Happy Valentine’s Day. In the past 96 hours, I have experienced one of the most thrilling, insane, upsetting yet rewarding week I have ever had. I had quite a love affair with venture capitalism. Or perhaps “a brief flirtation” would describe what happened more accurately, but it is my crashout so I get to call it whatever I want. I also feel like writing a four-thousand-word blogpost for “a brief flirtation” would make me sound insane. And for those that are updated with the recent ronilore and very disappointed, yes, it was clickbait; but please hear me out, as the lore does go hard on this one.
As you may or may not know, I am quite the CS major. I am a very engineering-minded, problem-solving-oriented person, but I am also a yapper. Sometimes I find myself pondering if this is the right career path for me, as the stereotypical engineer are usually socially inept losers that only communicates through discord. But that does not apply to me, and I don’t know if that is truly “my calling”. I enjoy what I do, and over the years I have adapted into the space a little more than what I’d like to believe, but I am still not fully convinced that I should be doing SWE my entire life.
So, naturally, I decided to try out some of the entrepreneurship classes offered at Berkeley. To be honest, I am initially not even that interested in founding startups and stuff. I am not a risk taker. I believed that it is hard for rookies like me to break into investing/ entrepreneurship because a) I don’t have the financial literacy to do it, b) I don’t believe in investing as my main source of income, and c) I have seen too many cases where investments (stocks, real estate, just anything tbh) turn south, and I don’t think I want to gamble with my hard-earned money like that. But, since I am at Silicon Valley, where technology entrepreneurship is actually THE way to make an impact and make a name of yourself (a bit of an American Dream there eh), I decided to dip my toes in and try it out a little. Berkeley’s entrepreneurship program is like, their flagship stuff. Not every school has the resources for these classes. I personally cannot conceive that many unique ideas, but if somebody else comes up with something cool, I don’t mind joining a team and help out with my skills as an engineer. So that is my mindset coming into the whole entrepreneurial thing. You can say my reason is somewhat superficial: I am not here just to make money, I am here to make a lasting impact that can make people’s lives easier, even if at a miniscule level. It was quite innocent of a mindset to get into the whole entrepreneurship thingy.
And boy, did I try my best. I got into the SCET program at Berkeley, where they basically incubate undergrads to come up with their own startups, and potentially receive funding to turn their ideas into venture-backed companies. I really wanted the SCET certificate because I thought it would help me with applying to grad school some day, if I ever decide to go. And so, for my last semester as an undergrad, I am taking 3 entrepreneur classes: a class about how to start a startup with sustainability and ethics in mind, a class all about the business and steps in creating a tech startup, and a class about leveraging data as a way to stand out from the crowd and have a good business model. And I was going to only take 2 out of the 3 classes (for the certificate), but I loved all three classes so much that I decided to keep all 3. Was it an overkill? Most definitely. But this is lowkey the first time during my 2 years at Berkeley where I feel like I am truly taking classes for the sake of learning, not to fulfill the graduation requirement or fill up my units. Like, oh my god. I am actually interested in learning all of this. I don’t get to learn this from anywhere else, but the #1 school with undergrad founders. So yes, it was wonderful, and I was so ready to commit to this program, even if I am not going to be an actual entrepreneur.
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So, that was my plan up till last week. I have been consistently participating in classes, I crack a couple of jokes during class here and there, I get called out by my professors for being on the laptop or whatever, but it’s been going alright. Then, last week, as I was lining up to kiss the professor’s ass after lecture, one of the TAs called me over and said she has something to discuss with me. She is the TA for two out of the three classes I am in, so I suppose that I have made an impression.
“Okay, Veronica, right?”
“Yes, am I in trouble or something?” I try to recall if I used AI for the last assignment.
“Do you have any experience with venture capitalism?”
“Um, I have worked at a startup before, so I guess?”
“Well… okay it doesn’t matter. There is this venture capitalism competition that is happening next Saturday, and a team still needs two people. So, I want to see if you are interested in joining the team.”
“Um… sure.”
“There is a workshop happening right now, so we will need to go.”
As she was packing, I texted my friends that I had dinner/ alcohol plans with. I told them some crazy opportunity just came up so I couldn’t make it.
We rushed to the workshop, and by the time I got there, it was time for the mock presentation for the teams to present to the (actual) venture capitalists to show them what they’ve learn in the past three days.
Mind you, I just got there, and I lowkey don’t know a single VC term. I didn’t know TAM, SAM, SOM, or LTV:CAC ratio, just any of the crazy terms. I was an eager noob.
I met the two guys that are left in the team. There were 5 people originally, 3 dropped out due to various unreasonable reasons, a girl from a different team joined, and now they need two more people. Let’s just call those two, Andy and Caleb. They were super nice, super accommodating, and reassured me that they won’t be mad even if I don’t know what is happening.
To put it in very vulgar terms, I rawdogged the mock presentation. I went in there with my super cute outfit and boot heels, I told the venture capitalists that I have an engineering background, and I brought in all the excitement that I had with this crazy fun opportunity, and I acted as professional and business-y as I could. I used some technical engineering terms, I questioned the founder’s idea behind the AI use, and I raised questions about their business model. The VCs did not grill me too hard, although the guy said I had “too much energy”. But the VC lady loved it, and I think I did well. It was such an incredible experience, and I was almost starstrucked with talking to actual, professional VCs working in Silicon Valley. I mean, these are the actual sharks of shark tank. They were a little mean sometimes, but, they earned the right to be mean. And they are business people that sign million-dollar deals, making million dollar decisions. Of course they are a little mean, why wouldn’t they?
It was a bit of a Cinderella moment for me. Before this opportunity, I accepted my fate as a CS major that is destined to be the builder/ engineer, but never the presenter. I have always knew that my strongest skillset lies in the way I make connections and network with people, as well as improvisational comedy and just being a crazy public speaker (due to the lack of social cues). I am aware of my talents/ skillsets, but I also wanted the safest way to make money/ an impact, plus I am pretty good at math. So I thought I could just put my dreams of being a professional social person on the backlog for now. But with this world of venture capitalism, it combines my greatest two interests in life: the theatrics of persuasion and public speaking, and also the technicality in engineering and innovation. Venture capitalism is truly the best of two worlds. I use my engineering domain knowledge to make business decisions. Plus, it’s technically not my money. It’s the LPs. So, I thought this might be my true, true calling. And it is not too late discovering your true, true calling three weeks into the last semester of your undergrad, right? I still have the rest of my life to figure it out!
It was amazing. I enjoyed chilling with the two teammates, and I had a nice time briefing texting the other girl. Let’s call her Blaire. Andy offered to teach me a little more of the VC jargon/ terms that’s foreign to me, an offer which I gladly accepted. Caleb is a sophomore that is super sweet and has this almost childlike charm that reminded me of a younger version of myself, before I got jaded and disillusioned.
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Some personal stuff happened over the weekend, but I was still so excited for the competition. I even had Valentine’s Day blocked out for this competition, so I know I won’t be alone. Fast forward to Tuesday, I texted the groupchat if anyone wants to hang out and teach me a little bit more for the competition. Andy DMed me, and said he is down to come over and help me. We live in the same building, so it is not that hard to hang out. I thought we were going to the study lounge, but he straight asked me my room number. Naturally, I gave him my room number. He’s like “I’ll hurry over” and came at around 10pm.
He was quite adamant about taking his shoes off, I am not sure why. I gave him some spare slippers, he tried and told me they were too small for him. We both laughed. He threw his dirty ass backpack onto my bed, and sat on it when his street clothes. I was pretty startled, as my bedsheets were very clean and shouldn’t be touched with outside stuff. You know what I mean. But he just treated the place like it’s his.
We sat down and went over the VC razor checklist. He went over the details, and I asked questions. He is an econ major, and when we talked about the market and stuff, I gave him the chance to mansplain macroeconomics to me. He gladly took the offer and started yapping about government bonds and stuff. Despite the fact that it is all basic information any econ major would know, I was quite impressed. I was also impressed by the fact that he is willing to sit down and explain all that to me. But after around 45 minutes of serious learning, I had the overwhelming urge to overshare. And I asked for his consent to overshare, he said yes. I went on a two hour rant on things that had happened in the past couple of days, and he was deeply interested in listening. And afterwards, he went on a rant about his roommate. It was really fun as I had a lot of pent-up anger and needed that to be released. We yapped until midnight, which was when we got a noise complaint. But that did not stop us, we just went to a study room to continue talking.
He briefly explained some cool VC terms after switching rooms. I learned about the “pro-rata right”, which was a VC jargon that guarantees the same amount of shares the VC would have when more investors come in. It is for anti-dilution prevention, and it prevents the scene in the social network where Eduardo Saverin’s shares in Facebook was diluted after millions of new shares were distributed. It was really cool. It was interesting though, he said “pro-rata” like “pro-ray-da”, so I assumed it’s spelled as “pro-vader” or “pro-razor”. But when I googled it, it’s pronounced as “pro-rah-tah”, so I got confused. Either way, I’m glad I learned all that from him, I probably wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn any of this anyways. And side note, while I was doing my research writing this, and I discovered that Eduardo Saverin is now a venture capitalist and is the richest man in Singapore with his 2% share of Facebook. He started out as the co-founder of Facebook and is now helping out other startups. It’s all quite poetic.
During the serious parts of our conversations, I talked about my fear for investing and how I prefer “working earnestly” as my means of production. I was obviously implying that investing is not a way to make money “earnestly”, because it is like gambling and I don’t think I am capable of making good decisions with my limited knowledge. But he raised a really good point that stayed in my mind ever since: “you cannot create generational wealth just by working hard for someone else.” And that makes a lot of sense to me all of a sudden. Generational wealth, or generational impact just by following the lead of somebody. This is why Berkeley is so keen on undergrads doing startups anyways. They want organic, home-grown innovation. And that’s so cool!
Also, I do want to defend venture capitalism as like, quite an interesting and niche sector within investment and finance. It is high-risk, high-return, and they are investing in companies and make people’s dreams come true. With the stock markets and typical investing, you are not contributing to make a lasting impact on somebody/ something. But with VC, you are here to disrupt and make an impact. You get to make million-dollar decisions and take chances with helping somebody out. Obviously, VCs want high yield returns, but that comes with any business deals. I am a little swept off my feet with all these new and exciting concepts, only at places like Silicon Valley, y’know?
Beyond venture capitalism, we talked so much about the dating scene and hookup culture. I really enjoyed the conversation as I don’t really get a candid, platonic male perspective, and he doesn’t get that with women either. It was such a 2-3AM conversation. Oh and, we also talked about classical music. I forgot how the conversation started, but we were just saying how we don’t have friends to go to recitals with, and we made the crazy decision to buy tickets to this concert the next week together. It was nice, I was genuinely making a friend. We ended up talking till 4AM. We yapped till our eyes cannot open, it was crazy.
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Days leading up to the competition, I was actively recruiting for members. I invited a guy that was great at public speaking at one of the the SCET classes, who accepted them later left the team due to a scheduling conflict. I also told my professor, who is a full-time venture capitalist, about the opportunities. He was super supportive about it and gave me some tips with how it went. I also bought a suit off Amazon. I am an ENGINEER, there is like zero occasions where I need to wear a suit. Even at networking events, dressing in business casual would be deemed as overdressing. Techbros just show up in hackathon hoodies and call it a day.
Two days before the competition, the TA found a new member. Let’s call him Dhinesh. We were running out of time, so Dhinesh was our last bet. Dhinesh and Blaire had beef and she didn’t get fully into it. And when I dmed Andy and asked why, he said Dhinesh is “fruity and weird”. I want to take his word for the weird part, but I can’t help but feel like it is very mean of me to judge somebody’s character based on whether they are fruity or not. That’s just thinly veiled homophobia, and that does not fly with me.
Caleb and I were the only ones texting in the groupchat. Mind you, Andy and Blaire are the two more capable, and more well-versed in the VC jargon, but they were virtually silent days leading up to the competition.
It’s all just so sketchy. Andy, Blaire, Dhinesh and I are all seniors, while Caleb is a sophomore. I can imagine Caleb being confused with why these senior citizens are fighting like highschoolers. It was such a messy mess and I feel bad for Caleb the most. He just a baby.
Since there is no other way, I added Dhinesh to the groupchat. He is quite capable and enthusiastic about it. Andy and Blaire are still mute, and the three of us plan to meet the day before the competition. But 5 people were the minimum requirement, so we could just wing it. I was there to participate, to meet the VC judges and to learn more about this exciting, niche industry. What’s the worse that could happen?
Dhinesh and I met on Google meet, the night before the competition. Caleb added everybody on a google meet link, but only the two of us showed up. We had a good time introducing ourselves, while I sorta understand what they meant by “weird”, but I still have an open heart and mind to collaborating with him.
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Around 30 minutes into the meeting, Andy hopped in out of nowhere. He told us that he and Blaire decided to withdraw, so we will not be participating. I was shocked, but I tried to keep my cool. I tend to process my feelings a lot later after my fight/ flight mode gets triggered. But Dhinesh was visibly shocked and confused. He cleared his schedule to dive into this competition head first, and I did too. 24 hours before it starts, someone decides to withdraw: the people that got screwed over decides to screw somebody else over the same way they got screwed over. He stayed to banter a little though, and we kept it very civil.
Hours after that weird call, Dhinesh calls me to discuss what happens next. The both of us are confused. I sort of defended Andy and Blaire’s decision, as I am still trying to see the good in people and always give others the benefit of the doubt (until they cross the line). But Dhinesh and Blaire had beef tracing all the way back to freshman year, so he was not having it. And hearing how Dhinesh is not having it makes me realize that maybe I should not just sit here and agree with what others want, disregarding what I want in the first place.
And so, Dhinesh and I decided to hit Caleb up and ask him how he feels. Caleb wanted to do the competition so bad, and technically it is three against two, so we want to move forward with it. I also called Blaire on the phone, but she didn’t pick up. Mind you, I haven’t met her a single time up to this point.
At the emergency meeting, each of us explained our thoughts on how to move forward. Andy said this is not what he signed up for with the competition, he doesn’t want to be the teacher for this last-minute team. Blaire said we don’t know the terms enough and we don’t know each other well enough to be in a team together. Caleb wants to take a stab at it and he doesn’t mind the outcome regardless. Dhinesh wants to do it and expressed his frustration with just joining and team and also getting told to withdraw last minute. Last but not least, if I were a character I would probably call myself Eliza or something, but I said I just want to learn and this seemed so fun. So we voted, and 3 out of 5 people want to continue. So we worked on preparing for the competition a little, only for 30 minutes. But you can tell that Andy and Blaire were not having it. I try not to think too hard during the meeting, because I really try to see the best in people and I don’t think Andy and Blaire thinks we are beneath them necessarily. But the truth is, other teams had 3 weeks to prepare and we didn’t. And that is not anybody’s fault except for the ones that left the two guys. And Andy was the one that wrote the email saying we are withdrawing, but he didn’t want to look bad with the un-withdrawal. I could somewhat empathize but disagree with their mindsets, but it is just not fair for them to take away our chances of doing the competition.
The next day, Caleb, Dhinesh and I talk in the groupchat about the preparation meeting. I was pulling all the strings together and messaging everybody with our plans. At around 4pm, Andy and Blaire texts the groupchat saying they have, once again, decide to withdraw. They dropped two random people in the groupchat and said, “here are two people that we found that could do the competition with y’all. Good luck.” Dhinesh and I were stressed out of our minds. Let’s call these two people, Fredrik and Gauri. I dmed the two of them, greeting them and asking them if they can meet at the library at 5pm. Fredrik responded enthusiastically. Gauri was very confused with what was happening, and asked me to explain everything. I did, and she told me that she doesn’t want to join a competition 12 hours before it begins hastily. She said she would’ve loved to join from the beginning, but given how messy it is, she doesn’t think it would be a good idea. I completely understand and small talked a little, she seems like an amazing person. Fredrik said he is available to meet with Dhinesh and I on campus at 5pm. We are still one person short, but I suppose that I could still do it.
I talked to my TA about the entire situation. She informed me that our team could NOT move forward with Fredrik in the team. He competed in the competition last year and caused a lot of drama. So, in the end, the two members that “joined the groupchat” could not actually join the group, and we could not move forward with the competition. The organizers (TA included) emailed Andy and Blaire, and they were also informed that they are unable to move the team forward without the two of them in the team.
I met up with Dhinesh after class and called Caleb. We were actively traumabonding. We drafted up a sincerely apology of all the inconvenience caused (despite the drama not caused by us), and we wished them a nice, smooth competition the next day. All of that was sincere and true.
But Dhinesh and I were not satisfied with the outcome. We cleared our schedules, stayed up till 2am to study for the competition, and we don’t want other people to sabotage our learning opportunity. So we decided to finish up our VC learnings and draft up a term sheet for the competition, even if we are not competing anymore. We went to get frozen yogurt after deciding all that, and we sat in a student lounge completing all our due diligence with the competition materials. We learned all the business terms together and drafted up a pretty solid term sheet, if I do say so myself.
I rarely do things just for the sake of learning, it is always for a grade, a certificate, or to look good. But this is the one instance where I am genuinely learning for the sake of learning. Perhaps it is to feel better about dropping out of the competition, or to learn everything “out-of-spite” so I don’t feel like I am beneath Andy and Blaire. But it didn’t matter, I had so much fun and I learned so much about the business terms with startups and investments. Now I can tell people I have drafted up term sheets before, and I won’t be ripped off at car dealerships anymore. Dhinesh was also incredibly motivated to learn, so, I am glad I had him to learn with me.
We also talked a lot of shit about Blaire. Dhinesh told me that Blaire acted cold and stand-offish towards him since the beginning. And to be real with you, I think I understand what Andy meant we they said Dhinesh is “kinda off”; he goes on his phone when I’m talking to him and farted multiple times. The amount of dirt he said about Blaire was also just, a little much. I was matching his energy, but I do feel a bit bad talking shit about a girl that I haven’t even met. But this isn’t high school. This isn’t “popular kids don’t play with weird losers”. It is rather juvenile to refuse to collaborate with someone smart simply because you find their vibe to be “kinda off”, or had drama with almost three years ago.
I was so tired by the end of the night, my accent was slipping. I was on power-saving mode.
I texted Andy the next day (which is today), telling him not to feel too bad about it. He is still a super knowledgeable finance bro/ budding venture capitalist, so I want to introduce my CEO on a separate startup project (for the entrepreneurship classes) to him and ask for some advice. He thanked me and we are still cool; we are still going to the recital next Friday together after all.
I suppose I walked away without burning a single bridge, something I try my best to do in every situation. But I probably won’t be close friends with any of these people anyway. This is probably not my crowd.
I leave this crazy, thrilling world of venture capitalism and business like Nick Carraway leaving New York. My mind was absolutely blown, but my heart was incredibly let down. It debunked some of my assumptions— that business/ finance is not just about being ruthless and insane, it could also be a platform that leverages money to make people’s dreams come true; but it has also confirmed my hypothesis— that the business world is, at its core, dark, cutthroat, and evil. It’s full of fake people backstabbing each other. And at the end of the day, it’s every man for himself. I get it, but I also cannot believe how it played out. But if I can’t make a LinkedIn post out of this experience, the least I can do is write a blogpost about it. And that is exactly what I am doing.
In conclusion, software engineering is most definitely still my calling, for now. But I am open to new opportunities and would love to rekindle this affair with venture capitalism some time.