How does Xiaobai, a non-financial major, switch to venture capital? Experience sharing

Thanks for the invitation and organization. Actually, I'm a new investment manager. It is especially valuable to have the opportunity to answer an experience I had before.

Let me introduce myself briefly first. My name is Du Juan. Now I work as an investment manager in Yuanchuang School. I am mainly responsible for screening these entrepreneurial projects and founders in the market. If we feel good, we will provide them with a series of services, mainly consultation and output.

Let's get down to business. How did I step on this road of chatting for a living? I sat down to seriously reflect on myself and found two main reasons. The first one is because I'm too curious, and then the second one is that I'm a little stubborn, maybe I won't stop until I reach my goal, or I don't know what the logic behind this matter is, and then I'll go all the way.

Let's talk about how curiosity got me on this road. At the beginning of graduate school, four friends and I set up a small berth at the school gate. I was very excited at first, but after doing it for a month, I found that there were too many problems in the middle.

For example, the supplier's place is particularly dark, and then the price is opaque. The products given to us may be inferior, or our four small partners may have different opinions, or the division of labor may be uneven. There are many problems that we have never imagined before.

So we ended our business here later, but I was particularly reluctant because I transferred the store to our uncle and bought several houses next to the school. Why is our business so mild, while another person can make a lot of money doing it? I am particularly interested in this kind of business operation.

Later, I was about to enter the third year of graduate school, and then I sat down seriously and began to think about my work. I saw a favorite fitness V on the Internet, and his official WeChat account was recruiting me, so I submitted my resume with a try attitude. As a result, the other party sent me an offer, and then I came to Beijing directly with my box and became a drifter.

My first job was to start writing articles in the background of the official WeChat account. At that time, our official WeChat account was about to have millions of fans. My boss is actually very powerful, but I didn't understand it at that time, so I thought: What do these investors think of such a broken figure, and they can even invest more than10 million to do such a thing for him without any cash flow return at all?

So I began to search online for some opinions about this early venture capitalist and their views on these so-called entrepreneurial projects. But I don't think it's enough just to search through second-hand information. I still want to know how real investors live and work. So I started looking for my next job and went to the place I wanted to go more.

I went to a technology media from my original startup. This is my second internship in Beijing. Because the media has a natural network advantage, what I did at that time was to cooperate with my colleagues to help some entrepreneurial projects establish a scene to meet investors. So calling the founders and investors is my main job. So I can get in touch with both sides and get to know each other slowly.

After I did this docking work for two months, I was not satisfied again, and it was this curiosity that tickled my heart again. Because I have little communication with investors, it is this kind of in-depth understanding, for example, their thinking logic is almost absent. At that time, when looking at the project, it was judged entirely by personal perceptual knowledge. Then I began to wonder what these investors were thinking. This project feels unreliable at all. Why did they vote?

So I came up with the idea of working in an investment institution, but it was difficult for me to find a job at that time because I didn't have any financial background and basic knowledge of fund practice.

In order to achieve this goal, I want to approach venture capital funds. I frantically searched the internet and the market for all the early investment institutions with recruitment needs. No matter whether they hired investment managers, investment assistants or even fund secretaries, I voted, and finally * * * received several offer. In fact, some good jobs invited me to do new media operations, but at that time, this job didn't interest me. So I decided to be an investment assistant.

My first job after graduation was to organize information for my boss in a fund, and then help him to order food, arrange hotels and book air tickets. There is another girl in front of me who is an investment assistant like me. After I went, I saw that her life was actually very comfortable, because after all, the income in the financial sector would be slightly higher than that in other industries.

But I'm not satisfied. I think the purpose of coming here is to know what kind of structure the fund is. So I began to prepare some fund-related employment certificates, and then I went to see all the information in some funds. Anyway, I happen to have such convenience.

Because my boss was too busy to take care of me, it took me two months to print all the documents in our fund into electronic versions and read them carefully from beginning to end. Go to Baidu if you don't know anything, and then ask other experienced colleagues if they really don't know anything. I finally spent two months figuring out the logic and structure of a venture capital fund, and then I began to meet the founder.

In fact, I am especially grateful to my former boss, because he supported me to try things that are not within my scope of work. At that time, I told my boss that if I went out to chat with the founder with the business card of the investment assistant, the founder would not talk to me. Can you change me to an investment manager? The boss actually agreed.

Then I began to collect all the offline entrepreneurial roadshows that I could see in Beijing, listed the activity information into a giant excel table, and then went to participate in the activities one by one. And I sit behind every activity and listen carefully, studying how investors ask questions, and then adding WeChat to friends in the same industry when I meet the right opportunity, and then slowly I feel that I really touched the door.

Looking back now, I have been doing new media from the beginning to investing now. Every step seems to be idle At some critical moments, the choices I made seemed different from others. That involves the second thing I want to share with you today, that is, what kind of investors are and why I have become like this.

To sum up myself, in fact, these investors can be called a group of lunatics, that is, a group of people who believe in the future and possibilities. In fact, it takes many years to really judge an entrepreneurial project and really give the founder a sum of money to do it when investing in the early stage. It may take five or six years to give you a return, and it may take seven or eight years or even ten years to grow. Then you have to be more than five years ahead of others to realize that this matter will reach a certain volume in the future. So who are these people who are not crazy? Just like when ofo got up early to develop, how could early investors know a few children who went to college, then get a bunch of second-hand bicycles and become unicorns in the future?

My first feeling is that investors are really a group of people who dare to gamble, just like gamblers. Later, when I really came into contact with this business, I found that the investment managers of truly reliable investment institutions are a group of extremely diligent and particularly smart people, such as those from top investment institutions. Their personal self-management ability, time management ability, logical analysis ability and interpersonal relationship building ability are far superior to their peers, so there is a reason why top investment institutions do not accept students from Fudan University in Qingbei.

So for a while, I felt that I was neither diligent nor clever, and then the school was not so good, and I felt very discouraged. At this time, an investment elder I like very much wrote an article on the Internet, saying why he didn't become an investment manager. He also described in detail his process from entering the business to giving up. Then I spent some time thinking about whether this field is really suitable for a young man. Finally, I came to the conclusion that I want to go my own way.

So if you want to be a good investment manager, besides being diligent, intelligent, highly emotional and able to establish contact with others quickly, I think you also need curiosity, that is, you must be curious about everything and the logic behind it. Just like a table placed there, I will think about where the table was made, where the wood came from, and then what process a tree went through from the day it was a seedling to the day it was placed here as a table, how many people worked in this field, and how the funds flowed here. If you have such curiosity, I think you can try to think so.

As for the school background and some practical factors I mentioned, it will really restrict everyone from entering the venture capital circle, although I have to admit that this is a practical problem. But in fact, I think as long as you are awesome enough, those are just some additional things. Just like if you are awesome, you voted for the US delegation, or you voted for today's headlines, then no matter what your background, you are a very good investor.

Therefore, it is cruel to talk about performance in this industry, and the return rate of this performance is not particularly fast, but a very slow and long return. It takes a lot of patience to do this.

If you are still interested in this field, then if you really want to enter the venture capital field, I can give you some practical methods to get you into this field as soon as possible.

The first one is that you need to know what kind of structure these venture capital institutions are, so the basic knowledge you have learned through the fund qualification examination is enough.

The second point is that through some information shared by some investment bulls in the investment circle, everyone will dig extensively to see what they have said and try to keep up with their logic to exercise themselves.

The third point is that if you want to enter the field of venture capital, we must start from scratch. If you are not the kind of high flyers who enters this field with a halo, you should start with something basic, such as being a reporter for the venture capital media. Then your daily task is to chat with entrepreneurs, and then write a business report, explaining your views on the industry and this field where your project is located. After a long time, you will definitely accumulate something, such as your contacts and this field.

I know a lot of people from venture capital journalists to investment fields. Or you can try, like me, to be an advanced investment institution, starting from the lowest investment assistant, then learning slowly, learning how to analyze projects and do investment analysis, and then upgrading to investment manager.

Of course, there is still a hard way to go, that is, you start your own business first. As an entrepreneur, you will come into contact with many people in the investment field, and then many people who have done very well in entrepreneurship, or who have failed in entrepreneurship in succession, will finally transform into investment. If their understanding and cognition of entrepreneurship can even reach the level of investment institutions, then transformation is a very good choice.

But the failure rate of entrepreneurship is too high. If you want to choose this road, I think you should be cautious first, and then if you really want to start a business, you can contact me and I can help you sort out the logic.

Finally, I will tell you about the general career planning of investment managers.

In fact, I understand that investment is a very open field. An investment manager can invest at any time, from the investment manager to the investment director to the partner level, as long as the projects you invest are excellent enough. But it actually takes a long time and it is a cruel state. Investment and entrepreneurship are the same. There are very few successful entrepreneurial projects, and even fewer investors can invest in these projects, so it is a very competitive position.

Where are all the people who didn't throw out excellent projects in that industry? For example, he has been looking at projects in the field of education, so he may directly jump to a startup company doing education to join the team in the future, which is also a good career plan.