Volunteer for extra work, join calls when possible, and spend time evaluating real startup pitches.
2. Find a Mentor – Even if it’s a “Summer Camp” internship, it helps to get close to at least one VC professional who can give you career tips and referrals to bankers in the future.
3. Hone Your Story – Midway through the internship, plan out how you can incorporate the experience into your main “story” by explaining what you liked and didn’t like about VC and how it led you to apply to IB or other finance roles.

Even if you get paid poorly, a VC internship early in university could still be very worthwhile if you get these benefits from it.

It won’t quite match a summer camp, but it will still be more fun than an internship spent burning the midnight oil on pitch books.