Sample Interview Questions
1. Are you interested in VC or Private Equity? Why? Which stage?
2. Do you have a particular industry focus?
3. Are you interested in being an entrepreneur? Candidate should be able to articulate why they are more interested/more suited for VC vs. being an entrepreneur.
4. What type of deal experience have you had? Can you discuss what makes for successful deal making? What are lessons learned from your deal-making experience? Candidate should be able to demonstrate that they can source deals, do due diligence on deals, negotiate deals, determine valuation, etc.
5. How comfortable are you with valuation? Projecting cash flows? Candidate should demonstrate very strong quantitative skills.
6. How are you doing in finance classes? GMAT scores?
7. If you were at my VC firm right now, what deal would you like to do? Why?
8. We are looking to invest in X company/industry. How would you analyze the opportunity?
9. Do you have any operational experience, i.e., running a business, managing a product line, launching a product/service? What experience can you bring to our firm that lets us know that you would be comfortable advising companies or sitting on their boards?
10. What are key success factors for a start-up?
11. How would you grow our business?
12. Tell me about your networks i.e., business, school, community, personal? Are you comfortable cold-calling, i.e., dialing for dollars? VCs are all about networking, so the firm will need to assess whether this is a quality that comes naturally to candidate.
13. Who in your section is from the VC industry? This would assess how serious candidate is about industry and also their networking skills.
14. What venture capital firms are you talking to? The firm will want to get a sense of how committed candidate is to field and what their level of knowledge is of industry.
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