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. 007Bottom-up or top-down market sizing — which do you trust, and why?Market sizing and estimationCorephone / first roundGrowth equity

   Say this

   Bottom-up, always, and I use top-down only as a sanity check. Bottom-up is units times price, built from things you can count. Top-down is a big industry number times a percentage you made up, and that percentage is doing all the work.

   Then walk it

   1. Bottom-up: number of potential customers, times the share you can realistically win, times what each one pays. Every input is arguable on its own terms, which is the point — the interviewer can push on one number rather than the whole thing.
   2. Top-down: 'the global logistics market is $10 trillion and we only need 1 percent.' That sentence has appeared in every failed pitch deck ever written. The 1 percent is unjustified and usually off by a factor of ten.
   3. Worked example. Indian restaurant POS software: roughly 500,000 addressable organised restaurants, maybe 40 percent can pay for software, at ₹2,000 a month that is ₹4.8bn a year, call it $58m of Indian SaaS revenue. Now you can argue about penetration and price with real edges.
   4. And notice what bottom-up just told you: a $58m market cannot support a venture-scale outcome on software alone, which is exactly why every Indian restaurant-tech company ends up in payments or lending. Top-down would never have surfaced that.
   5. Use top-down to check the order of magnitude. If bottom-up gives you $58m and the top-down says $6bn, one of them is wrong and finding out which is the real work.
   6. The honest limitation: bottom-up systematically underestimates genuinely new categories, because it prices at today's price point. So for a category-creating company I build bottom-up at the new price, not the old one.

   Where candidates lose it

   Saying 'both, they're complementary' and stopping. That is true and empty. Commit to bottom-up, then show one worked build with real numbers. The follow-up is always 'size it for me now', so have a live example ready.

   Expect next

   • Size the Indian SaaS market for restaurants, out loud, right now.
   • When does bottom-up mislead you?
   • What is the difference between TAM, SAM and SOM?
2. 009What is the difference between TAM, SAM and SOM, and which one actually matters?Market sizing and estimationCorephone / first roundGrowth equity

   Say this

   TAM is everyone who could conceivably buy the category, SAM is the slice this product and business model can actually serve, and SOM is the share you can realistically win in your planning horizon. SAM is the one that matters for the investment decision.

   Then walk it

   1. TAM: total addressable market, the whole category with no constraints. Useful only for establishing that the ceiling is not the binding problem.
   2. SAM: serviceable addressable market. Constrained by geography, segment, regulation, language, price point and what your product does today. This is where the honest number lives.
   3. SOM: serviceable obtainable market, your realistic share given competition and your distribution. For a seed company this is the five-year revenue ceiling, and it should be big enough to return the fund.
   4. Worked example. Global payroll software might be a $30bn TAM. Payroll for Indian companies with 50 to 500 employees is maybe a $250m SAM. Winning 15 percent of that is a $38m revenue business — a real company, and possibly too small for a $500m fund. That comparison is the entire decision.
   5. So the question I actually answer is: does the SOM support an outcome that returns the fund at the ownership I can get? Everything else is framing.
   6. The limitation worth naming: these boundaries are soft and companies move between them. Every great company's SAM expanded — Amazon's was books. So I hold the SAM number loosely and ask whether the expansion path is credible rather than assumed.

   Where candidates lose it

   Getting the definitions right and then failing to say which one drives the decision. Definitions are a two-mark question; the judgement is in connecting SOM to fund returns at your likely ownership. And do not confuse SAM with 'the market we're targeting first' — that is the beachhead, which is smaller again.

   Expect next

   • What SOM do you need for this to return a $200m fund?
   • Give me a company whose SAM expanded dramatically.
   • How would you size this bottom-up?
3. 013What is 301 times 447?Market sizing and estimationCorephone / first roundGeneral AtlanticGeneralist · New York · 2026Vista Equity PartnersPrivate Equity · Austin · 2021

   Say this

   134,547. Break the awkward number into a round one plus a remainder: 300 times 447 is 134,100, and one more 447 gives 134,547. Say the method out loud as you go, because they are listening to the decomposition more than the answer.

   Then walk it

   1. Split 301 into 300 plus 1. Three times 447 is 1,341, so 300 times 447 is 134,100.
   2. Add the last 447: 134,547. Two steps, about five seconds.
   3. The alternative decomposition works too: 447 is 450 minus 3, so 301 times 450 is 135,450, minus 903 gives 134,547. Same answer, and it is worth knowing both because sometimes one side is the rounder number.
   4. Then sanity-check the magnitude before you speak: 300 times 450 is about 135,000, so anything not starting with 13 is wrong. That check costs nothing and saves you from a transposition error.
   5. Say the working as you do it. In a growth or VC seat mental arithmetic shows up constantly — a revenue multiple in a meeting, an ownership percentage, a dilution check — and the interviewer wants to hear whether you decompose or freeze.
   6. If you genuinely lose the thread, restate the approach and start again rather than guessing. A wrong number said confidently is much worse than ten extra seconds.

   Where candidates lose it

   Trying to do long multiplication in your head, digit by digit, in silence. You will drop a carry and you will look uncomfortable. Round, multiply, adjust, and narrate. Also practise the standard set beforehand: percentages of round numbers, revenue multiples, and 'what IRR is 5x in 5 years'.

   Expect next

   • What is 17 percent of 1,400?
   • A company grows from $4m to $32m of revenue in four years. What is the CAGR?
   • If I invest at a $20m post-money and exit at $340m, what is my multiple on a 10 percent stake?

   Reported by candidates at General Atlantic (Generalist, New York, 2026); Vista Equity Partners (Private Equity, Austin, 2021). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

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.