Job Description

My Introduction to the Venture Capital Space

Certain industries find a way of making it especially hard for undergraduate students to enter. Knowing this, I walked into my job hunt last summer knowing that I would do anything and everything it takes to land a gig.

I finally synced up with a sharpshooter named Buck Jordan who founded Canyon Creek Capital. I remember getting the job offer with a confidential PDF of the rundown of his portfolio, filled with new technology trends. Reading it was like reading a science fiction book. I was hooked immediately. I soon discovered that I would be working with a peer of mine from Dallas, John-Marshall.

Buck placed the two of us in a remote office in a Cross Campus, which is essentially just like a WeWork. It was right in the middle of Santa Monica, and it had a very beachy and techy feel to it. Both very excited about the opportunity, we wasted no time and got straight to hammering away.

Generally, day to day tasks would be different, however, my favorite aspect of the job was the research. Buck’s firm focuses heavily on disruptive technology, meaning technology that is so innovative it will change the entire market. The first project I took on was very research intensive.

I made a fifty by fifty excel doc with about 200-300 words in each cell that served to analyze Buck’s entire portfolio at the time. He had around 50 companies and John-Marshall and I found around 50 questions to be answered by each company. They ranged from everything from hard numbers like monthly recurring revenue to very subjective questions such as “on a scale from 0-3 how disruptive are they?”

John-Marshall and I tackled this research assignment in a week, which was very fast. We both were hoping to turn some heads at Buck’s office, hopefully finding an in to make this a full-time gig. However, we still had three months to go on the job. So, besides working quickly and diligently, we decided to find ways to add value however we could. We tried several things, including, but not limited to the following:

• We turned his pitch deck intended for investors into a thirty-second trailer using photoshop and premiere.

• We began a $10M fundraise, which John-Marshall has turned into a $100M fundraise since I left.

• We created expert content on the AR/VR, AI, Drone, and Automation markets.

John-Marshall and I were young, scrappy, and hungry. We got a lot done in three months time, but I still go back and always say that the most rewarding part of the job was two-fold: the market and technology knowledge I gained, which fostered into a love for venture capital.

At most communal workspaces, the setup is very Californian. What I mean by this is that they all had special amenities such as beer and kombucha on tap. John-Marshall and I had a ritual where we would grab some free beer after work on Fridays, and go over what we had been reading about that had been fascinating. It seemed never-ending; there was always a new application of these technologies that completely took us off guard.

The summer at Canyon Creek Capital caused me to mature quite a bit. I became more inquisitive, I read more, I read stock market articles every day, I do my own research, and you could possibly claim that in some sectors I’m close to an expert. For the first time in my career as a business student at USC, I feel that I’ve found a field that genuinely excites me. For the first time, I’m excited to get to work, and that’s what it’s really all about.