Introducing To Be Continued...

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In all honesty, I didn’t know what to expect when I showed up at the office (after first entering the wrong building). For one thing, I have an incredibly surface level sense of what VC is. I’m an English major who just completed her first and only Economics course, “Econ for Everyone.” Yet despite my discomfort, I am reminded that the circumstances of my arrival make perfect sense. I am here because of my strange response to an arguably stranger LinkedIn post:

“Looking for a summer intern to help us tell stories.

i want someone who sees what’s happening in the world and understands why things matter to our founders and the vc industry.

someone who can help us capture what it’s really like to build something from the inside.

you’ll be a fly on the wall as we grow Daring Ventures, but move fast before Maddi tells me we don’t need an intern.

Must be in NYC this summer.”

And then another:

“i'm looking for a painfully online storyteller to intern with us this summer. less venture experience is better.

send samples & ideas to apply. also prove that you have no idea what VC stands for.

don't tell maddi I'm still on this kick”

It’s a dinner scene where the narrator tries to dive into her husband’s mind after a tense visit to the National Museum of Scotland, where Dolly the sheep is on display. After some shockingly candid email exchanges about my favorite podcasts and my philosophies on life, Joe and I chat over Zoom.

“That was supposed to be funny, right?” he asks about my excerpt. It was, thank God. The absurdity of my protagonist (or anti-hero?)’s internal monologue is palpable. She’s an overthinker. Aren’t we all? Isn’t that way better than underthinking? Joe tells me my character is a tad relatable. I can tell this is a good fit.

As I finally make it past the fortress of this office building’s check-in center, I’m nervous again. I arrived ten minutes early, but check-in takes ages and I can’t find a “Daring Ventures” sign in the maze of sliding doors and steel window panes. It doesn’t matter, of course, that the clock reads 9:03 by the time I knock tentatively on the door that some guy helped me find. VC is casual.

When I get into the office, it’s just Lauren and a stack of cardboard boxes that are almost as tall as me. I learn later that they’re from an event, that Lauren had ordered too many snacks. My first unofficial task is to help consolidate them and take them out of the office. We need all the space we can get.

Joe pulls me outside to chat after I silently observe a team meeting. He’s wearing a hat with a green dinosaur on it, which he flips backwards later in the day.

Joe goes on to describe his vision for my role over the next three months. Authenticity is his priority, so he wants me to be candid. I ask if candid should mean critical. “It can,” he says.  But he tells me not to punch down. Punch down where? He remembers that I’m just the lowly intern.

That’s ultimately the strangest part for me. As I learn and adapt, my bosses are doing the same. I’m a small fish in a small, growing(!) pond, that’s growing within an even larger pond. An oil spill, maybe. But the good kind.

One of the perks of a small office in a very pretty building is the opportunity to roam. The other interns and I take to the couch, and I eye the coffee table books as we get settled. A copy of queer art is stacked directly next to a copy of CryptoDad. This amuses me.

As we talk, I seize the opportunity to figure out what exactly it is that Daring Ventures does. Dawson explains, patiently answering each of my follow-up questions when he mentions a new piece of lingo. The story he tells is one of audacious choices, which he clearly admires. It’s not what I’m used to. It’s risky – daring, as it were.

I’m surrounded by hypotheticals. The “maybes,” the emails sent into the abyss, the impulse to achieve the impossible – to discern the infinite paths a person’s mind might be taking when you try to make a connection with them. Because at the end of the day, the industry is all about connections. My brain churns. I can’t imagine how their brains are churning.

I soon discover just how flexible my position is. Brainstorming is a large part of it. Periodically, I slide open the office door to share my latest epiphany. “A VC children’s book” – already exists. “A VC Coffee table book” – I’m too caught up on this book thing.  “Hand-drawn LinkedIn visuals” – he likes that one.

One morning I wake up to a Teams message sent at 2:58 AM: “Reminder to add you to the meme team slack group.” Turns out Joe has a group of meme guys on retainer. Also turns out he doesn’t sleep.

The other two interns are working on an excel sheet of the types of companies that DV would or wouldn’t invest in. Joe confesses that the chances of anyone looking at it are slim. “But the one person who does click,” he says, “will be extremely impressed that we did this.” Is that comforting?

I, on the other hand, am tasked with going through Joe’s old LinkedIn posts and taking notes on the ones that blew up. The comments are my favorite part. It’s interesting to see how subtly or explicitly founders promote their companies through the guise of a genuine reply.

The best ones are the hate comments. Joe’s post about looking for founders outside of tech hubs was one of his most controversial. 137 comments worth of controversy! My favorite comes from Dr. Fred J.: “That’s dumb stats. Are you trying to be smart or just the kind of fun you enjoyed at your snowboarding school?” When I meet with Joe, I express how valuable I find these comments for both entertainment value and viewer engagement. He agrees, and suggests we start highlighting some of them in OoS.

On Wednesday, I sit in on a financial modeling meeting. I’m impressed, and startled. I’ve been taking the humor stuff so seriously that I forgot about the serious stuff. And I surprise myself with how well I can follow along. Joe is masterful at excel shortcuts. Maddi says something about focusing on what works, not a systematized way to make value. It’s as cool as a spreadsheet can be for an English major.

On Friday I arrive to find an empty office. Turns out everyone’s at a meeting with a potential LP. With nothing urgent on my plate, I make posters for an upcoming TikTok. I’m going to film the interns conducting their own guerilla LP outreach. Once that’s done, I draw a coffee cup on fire for one of Joe’s LinkedIn posts.

He comes out of the elevator to find me hunched over a coffee table that’s covered in crayons. “Looks good!” he says. I feel absurd, but embarrassingly proud. Joe and Maddi are in business attire. Sometimes VC is less casual.

The nature of our building makes it so that we can clearly hear everything our neighbors say. It’s not that the office dividers are thin – it’s that there’s a 5 foot gap between the walls and the ceiling. I find it hard not to giggle as we silently type. A disembodied voice annunciates “vee-hic-cals” in a way I’m desperate to mock. Maddi finally laughs, and Lauren quips “wow, he’s using every buzzword in the book.”

“When does ‘buzzword’ become a buzzword itself?” I ask.

“I think it already is one,” Maddi responds.

So much of the VC world is mockable, as Joe’s LinkedIn posts point out, yet so much is inevitable. Should self-deprecation function as a call for self-improvement? Or does the fun of it stem from its superficiality? I don’t know. I’m new to all of this.