Nafisa Istami: Building a Career in Venture Capital | Seed Guest Series
What does it take to break into VC?
This week, we chatted with Nafisa Istami, a senior at Rice University, about her experiences building her career in venture capital, landing VC roles, and building Rice Ventures.
Listen to our full conversation here!
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what got you interested in venture capital?
While at Rice, I was very much a freshman who was struggling to find her niche and trying to figure out who I wanted to be. I thought about exploring a lot of different things in business, law, etc. But the summer after my freshman year, I came across OwlSpark, which is our university startup accelerator. I didn't know anything about startups and never even heard of venture capital. At the accelerator, I found myself coordinating workshops with Houston industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists. I would sit side by side with founders, learning from them and understanding what the entrepreneurial journey looks like. After the workshops, I’d pivot back into this administrative role where our founders would ask me questions like, “what do you think of this go-to-market strategy?” and, “can you review my pitch deck?” I thought that it was incredible to be able to help even though I was an 18 year old with absolutely no industry experience. I don't know how helpful I actually was, but it was really cool.
For the past year and a half, I’ve been really focused on understanding the Rice and Houston ecosystem and broadening my network beyond that. I've been working with the Houston Angel Network and that's been a really valuable experience because I've been able to get the kind of experience that VCs actually want you to have when you're interviewing for full-time roles. I’ve also got selected for the first Republic Venture Fellowship, have been working with Emily Herrera at the Wiress, and recently joined the Envision Accelerator which is a non-equity virtual accelerator for young, diverse founders. Within Rice, I've been focusing on building up our ecosystem through Rice Ventures.
What are some skills you believe students should have if they wish to work in VC?
I think the first thing is to be very proactive. This industry really rewards that. In my first couple of internships within this role, I was kind of sitting on my laurels, waiting for someone to tell me what to do and I quickly realized that wasn’t going to work out. Venture Capital is an industry where you can do the job before you have the job. I can go and I can look at Crunchbase or Product Hunt every single morning and understand what is happening, who is building, etc. I can create market maps on my own. I can look at startups and reach out to them and say, “hey, I'm a student and I’m trying to learn more about entrepreneurship. Can you tell me more about your company?” You can ask them all the questions investors would typically ask like, “can you tell me more about your TAM? What is your go-to-market strategy? How are you looking at partnerships? Tell me more about your team.” Those are all things that students can already do without needing a fellowship or internship. Being proactive is really important in mapping out your own startup ecosystem.
What are misconceptions about VC that students and early professionals should be aware of before starting?
One is that you don't have to be from a STEM background or a finance background. You don't need to do management consulting for three years and then pivot into VC and you don't need an MBA. You can get a lot of the skills you need by just diving in. If you truly have the passion and ambition and grit for it, you can do the job and people will see that.
Another is that you don’t need to be in Silicon Valley. I'm in Houston, we are the fourth largest city in the US and we are just growing our entrepreneurship ecosystem, but there's a lot of really interesting things happening here. We just wrapped up Venture Houston 2021 and so many startups applied, easily over 300. That might not sound like a lot to Silicon Valley elite, but people are coming to Texas. We're understanding how we can kind of build up this ecosystem with incubators, accelerators, angel networks, and universities.
How can students become successful at VC recruiting?
Recruiting in VC is very different from recruiting in other fields because recruiting is very ad hoc. Funds really only tend to hire if somebody has left the fund or if they're raising new money, so there isn't a recruiting cycle like in other industries.
My advice when it comes to recruiting for VC is to focus on the network. The best way to do it is not through applications, but by making connections with people who are already in the industry, showing them your value from day one. That might be through publishing content, sourcing deals, writing deal memos, showing them that you're hungry for it and that you can do this job and you have what it takes.
All of my opportunities so far have very much come from existing network connections. All the interviews that I'm doing right now are because I already knew somebody at the firm or I met somebody who connected me to that fund. I don't think it's a great system, but that is how it currently is. And having a bigger network is never a bad thing.
For outreach resources, I recommend checking out Paige Doherty’s cold outreach workshop. In addition, I’m pretty active on Twitter. Some of my interviews have come out of me going viral on Twitter. And now that I’ve branded myself as a student interested in VC, people know to tag me in things. When people find Texas startups, they send them to me. So I would say that networking, building brands, making a paper trail online of what you have done and what you're able to do is really important.
Follow Nafisa on Twitter!