Hi! I’m glad you’re here. You’ve made it to issue #102 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.}

VC reference checks work in two ways and most candidates only know about one of them.

The first is the one you expect: a fund asks you for a list of references, you send over names, they make calls. You know it's happening. You've given them permission.

The second is the one that catches people off guard: a fund goes looking on their own. They look at your work history, figure out who you've worked with, and reach out directly, without telling you. The candidate may never know this call happened. Sometimes I've been contacted this way. Other times, I've been given context that I was a listed reference.

Often, funds are doing both simultaneously: working the list you gave them and running their own back-channel at the same time.

Either way, here's what most aspiring VCs don't realize: by the time a fund is calling your references, they've already decided they like you. The reference check isn't about confirming you're competent. It's about finding reasons not to hire you. It stress-tests whether the version of yourself you presented in interviews holds up under third-party scrutiny.

Every call I've been part of follows a similar structure. It starts the same way: how did you work together, for how long, and how closely? This isn't small talk. It's how the fund decides how much weight to give everything else you say. A reference who worked alongside someone daily for two years carries a different signal than a colleague who worked adjacent to them for six months. They're calibrating before they even get to the real questions.

Then it gets specific fast.

In this issue for premium subscirbers, I'm sharing the specific reference questions I've been asked multiple times, what funds are really trying to learn from each one, and the two answers that quietly kill VC candidacies, even when the reference thinks they're being positive.