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. 057How many investments should a hundred million dollar seed fund make, and how much do you reserve?Portfolio constructionHardtechnicalSeed fundsIndian venture capital

   Say this

   Roughly thirty to thirty-five companies with about half the fund reserved for follow-ons. So call it $45m of initial cheques averaging $1.4m for 10 to 15 percent ownership, $45m of reserves, and $10m for fees and expenses over the fund's life.

   Then walk it

   1. Start from the return requirement and work back. A $100m fund needs $300m gross to return 3x net-ish to LPs. If one company produces $200m of that, I need to own enough of it: a $2bn exit with 10 percent retained ownership gives $200m. So the entry ownership target has to survive dilution to 10 percent.
   2. That fixes ownership at entry around 12 to 15 percent, because three later rounds will roughly halve it unless I follow on. Ownership target, not cheque size, is the primary constraint.
   3. Then portfolio size. Too few names and you may simply not own an outlier; too many and you cannot own enough of each or spend time on them. Thirty to thirty-five is the conventional band for seed, and the maths behind it is that at roughly a 1-in-20 hit rate for a fund-returner you want at least twenty-five shots.
   4. Reserves: 50 percent is the standard split at seed and it is the single most consequential construction decision. A fund that deploys 80 percent into initial cheques gets crushed in the winners, because the Series B and C are where the ownership is defended.
   5. Fees drag, and you should mention it because it catches people out. A 2 percent management fee over ten years is roughly 20 percent of committed capital, though most funds step it down. So the investable capital out of $100m is $80m to $85m, not $100m, and every portfolio-construction number has to be built off the investable figure.
   6. The India-specific adjustment: at seed in India, cheque sizes of $1m to $3m buy meaningfully more ownership than the same cheque in the Bay Area, so the same $100m fund can run a slightly more concentrated book at higher ownership. The offsetting constraint is exit scale — fewer billion-dollar outcomes means the fund-returner has to come from a smaller pool of candidates.

   Where candidates lose it

   Giving a portfolio count with no arithmetic behind it. Build it from the fund-return requirement through ownership target to cheque size — that sequence is the answer. And forgetting the fee drag, which makes every construction number 15 to 20 percent tighter than the headline fund size suggests.

   Expect next

   • What if you could only make ten investments?
   • How would that change for a $500m multi-stage fund?
   • How do you decide which companies get the reserves?
2. 058When do you decide not to follow on?Portfolio constructionHardsuperdayEarly-stage VCSeed funds

   Say this

   When I would not make the investment cold at the new price. That is the only test, and applying it honestly is hard because I am anchored on my entry price and on not wanting to signal doubt. Sunk cost and signalling are the two forces pushing every follow-on decision the wrong way.

   Then walk it

   1. The discipline: re-underwrite the company from scratch at the new price as if a stranger brought it to me. If I would pass, I pass, and my existing position is irrelevant to that judgement.
   2. The specific triggers for not following. The team has changed in a way that removes the reason I invested. The market turned out to be structurally smaller than underwritten. The metrics are fine but the shape is wrong — growing revenue with deteriorating retention. Or the price now requires an exit outcome I do not believe in.
   3. The uncomfortable one: the company is doing fine and will probably return 2 to 3x, but it will never return the fund. In a power-law portfolio that capital is better spent defending the position in a potential outlier. Passing on a healthy company is the hardest call in the job and it is usually right.
   4. Signalling risk is real and you should address it rather than pretend it is not. If an existing investor does not participate, incoming investors read it as information, and it can genuinely make the round harder for the founder. So the decision has to be communicated early, directly to the founder, with a clear reason — never by going quiet.
   5. What I would do to make it cleaner: agree the reserve policy in advance at the portfolio level, so the decision is a framework being applied rather than a verdict on the company. And where I can, offer to introduce other investors, which is the honest version of support when I am not writing the cheque.
   6. One structural caveat: a fund at the end of its investment period with no dry powder has no choice, and everyone in the market knows it. That is a fund-construction failure showing up as a portfolio decision, which is exactly why reserves are set at the start.

   Where candidates lose it

   Answering only on the company's merits and ignoring signalling risk. It is the thing that makes this decision genuinely difficult, and interviewers want to hear you handle the founder conversation. Also failing to mention the hardest case — the perfectly decent company that cannot return the fund.

   Expect next

   • How do you have that conversation with the founder?
   • What is signalling risk from a multi-stage fund?
   • Would you ever follow on just to protect the signal?
3. 060What makes your investment philosophy different and better from others'?Portfolio constructionHardsuperdayGeneral AtlanticGrowth Equity · New York · 2022

   Say this

   State something narrow enough to be wrong, then say what it costs you. A philosophy that excludes nothing is not a philosophy. And be careful with 'better' — the defensible claim is that it is a genuine edge in a specific slice of the market, not that it dominates everyone else's.

   Then walk it

   1. Pick a real lane and say it in one sentence. Something like: I look for businesses where the distribution channel is the moat rather than the product, because product advantages in software now decay in eighteen months and channel advantages compound.
   2. Then say what it makes you pass on, which is the part that proves it is real. That philosophy means passing on most pure-technology plays and most companies whose pitch is a model or a feature. Naming the exclusion is what makes it falsifiable.
   3. Then the edge claim, carefully. 'Better' in investing means one of three things: better information, better judgement, or better access. Only the first and third are checkable, so I would argue from those — a specific network, a specific operating background, a specific market where I see things earlier.
   4. Ground it in one concrete instance. A company you looked at, what the consensus view was, what you saw that was different, and what happened. A real example beats any amount of framework.
   5. Then connect it to the firm, because in a growth-equity interview this question is partly 'do you understand what we do'. If they run concentrated growth rounds with an operating team attached, a philosophy built on post-investment value creation fits; one built on early-stage pattern recognition does not.
   6. And be honest about the limit: my philosophy would have missed some of the best companies of the last decade, and here is the category it would have missed. That admission is what makes the whole answer credible rather than promotional.

   Where candidates lose it

   A philosophy so broad it excludes nothing — 'I look for great teams in large markets' is what everyone says and therefore says nothing. The second trap is the word 'better': claiming superiority over a firm's existing approach in their own office is a bad trade. Argue for a specific edge, name what it costs you, and say what it would have missed.

   Expect next

   • What would that philosophy have made you miss?
   • Give me a specific company where it produced a different answer from consensus.
   • How does it fit with what we do here?

   Reported by candidates at General Atlantic (Growth Equity, New York, 2022). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

4. 061How do you think about signalling risk from a multi-stage fund?Portfolio constructionHardsuperdayEarly-stage VCSeed funds

   Say this

   If a fund with a large Series A vehicle writes your seed cheque and then declines to lead your A, the market reads it as inside information that the company is not working. The seed capital comes with an option the fund holds and the founder pays for.

   Then walk it

   1. The mechanism: an incoming Series A investor asks why the seed fund with $2bn under management and an obvious ability to lead is not leading. There is rarely a good answer, and the absence of one prices the round or kills it.
   2. Why it is asymmetric: the multi-stage fund gets a cheap look at fifty companies and a free option on the best few. The founder gets capital plus a hidden liability that only appears at the next raise, precisely when they have no leverage.
   3. How founders manage it: take the multi-stage seed cheque as a small, non-lead participation alongside a dedicated seed fund that has no Series A vehicle, so there is no inference to draw. Or get an explicit, written commitment about what the fund will do at the A — which is worth less than it sounds but does change the conversation.
   4. How the fund should manage it, and this is the answer they want from someone joining one: be explicit at the time of the seed investment about whether this is a scout-style option or a genuine seed position, and if you do not lead the A, say why publicly and warmly to the incoming investors. Silence is what does the damage.
   5. The counterargument is real too: multi-stage money at seed is cheaper and comes with more resource, and many founders would rather have it. Signalling risk is a cost, not a disqualifier, and founders who price it correctly still often take the money.
   6. And the honest asymmetry from the fund's side: the signal cuts the other way as well. When a top multi-stage fund does lead the A, the round prices higher and fills faster than it would otherwise. Founders are buying a positive signal along with the negative option.

   Where candidates lose it

   Describing signalling risk as a founder problem only. In an interview at a multi-stage firm, the useful answer says how the firm should behave to reduce it, because that is a live internal debate at every one of them. And do not present it as a reason multi-stage seed money is bad — it is a cost to be priced.

   Expect next

   • How would you reduce it if you ran the seed programme here?
   • Would you rather have a dedicated seed fund or a multi-stage fund lead your seed?
   • What does it mean when a seed fund does not take its pro rata?

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.