Venture Capital interview preparation

Questions

100

Traced to a firm

31

Firms

12

Updated

September 2026

Asked at

All firmsGeneral Atlantic9Insight Partners7Silver Lake6Vista Equity Partners4Bessemer Venture Partners3ACAccel2Advent International2Battery Ventures2Andreessen Horowitz1Coatue Management1Sequoia Capital1WPWarburg Pincus1

Topic

All topicsSourcing and deal flow5Market sizing and estimation8Founders and teams5Unit economics and cohorts11Term sheets12Cap table and dilution7Early-stage valuation7Portfolio construction6Board and governance4Down rounds and secondaries4Exits and liquidity4Fund economics5Sector theses and markets6India venture market6Fit and motivation10

Level

AnyCoreIntermediateHard

Type

AnyTechnicalFitCaseMarket viewBrainteaser

1. 062What does a venture investor actually do on a board?Board and governanceCoretechnicalGrowth equityIndian venture capital

   Say this

   Three real jobs: hire and if necessary replace the CEO, approve the things that cannot be undone, and make sure the company does not run out of money by accident. Everything else — advice, introductions, recruiting help — is valuable but is not a board function, and confusing the two is how directors overstep.

   Then walk it

   1. The fiduciary duty runs to the company and all shareholders, not to the fund that appointed you. That distinction matters in practice, because the moment a sale price is being negotiated your fund's preference and the common's interests diverge, and a director who behaves as the fund's agent creates real legal exposure.
   2. The formal work: approve the budget, approve financings and option grants, approve a sale, and set CEO compensation. Roughly six meetings a year, plus a lot of between-meeting contact that is where the actual influence sits.
   3. The single most important decision a venture board makes is whether the CEO is the right CEO for the next stage. It is rare, it is painful, and boards are systematically too slow at it — the modal error is eighteen months of hoping.
   4. The cash-watch job: knowing the runway to the month, forcing the conversation about the next raise nine months before the cash runs out rather than three, and being honest about whether the fund will support a bridge. A board that lets a company drift into a two-month cash position has failed.
   5. Then the non-board value-add, which is most of what a founder actually wants: candidate introductions, customer introductions, pricing and go-to-market pattern recognition, and being the person the CEO can say 'I am out of my depth' to. That last one requires you to have never punished honesty in a board meeting.
   6. The discipline to state: the board does not run the company. A director who starts directing functional decisions destroys the CEO's authority with their own team, and the good ones ask questions in the meeting and give opinions outside it.

   Where candidates lose it

   Answering with the value-add list — introductions, advice, coaching — and never naming the fiduciary role or the CEO decision. Those are the board's actual powers. And missing that your duty is to all shareholders rather than to your fund, which is the question behind most board-conflict scenarios.

   Expect next

   • What happens when your fund's interests and the common shareholders' diverge?
   • How would you handle a CEO who needs replacing?
   • What is the difference between a board seat and an observer seat?

Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.