Summer Internship as a Venture Capital Analyst

Over the past 3 months, I’ve been interning with SEEDS Capital, the venture capital arm of Enterprise Singapore. I thought that it would be meaningful to jot down some of the key takeaways from this experience.

Learning to pick things up quickly, and becoming an independent problem solver

The unique thing about SEEDS Capital is that the nature of our investments cut across a plethora of industries. Just to name a couple, I’ve been exposed to deals in agrifood tech, edtech, medtech, fintech and robotics. As such, most of the time you are essentially evaluating a start-up in which you have little or no domain expertise in.

Moreover, at SEEDS Capital, everyone is extremely stretched and busy most of the time. As such, it is important that even as an intern, you are able to independently navigate the ways and find solutions to your problems and questions by yourself.

Taking initiative and being proactive in your own learning

The key objective of any intern is to learn as much as you possibly could in the short period of time that you are there — and the best way of achieving that is to be constantly challenged and exposed to things that are happening.

However, there could be several stumbling blocks or reasons why full-time staffs might not involve you in some of their work.

(1) You have yet to earn his/her trust.

(2) They probably think that it would be more efficient if they do the work themselves

(3) They feel awkward to ask somebody else to complete their work

At SEEDS Capital, I would constantly check each officer’s calendars to see what they are up to — if there’s any meetings or projects that I am interested in. Furthermore, capitalize on lunches to ask them what they are working on and if they can somehow involve you in their work. Most importantly, deliver top notch quality for any assignment as it would build trust. They are more likely to assign you higher value-added work in the future if you prove yourself with the quality of work you produce.

Keep asking questions

In general, people are afraid of asking questions as they are afraid of looking ignorant or unsure. However, asking questions is the simplest and most effective way to gain deeper insights into an investment or start-up. If you keep asking questions and keep drilling deeper, you keep finding better answers. It is thus, imperative for a VC to lead discussions and due-diligence sessions through asking questions. And it helps to prepare beforehand so that you can be as comprehensive as possible.

Learning the technical skills required to perform well in your VC role

Learning the considerations behind how deals are structured, how start-ups are valued, how start-ups are evaluated, etc. is key for one to perform well during the internship. It was a really steep learning curve for me as I came into this role without knowing much about the VC industry and landscape. So, I basically spent the first couple of weeks absorbing as much information as I possibly could. I would read about liquidation preference, anti-dilution provisions, modelling capitalization tables, convertible notes, VC method etc after work and even over the weekends. After all, how are you going to value add to the team if you don’t have your technicals right?

Some personal observations of the start-up ecosystem in Singapore

The key issue with the local ecosystem appears to be a lack of great companies. I am not surprised.

Singaporeans still generally have very traditional mindsets where your success in society is largely determined by how well respected your occupation is. Naturally, the brightest and most driven would gun for well respected professions like being a doctor, lawyer or banker.

The government’s top down approach of pumping money into the ecosystem has been relatively effective. However, there also needs to be a bottom up approach where people would somehow start seeing building start-ups just as well respected as pursuing medicine, law or finance. Only then would more great companies be born. And with that, top-tier investors would naturally be drawn to invest into the ecosystem here, bringing in more smart monies — which signals more great start-ups to be built and thus continuing the vicious cycle.

Conclusion

All in all, I am extremely grateful for the 3 months and numerous lessons learnt. I highly recommend those who are even remotely interested in the VC space to apply for Enterprise Singapore’s internship program!

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