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?
2. 064What should the board look like at Series A, and what changes by Series C?Board and governanceIntermediatetechnicalGrowth equity

   Say this

   At Series A, five seats: two founders, the Series A lead, the seed investor or a second common seat, and one genuinely independent director. By Series C it grows to seven with more investor and independent seats, and the founders no longer control it — which is the real change.

   Then walk it

   1. The standard Series A structure is two common, one preferred, and two independents agreed by both sides, or the simpler three-two split with founders holding the majority. Either way the founders still effectively control the board at the A, and that is normal and healthy.
   2. The independent seat is the one most people undervalue. It is the tie-breaker, and if you pick someone with genuine operating experience at the next stage of scale, they contribute more than any investor director does. The mistake is leaving it empty for two years, which happens constantly.
   3. By Series B and C, each new lead wants a seat and the board drifts to seven or nine. At some point the investor plus independent seats outnumber the founders, and control has shifted. Founders often do not register the moment it happens because it arrives one seat at a time.
   4. So the counter-discipline: cap the board at seven, move later investors to observer status rather than full seats, and add independents rather than investors as the company scales. A nine-person venture board does not make better decisions, it makes slower ones and pushes the real conversations into side calls.
   5. What also changes by Series C is the work. An A board is about product-market fit, hiring and the next raise. A C board is about operating discipline, the finance function, audit and compensation committees, and starting to think about what a public company or an acquisition needs.
   6. And a governance detail worth knowing: founders preserve control through mechanisms other than board seats — super-voting shares, or a voting agreement that ties specific seats to whoever holds the founder shares. Board composition and voting control are separate levers and sophisticated founders manage both.

   Where candidates lose it

   Describing a board as just a headcount. The substance is who controls it, when control shifts, and that independents are more valuable than extra investor seats. Also failing to distinguish board control from voting control — they are separate and founders often keep one while losing the other.

   Expect next

   • At what point do the founders lose board control, and does it matter?
   • How would you choose an independent director?
   • Would you take an observer seat instead of a board 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.