Summer Intern Blog Post: Chris Millisits at Company Ventures | by Chris Millisits | NYU Stern Private Equity and Venture Capital Club (PEVC) | Jul, 2022

Chris Millisits

Full-time MBA (graduating Spring 2023)

Company Ventures

Pre-seed & Seed

Fintech, Enterprise SaaS, and Digital Health

One of our PEVC club officers connected with a recent Columbia Business School MBA about sharing best practice between our respective Venture Thesis programs.

Turns out the former CBS MBA’s firm was hiring! I applied within the week, and applications closed within 2 weeks. It never went live on any public job boards (like LinkedIn).

I interviewed for the job, but one of my classmates ended up getting the role. But the classmate ended up going with another opportunity, and I got the role in mid-May!

The lessons learned?

1. Always be networking. It’s the best way to hear about jobs early
2. Apply to jobs immediately when they come up
3. Roll with the punches. You’re going to fail a lot during your VC job search, but it’s how you react to that failure that will determine whether you make it in the industry

We’re largely pre-seed investors. We run an accelerator-like program called Grand Central Tech, but instead of taking equity, we give founders office space for free. Then, we almost always get allocation in their next round.

This program’s application launched this summer, so I’ve been doing a lot of sourcing and outreach around that. It’s a great reason to connect with founders.

In addition, we have weekly investment meetings. I often pick up initial or follow-on diligence at those meetings, with the goal of progressing the deal to a Yes/No decision.

Other projects include CRM cleanup (I’ll never escape my past life in Sales Ops), and research projects on industries / technologies where we want to develop more expertise.

One of the things that our firm does well despite their (relatively) small allocation is advise startups on their fundraising strategy. This can range from reviewing pitch decks to make them VC-ready to making intros to relevant funds.

Personally, I’ve made some intros to investors that have turned into meetings. I’ve also helped with hiring, connecting founders with Stern graduates and other startup talent from my network.

We don’t lead rounds, so we don’t know the deal terms when we start evaluating a deal. We need to be able to run parallel processes on diligence and on tracking the round dynamics.

It’s an interesting problem because conviction alone means you still can’t move forward. That’s when you’ve got to be more creative (make introductions to leads) or be ready to walk from a deal.

Sit in on as many meetings as possible with your partners. I’ve learned so much sitting in on calls with prospective founders, current portfolio companies, and prospective LPs.

The more context you have for how a VC firm works, the more you’ll understand how decisions are made at your firm.

Network, network, network.

This is a people job, whether it’s with other VCs, founders, or LPs.

Some tips on where to get started:

1. Start with your own network. Look on LinkedIn at your 1st and 2nd connections in VC. Ask for warm introductions to 2nd connections and ask for an informational interview. DO NOT PITCH YOURSELF FOR THE JOB NOW. It’s about relationships, not transactions.
2. Go to networking events
3. Use your classmates! Go to events together, ask them about what they’re learning about, etc.

Other tips:

1. Read Rani Kubersky and Rebecca Mandel’s article about breaking into VC
2. Get involved with the PE & VC club at Stern! Attend events, apply for board positions, and write for the blog.

You can find me on LinkedIn posting about my Medium articles, or on Twitter doing my best impersonation of a Twitter VC!