Day in the Life: NYC-based Associate at Northzone VC
✨ We’re hiring!! More here.
Wendy and I are so excited to expand Northzone’s NYC team by bringing on another investor. The tech ecosystem is buzzing, our portfolio is thriving, and we’re looking for the next member of our intimate team to help invest in the future generation of maverick entrepreneurs.
To supplement the job posting and give potential candidates a better idea of the role and lifestyle, I’m sharing my “Day in the Life” of being an NYC-based Associate at Northzone VC. It goes without saying that every single day is completely unique — if you’re more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty than consistency and defined tasks, then read on!
7:00AM — wake up
…and check my phone. Because a lot of the Northzone team is in Europe (Stockholm, London, and Amsterdam), I wake up to a string of email and Slack notifications. I scroll through to quickly get up to speed and respond to anything I’m a bottleneck for (ideally I’ll also read my daily newsletters but that’s an uphill battle). Working 5–6 hours apart from other offices can be very efficient; I have answers/feedback to things I’m working on first thing in the morning.
8:00AM — bike to the office
My 25-minute Citibike ride from Williamsburg, Brooklyn to Union Square, Manhattan is my version of morning coffee (I personally don’t consume caffeine). Once or twice a week I’m on early-morning calls with Europe which I occasionally take from home, but I otherwise prefer to be at the office; this is by no means a desk job but we enjoy face-time and have a culture of coworking.
9:00AM — live deal diligence
The priority is always to process live deals we’re excited about. That includes strategy sessions with the founders (preferably in-person), reference calls with customers or gtm partners, market research, financial analysis, investment memos, etc. Our sector mandate at Northzone is very broad; I’ve worked on live deals across enterprise, SMB, and consumer, and from health-tech to DeFi crypto to e-commerce enablement to lending to digital communities. While our firm-wide network is very strong, it’s important that we each bring in our own networks of operators to tap into for quick perspective and as potential value-add intro’s to founders.
e.g. I’m currently working on (1) the post-term sheet confirmatory diligence for a $20m Series B we’re leading into a revenue-based financing provider and (2) processing the data rooms for a $20m Series B b2b2c childcare services provider sold thru employer benefits and a $15m Series B interoperability datalayer for US healthcare.
11:00AM — internal calls/ops
We’re a global, distributed team but very collaborative — once per week, the full investment team gets together to discuss prioritized deals and to provide feedback to deal teams, and we also have smaller 1:1 catchups as well as geo- and sector-based deal pipeline discussions. Northzone is also very transparent — any investor can join Investment Committee meetings to observe the final deliberation and vote on deals at the very end of our process. Beyond my deal sourcing and diligence responsibilities, I also support internal admin activities like LP reporting, event planning, hiring, marketing, and miscellaneous things that arise. This is also the time that our European Partners are leaving the office so they might call to chat about deals et al. as they walk/drive home.
e.g. I recently presented an investment memo for a $3m follow-on investment into a blockchain-based video streaming platform.
12:00PM — lunch with investor friends
Venture capital is a social industry. I work as closely with investors from other firms as I do with my own Northzone colleagues. I genuinely count these peers as personal friends (and have sublet from two of them when in-between apartment situations), so catching up with them and hearing about sectors they’re spending time in and deals they’re excited about (as well as things like dating life and vacation planning) is very natural and fun. Lunch or afternoon coffee are my go-to’s.
1:00PM — investor catchup calls
I have ~5–10 meetings per week with investors at other VCs, usually non-Partners at NYC-based seed and series A firms. Some are first-time conversations to establish a point of contact but most are recurring catchups to collaborate on deal flow. I strive to meet everyone at least once IRL because this job requires a lot of trust and people-reading, but calls or asynch catchups are also very efficient.
2:00PM — founder pitch calls
Meeting entrepreneurs and processing deal flow is the bread and butter of this job; it’s also my favorite part. When founders afford me their time, I get to spend ~30 minutes per call learning about smart people, what drives them, their vision for introducing stepwise change to the world, and how Northzone can help further their progress. The more casual and conversational these are, the better — I don‘t want founders to feel like they’re ‘pitching’ Northzone but rather like they’re ‘offering’ Northzone an opportunity to join a movement.
Besides just joining calls with founders, I spend time prepping for upcoming calls with founders by looking up their background, perusing the company website or fundraising materials I might have, asking light questions to relevant folks in my network, etc.
e.g. I recently met a seed founder who was ex-Uber and is building a Lamba school-esque company for entry-level healthcare jobs; and a Series A founder who is building a merchandising platform for mid-market e-retailers.
4:00PM — uninterrupted thesis work
The late afternoons are my magic thinking time. I need longer stretches to really dive into a financial model or explore a research rabbit hole or write a compelling investment memo, and it’s easiest to block that time once Europe is offline/asleep. I also really enjoy blogging as it helps me synthesize and communicate my thoughts and reminds me of all the lab/thesis work I did at Berkeley, so uninterrupted time allows me to make progress on non-immediate projects.
e.g. I recently built an investment memo on the opportunity for a digital third place, wrote a blog post on the fulfillment-tech market, and combed through the data room of a live deal.
6:00PM — networking event or email catchup
At least once per week, I go to an evening event which could be a team-building event with a portfolio company, a VC happy hour, dinner at the Swedish consulate, and so forth. The larger-scale events are more important for folks new to the VC ecosystem as it throws a high volume of connections at you, but over time you find the pockets of communities that are most relevant to you.
7:30PM — gym or soccer
Consistent fitness is extremely essential to me and, turns out, is a great way to source deals!
9:00PM — dinner
A bit late but c’est la vie en NYC.
10:00PM — late-night portfolio support
I have routine catchups with my portfolio founders during the day, but a lot of the back-and-forth texting or off-the-cuff phone calls generally happen in the evenings during everyone’s downtime. And if I’m sprinting on an exciting new company, I lay in bed at night thinking about it and wake up before my alarm thinking about it — it’s hard to turn this job off mentally, too exciting!
All-day sprinklings
Throughout the day I’m active in Gmail, Slack, Affinity, Google Drive, Notion, Pitchbook, iMessages, WhatsApp, Fb M, LinkedIn…probably too many apps. My ability to be spread thin across platforms and parallel processes is facilitated by my incessant organization skills; I take copious notes on every call or research session and leave to-do’s for myself in relevant locations. I run a tight ship with my calendar but also respond to one-off pings all day, and my processes keep up with the slew.
Travel
Northzone encourages travel between offices and I strive to be in London or Stockholm at least 4x per year for our quarterly strategy meetings.
About Northzone: Northzone is an early-stage venture capital fund. Since 1996, we have been chosen by exceptional entrepreneurs as a long-term partner for growth. So far, across nine fund generations and over $1.7 billion managed, we have invested in 150+ companies including category-defining businesses like Spotify, Hopin, iZettle, Klarna, FuboTV, Spring Health, Thirty Madison, Trustpilot, Kahoot!, Personio, and Tier as well as unannounced emerging category creators in Web 3.0, new social, food, and ML.
