Hi! I’m glad you’re here. You’ve made it to issue #105 of VC Demystified🪄.

^{My personal mission is to open as many doors as possible for other people and this newsletter is just one avenue to do that. As always, I will continue to post VC insights daily for free across my socials. This newsletter may contain paid partnerships or affiliate links.}

Alexis Ohanian, founder of VC firm 776 and co-founder of Reddit, once said the best way to network is to reach out to people who are just 1 or 2 steps ahead of you in the journey.

The logic is simple: people who recently walked the path you're on still remember what it felt like. They're more accessible, more willing to share, and more likely to respond. The further ahead someone is, the harder they are to reach and the less they relate to where you are right now.

I've given this advice to nearly every aspiring VC I've spoken to in the last year. Most people default to going straight to the top: GPs and Partners. I get it. But it's almost always the wrong move, especially early on. Here's what I actually recommend, depending on where you are in your journey.

Target analysts and associates who just joined a VC firm (<12 months in).

Here's why this works so well: when you're brand new to VC, you're usually building your network from scratch. I know this because I was there just 4 years ago. When I first started, I was eager to meet other investors from other firms. I said yes to almost every meeting. I was learning from everyone, getting my reps in on how to talk to other VCs, figuring out how to articulate my perspective and my firm's thesis. It was a kind of a, what I like to call, “listening tour.”

A junior VC who just joined a firm six months ago is in that exact same mode right now. Their calendar is not packed yet. They are actively trying to build relationships with other investors in the ecosystem. If you reach out, your hit rate is going to be significantly higher than if you cold email a Partner.

The message doesn't need to be complicated. I'd send something like this:

"Congrats on joining [Firm]. I'm previously interned at [X] and would love to connect with more investors in the ecosystem. Would you be open to a quick call?"

No lengthy ask. Just a peer reaching out to another peer.

Target VC interns and former VC interns.

I got my first VC internship by DMing former interns at the firm. Not the Partners. Not the Associates. The people who had just done the internship I was trying to get. I asked if they'd grab coffee, learned how they got in, what the role actually looked like day to day, and what they wished they had known going in. I’ll share a screenshot of the exact DM I sent at the end of this newsletter.

Those conversations gave me an inside track that no amount of cold emailing Partners would have. There are a few reasons this group is so valuable to reach out to early in your journey:

The strategy only works if you can actually find the right people to reach out to. That part is less obvious than it sounds, and it's where most people get stuck so let’s get into the specific strategy on how to find the people to reach out to.