Hi, I’m Pablo, currently in my last days at Verve in Berlin. If you are interested in an internship in venture capital, possibly at Verve, this text is for you.

But before I tell you about my experience, let me first explain how I ended up here. After a few internships, mainly in banking and consulting, I wanted to explore further career opportunities and decided to look into the startup ecosystem – a field that has developed tremendous momentum in recent years. Being amazed at what kind of different companies are out there, I was lucky enough to find myself talking to founders such as Jonas Andrulis at Aleph Alpha, Sebastian Schaal at Luminovo, and Magnus Drewelies at Ceezer – three driven individuals building three amazing companies. There is hardly anything more exciting than getting to know new companies directly from their founders. I quickly figured that there is probably no one talking to founders more regularly than investors, and after three fun interview rounds, I ended up accepting an offer at Verve – my expectations: meeting more exciting founders and their businesses, learning about early-stage investment criteria, and getting to know the process and structure of deals.

Daily Work

My tasks during the internship can be broadly divided into two categories. Deal sourcing and deal execution. Verve usually invests in startups at Seed and Series A, across Europe, industry-agnostic. Together with my colleague João, Investment Manager at Verve, I was responsible for covering the Nordics, as well as Central and Eastern Europe. On the deal sourcing side, I was initially told what kind of business models are interesting for us. Besides that, I had a lot of freedom in my sourcing approach. It was my responsibility to establish first contact with promising startups and conduct the first call with founders before deciding which cases to move forward with. Once we had a mutual agreement on an interesting company, we conducted further calls with the management and started a formal due diligence process. All investments are executed by one Investment Manager or Principal together with an Analyst or Associate. In other words, the “heavy lifting” (most of the evaluation processes) falls onto the back of the junior position. While this may sound a bit scary at first, it is a great opportunity to learn how to assess cases in-depth and speak up to more senior positions that ultimately must decide on the investment committees.

During my five months at Verve, I worked on three investments from the beginning until the end and was significantly involved in the assessment of a fourth case. One deal has already been closed and I hope the others follow soon – something I learned early on: an investment is not done until the money has actually been wired.

Team & Culture

The people at Verve are very diverse in terms of their backgrounds. At the same time, I have never met a team that fits so well together, personally, and professionally, across different offices – and they do a great job in making sure Visiting Analysts get the full Verve experience. I was flown to Zurich two times, to the headquarters, together with the Berlin team to be part of office parties and meet the rest of the team. At the Zurich office, you’ll hear people talk in Swedish, Italian, French, Romanian, English, and Swiss German. Professional backgrounds range from Physics, Engineering, and Life Sciences to Computer Science and Economics – if you are a business major like me, you will be a minority at Verve. I learned to appreciate the diversity in backgrounds because people tend to have different approaches to looking at things. I got to know the Verve culture as very warm and welcoming. Professional but fun during working hours, and a bit crazy after hours. I quickly got the feeling of being among friends, as opposed to supervisors and colleagues, not least, because I started spending time with the team outside the office, such as playing a paddle match on a Wednesday night or going to a house party on a Friday night.

Berlin as a Startup Hub

Before I joined Verve, I toyed with the idea of going somewhere other than Berlin, because I always thought of it as a big city full of dirt and strange people – and you could probably argue that that’s exactly what it is. In hindsight, however, coming to Berlin was clearly the right decision. Given the high density of startups and VCs, there are a lot of networking opportunities. For me, the most important aspect was connecting to peers, fellow visiting analysts at other funds, and I indeed met a few smart and cool people with whom I hope to keep in touch in the future. I am now biased of course, but I would confidently claim that there is no other city in Germany where you can experience as much of the startup ecosystem as in Berlin. Moreover, I came to appreciate the city because of its wide range of options regarding food, sports, and other social activities.

Let’s sum this up

After having talked to more than 100 founders and worked on several cases at Verve, the internship did not only exceed my expectations but also made me seriously consider making the startup ecosystem my first career choice. Next, I will join Magnus and his team at Ceezer on their mission to make the voluntary carbon market as easily accessible as the capital market. If you have any questions about the Visiting Analyst Program at Verve, VC in general, or simply want to grab a coffee in Berlin, feel free to reach out!

Read more

In this article, Henry Waldersee talks about his experience as a visiting analyst at Verve Ventures. Learn more about our visiting analyst internship program at Verve Ventures.