Investing is an apprenticeship business

The claim, often repeated in venture capital and private equity, that investing is a craft learned by working under more experienced investors. Kyle’s essay Eat What You Kill takes the phrase on directly: it quotes his earlier line that “there is no real tangible incentive for venture investors to mentor anyone,” and contrasts that with Sequoia’s chain of mentorship (Don Valentine to Doug Leone to Roelof Botha to Pat Grady) and with an account of two analysts at the original Tiger Management in the 1990s, one of whom helped juniors shape their ideas before pitching. The Apprenticeship Litmus Test develops the same argument.

The saved tweets filed under this tag approach it from several sides:

• Whether it is true. Gil Dibner (2019) called the volume of capital deployed by VCs “who have never been mentored by anyone” a “massive experiment” in whether VC is an apprenticeship business, adding “This aged well.” A 2022 post (original now deleted) asked who would top a Midas List ranked by mentorship performance rather than investment record.
• How to measure mentorship. Orlando Bravo (2022): “If you want to be a good mentor to young investors, measure your results by their numbers.”
• How to train. Flo Crivello (2023) asked whether any firm has built a training program, such as predicting what happened to ten-year-old decks, to tighten VC’s loose feedback loops.
• What the apprentice should do. Harry Stebbings (2022) warned young VCs against copying senior partners’ style instead of finding their own; Cedric Chin (2022) argued that a mentor relationship works only if the mentee acts on at least some of the advice.
• Firm culture. A Cundill Capital post (2022) asked what a successful investment firm’s culture looks like and whether it can be built remotely.

Related reading in the same vein: Scout Programs (apprenticeship-style versus community-style program design).

Where this appears

• 1- There’s an Element of… (tweet)

• Biggest Mistake Young People in… (tweet)

• If the Midas List Was… (tweet)

• PE is All About the… (tweet)

• VCs Always Talk of How… (tweet)

• We Are Running a Massive… (tweet)

• What Does a Successful Investment… (tweet)

• March 1st, 2022 — Steve Jobs Was Wrong About His Famous Smart-Person Quote (Inc.), filed here.