This summer I assisted Social Impact Capital through a variety of projects. Primarily, I was tasked with researching, developing, and publishing articles that purport views on impact investing topics. This summer, I focused on climate change, developing long-form well-researched articles on climate change investment opportunities. For example, my research article on direct air carbon capture was published in Impakter Magazine and generated interest from various members of the VC investing community, including Web Summit, an annual technology conference held in Lisbon, Portugal, considered the largest tech event in the world. In addition to publishing content, I assisted the firm with conducting due diligence on various ventures, editing their PPM and DDQ, and assisting with the model that derives IRR on their investment funds.

In publishing the articles on investment opportunities, I found that presenting the business cases for certain ventures came much easier to me thanks to my core classes in my first semester, especially accounting and strategy formulation. For example, when I wrote the article on direct air carbon capture it was essential to understand the distinctions between initial capital expenditures, operating expenses, and the importance of margins in determining profitability. In publishing an article on the emerging meat cultivation sector, I recalled the lessons I have learned from strategy formulation surrounding horizontal integration. This seeded the inspiration for my thesis – that it is more advantageous to integrate into the sector horizontally (providing cell lines, cell culture mediums, etc.), as opposed to being another competing meat cultivation startup. Of course, when improving the IRR model the concepts from corporate finance were invaluable as well. Understanding the pros and cons of measuring return via this metric and exactly how it is calculated allowed me to immediately provide value to the firm.

The primary challenge I faced, which was probably not unique this summer, was navigating the virtual internship. After all, I worked the entire summer without ever being able to meet my team in person. This made building relationships more challenging because it is hard to have organic, unstructured, unscheduled conversations via Zoom. Sometimes those are the most memorable and valuable conversations. Nonetheless, the team was very good at making me feel welcome by scheduling Zoom happy hours every other Friday and offering to have calls to discuss anything that I was curious to learn more about regarding the firm, the industry or what it is like generally to work in venture capital. My advice for future students with virtual internships is to be proactive. Take initiative in asking for mentorship and advice and schedule calls with people within the firm. It feels unnatural, and is not as enjoyable as building relationships in person, but it is a very important aspect of the internship experience.

For all the books, articles, and courses you can take on venture capital, there is no substitute for getting an authentic inside view of a venture capital firm. Just being able to be a fly on the wall and observe how partners communicate with each other and with ventures looking for investment is a priceless experience. Being copied on emails and having access to internal documents also present a view that would be very hard, if not impossible, to have otherwise. My goal is to end up working for a venture capital firm in the impact investing space after I graduate. While it may not be with this firm, having that initial experience makes it a lot easier to market myself to other firms. Also, publishing the content that I have gives me somewhat of a portfolio that I can use to showcase my skills.