Venture Capital interview preparation

Sourcing, unit economics, term sheets, cap tables, fund economics and the India venture market. Every question is either traced to a named firm from a public candidate report, or tagged at desk level when we could not trace it — answers lead with the point, then the mechanism, then the limitation.

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100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

Questions
100
Traced to a firm
31
Firms
12
Updated
September 2026
Asked at
All firmsGeneral Atlantic9Insight Partners7Silver Lake6Vista Equity Partners4Bessemer Venture Partners3Accel2Advent International2Battery Ventures2Andreessen Horowitz1Coatue Management1Sequoia Capital1Warburg 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
Showing 1–1 of 1 · filtered from 100Clear filters
  1. 074Explain the J-curve.Fund economicsCorephone / first roundGrowth equity

    Say this

    A fund's reported return is negative for the first few years, then turns up sharply. Fees and expenses are charged from day one while investments are held at cost, so the net return starts below zero and only recovers once the winners get marked up or exit.

    Then walk it

    1. Why the dip: management fees of around 2 percent a year come out of committed capital immediately. Meanwhile companies are held at cost until a new round reprices them, so there are costs and no gains. By year two or three a fund is commonly showing a net TVPI of 0.8 to 0.9.
    2. Why it turns: as portfolio companies raise at higher valuations, the fund marks them up, and TVPI climbs. Then exits convert marks into cash and DPI starts rising, usually several years behind TVPI.
    3. Typical shape for venture: trough around year two or three, crossing 1x somewhere between years four and six, and peak distributions in years seven to twelve. Venture's J-curve is deeper and longer than buyout's because there is no cash yield along the way.
    4. The practical consequence for an LP: early-year IRR is meaningless and comparing a year-three fund to a year-eight fund is nonsense. LPs use vintage-year benchmarking specifically because of this.
    5. The consequence for the GP, and this is the part worth volunteering: the J-curve is why raising the next fund is hard. You go back to market in year three or four with a portfolio that shows a negative net return, and the pitch has to be built on the underlying companies rather than the headline number.
    6. One honest caveat: the shape can be manufactured. Marking up a company aggressively on a small insider round, or using a NAV facility, flattens the curve without creating value. Which is why an LP looks at DPI rather than the shape of the line.

    Where candidates lose it

    Describing the shape without explaining the two mechanisms — fees charged upfront, holdings carried at cost. And missing the fundraising consequence, which is the reason a GP cares about the J-curve at all. If you can add that marks can be managed, you are ahead of most candidates.

    Expect next

    • How deep does the trough usually get?
    • How does a GP raise Fund II while sitting in the trough?
    • What is a NAV facility and how does it affect the curve?

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.