nxr wrote:
My greetings to gmatclub members,
My post-MBA goals are tech entrepreneurship and Venture Capital, and I'm thinking about a summer internship in a VC firm as a way to better understand the VC business.
The issue is that I'm not from Investment Banking. My background is 10 years of software engineering and management in for a tech company (outside of U.S.),
which I joined as a startup, and which now has a capitalization of more than $10 billion.
Personally, I have grown from a software engineer to a head of department with more than 50 engineers.
I'm wondering, how hard is to get such summer internship in a well-known VC company?
Is my background sound enough to get a summer internship at a VC and to consider VC as my post MBA goal?
It's really hard to get a position with a VC firm, as there isn't a formal recruiting pathway and it is heavily network dependent. With that said, VCs prefer people with industry operational experience, which it appears you have plenty of. The tech industry is also one that VCs invest the most heavily in. My opinion is that your profile is quite competitive.
I'd look into the specific MBA programs and see how strong/big their VC clubs are, maybe contact a student on the club leadership and ask about their VC recruitment experiences in general. You can also check the employment reports of leading MBA programs (they're all pretty low for VC, but some schools may stand out). Duke has a formal internship program (mentored study) program that can help students with networking and gain experience in the VC industry during school.
Regardless, plan to do a lot of off-campus recruiting during the MBA.