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. 003You get two hundred inbound decks a month. How do you triage them?Sourcing and deal flowIntermediatetechnicalEarly-stage VCSeed funds

   Say this

   Two filters in sequence. First a hard screen on fund fit that takes thirty seconds, then a judgement screen on the three things that actually predict an outcome. Most of the two hundred die on the first one, and that is fine.

   Then walk it

   1. Hard screen, mechanical: stage, cheque size, geography, sector mandate, and whether the round is already led. If the fund writes $2m seed cheques in India and this is a $40m Series C in Brazil, it is a polite no in one line. That is maybe 70 percent of the pile.
   2. Second screen, three questions only: is the market big enough to return the fund on its own, is there something about this team that makes them the right people for it, and is there evidence anybody actually wants this.
   3. Evidence beats narrative at this stage. Twenty paying customers with a two-week sales cycle tells me more than a beautiful market slide. For consumer, a retention curve that flattens.
   4. Then a deliberate 'weird pile'. Companies that fail the screen but where something is genuinely strange in an interesting way. In a power-law business the outliers rarely look sensible on a first pass, so a purely mechanical filter is a good way to miss the one that matters.
   5. Reply to everyone within a few days, including the noes, with one line of real reason. The cost is low and the reputational return is high, because founders route deals to VCs who answer.
   6. And I would track my own passes. Writing down why I said no, then reviewing those names a year later, is the only way to find out whether my filter is any good.

   Where candidates lose it

   Describing only the mechanical filter. Any associate can build a screen. The interesting half of the answer is how you keep the screen from killing the outlier, and that you close the loop by tracking your own passes.

   Expect next

   • What would make you take a meeting with a company that fails your screen?
   • How would you review your own passes a year later?
   • Which single signal would you keep if you could only keep one?
2. 008A founder tells you their TAM is fifty billion dollars. How do you stress-test that?Market sizing and estimationIntermediatetechnicalEarly-stage VCGrowth equity

   Say this

   Rebuild it bottom-up in front of them and see where the two numbers diverge. Then test the three places TAM claims usually break: who actually has a budget, what they actually pay, and whether the product they are buying is the one that reaches all of those customers.

   Then walk it

   1. Ask how they built it. If the answer is a research-house report, the number is not theirs and they have not thought about it. If they can build it live, that alone is most of the signal I need about the founder.
   2. Test the customer count. 'All small businesses' is not an addressable base. How many have the problem acutely, have the budget, and are reachable through a channel you can afford? That usually cuts the base by 80 to 90 percent.
   3. Test the price. Founders assume enterprise pricing on an SMB base. If the claimed ACV is $30,000 and the customers are 20-person firms, the pricing and the segment contradict each other.
   4. Test the product boundary. A $50bn TAM often assumes three products they have not built. Ask what share of it today's product addresses, and you frequently get from $50bn to $400m in one question.
   5. Then the important reframe, and I would say it kindly: the size of the TAM barely matters at seed. What matters is whether the first $10m of revenue is reachable from one segment with one product. A huge TAM with no beachhead is a worse company than a $1bn market with an obvious wedge.
   6. And I would not treat a bad TAM slide as disqualifying. Plenty of great companies had absurd TAM slides. It is a probe into how the founder thinks, not a scorecard item.

   Where candidates lose it

   Treating this as gotcha — catching the founder out and feeling clever. Diligence is not cross-examination. The useful output is a defensible number and a read on how the founder reasons under pressure, and you get neither if you turn it into an argument.

   Expect next

   • What is the smallest market you would still invest in?
   • How do you find the beachhead segment?
   • What if they refuse to rebuild it with you?
3. 010If you were to open a restaurant, what would be your key concerns?Market sizing and estimationIntermediatetechnicalGeneral AtlanticGeneralist · Beijing · 2014

   Say this

   Treat it as an investment, not a hobby: location economics, the unit-level P&L, working capital, and whether the concept is repeatable. The concerns in order are rent as a share of revenue, labour, food cost, and whether I can get a second site to work.

   Then walk it

   1. Unit economics first. Restaurant maths is brutal and well known: food cost around 30 percent of revenue, labour 25 to 30, rent under 10, leaving a single-digit to low-teens operating margin if everything goes right.
   2. So the binding constraint is revenue per square foot, which is really seats times turns times average ticket. Forty seats, two turns at lunch and two at dinner, ₹600 average ticket, 26 days — that is about ₹2.5m a month, or ₹30m a year. Every cost decision has to fit inside that.
   3. Then the capital question: fit-out and deposit are largely sunk and unrecoverable, payback on a new site typically runs 18 to 30 months, and the lease term has to be long enough to earn that back. A three-year lease on a five-year payback is not a business.
   4. Working capital is the thing people miss. Suppliers on short credit, aggregators paying out on a lag, staff paid monthly, plus perishable inventory. A profitable restaurant can die on a cash timing mismatch.
   5. Then the concern I would lead with as an investor: is it repeatable without me? A single great restaurant is a job, not an asset. What makes it scalable is a standardised menu, a central kitchen, a manager who is not the founder, and a site-selection model that has worked twice.
   6. And the delivery question, which changed the maths: aggregator commissions of 20 to 30 percent turn a thin dine-in margin negative unless you price a separate delivery menu. Cloud kitchens exist because that one number is so punishing.

   Where candidates lose it

   Answering as a diner — menu, ambience, chef. The interviewer is testing whether you naturally reach for a unit-level P&L and a payback period on an unfamiliar business. Lead with the cost structure and the repeatability, then let the concept discussion follow.

   Expect next

   • How long before you open a second location?
   • Would you ever invest in a restaurant chain? What would you need to see?
   • What is the payback period on a new site and how would you shorten it?

   Reported by candidates at General Atlantic (Generalist, Beijing, 2014). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

4. 012You have ten minutes with a founder and no deck. What do you ask?Market sizing and estimationHardsuperdayEarly-stage VCSeed funds

   Say this

   Five questions, each designed to be hard to rehearse. Why you, why now, what did you learn last month that you did not know before, what does your best cohort do, and what would have to be true for this to be worth ten billion dollars.

   Then walk it

   1. 'Why are you the person to build this?' Founder-market fit in their own words. I am listening for specific earned insight, not a career summary.
   2. 'Why is this possible now and not in 2019?' If there is no real answer, the company is probably a feature or a timing bet with no tailwind. This question kills more pitches than any other.
   3. 'What did you learn in the last month that changed your plan?' This is the highest-signal question I know, because it cannot be prepped and it reveals whether they are actually running experiments or just executing a deck.
   4. 'Show me your best cohort.' Not aggregate growth — one cohort, month by month. Retention curves do not lie and founders who know theirs by heart are usually the ones running the business off the data.
   5. 'What has to be true for this to be a ten-billion-dollar company?' I want to hear them reason about their own ceiling. Founders who have never thought about it are usually optimising for the next round, not the outcome.
   6. And I would spend at least two of the ten minutes shutting up. The questions matter less than whether they ask me anything sharp back, and whether they say 'I don't know' when they don't know.

   Where candidates lose it

   Reeling off fifteen diligence questions. Ten minutes means five questions and real listening. Also asking anything that a deck already answers — you learn nothing from 'what does the product do'. Pick questions that only the founder can answer.

   Expect next

   • Which of those five is most predictive, in your view?
   • What answer would make you pass immediately?
   • How do you avoid falling for a charismatic founder?
5. 016A brilliant solo founder, no technical co-founder, strong early traction. Invest or pass?Founders and teamsIntermediatetechnicalEarly-stage VCSeed funds

   Say this

   It depends on whether the missing capability is on the critical path and whether they can hire it. Solo founders are not disqualifying — the data is roughly neutral — but a non-technical solo founder in a deep-technology business is a real problem, and the same person in a distribution-led business often is not.

   Then walk it

   1. First: is the hard part of this company technical or commercial? A compliance-workflow product where the moat is regulatory relationships and sales can survive an outsourced build. A new database cannot.
   2. Second: what has the traction actually proven? If they got to $500k of revenue with contractors and no CTO, they have proven demand and they have taken on technical debt. Both are true and both get priced.
   3. Third, and decisive: can they recruit? Ask who they have already tried to hire as CTO, what happened, and who is in the pipeline. A founder with two credible engineering leaders in late-stage conversation is a different risk from one who has not started.
   4. The structural risk is single point of failure. No one to argue with, no one to cover when they burn out, and a key-person dependency that shows up in every later diligence. That does get priced, usually in ownership or in a vesting and governance structure.
   5. How I would actually do it: invest with the round sized and milestoned to a senior technical hire, help run that search as the main value-add, and reserve for a bridge if it takes longer. Possibly a slightly larger option pool to fund the hire.
   6. And the honest data point: solo-founder companies are well represented among large outcomes, so a blanket rule against them is a filter that costs you more than it saves. The real question is capability gap, not headcount.

   Where candidates lose it

   Giving a policy answer either way. 'We never back solo founders' is a lazy heuristic the interviewer will push back on, and 'traction solves everything' ignores the execution risk. The answer is conditional on where the hard part of the business sits, and it ends with a structure, not a verdict.

   Expect next

   • How would you structure the round to manage that risk?
   • What if they refuse to give up the CTO title?
   • Name a solo-founder company that worked and say why.
6. 018Two co-founders, a fifty-fifty split, no vesting. What do you say to them?Founders and teamsIntermediatetechnicalEarly-stage VCSeed funds

   Say this

   The split I can live with; the absence of vesting I cannot. Any round I lead will put both founders on four-year vesting with a one-year cliff, with credit for time already served, and that is a condition rather than a negotiation.

   Then walk it

   1. Why vesting is non-negotiable: if a founder leaves in month eight with 50 percent of the company unvested-but-owned, the remaining founder is running a business where half the equity belongs to someone who has gone. No later investor will fund that, and no new hire can be paid properly out of what is left.
   2. Mechanics: four years, one-year cliff, monthly thereafter, with acceleration only on a change of control and usually double-trigger. Credit for time already worked is the fair concession — if they have been at it 18 months, they start 18 months vested.
   3. On the fifty-fifty split itself: it is fine and often healthy, but it is worth asking how they break a tie. Companies with no decision-maker stall at exactly the moment speed matters. I would want to hear a real answer, even an informal one.
   4. The deeper thing the question is really testing: how the founders react to being told. A pair who immediately understand why an investor needs it are much easier to work with than a pair who treat it as distrust. This is genuinely diagnostic.
   5. And frame it for them in their own interest, because that is the truthful framing: vesting protects the founder who stays, not the investor. Ask them which of them would want to be the one left holding 50 percent of a company they cannot fund.
   6. One nuance: acceleration on termination without cause is a reasonable founder ask and I would give some of it. Full single-trigger acceleration on any acquisition is not, because it strips the acquirer of retention.

   Where candidates lose it

   Focusing the answer on the fifty-fifty split. The split is a talking point; the missing vesting is the actual deal issue and it will be the first thing your investment committee asks about. Lead there, then say how you would give credit for time served so it does not read as a power grab.

   Expect next

   • What is single versus double-trigger acceleration?
   • What if one founder has already checked out?
   • Would you invest in a company where one founder has left and kept their shares?
7. 025A company shows net revenue retention of 140 percent and logo churn of 30 percent. What is going on?Unit economics and cohortsHardtechnicalGrowth equitySaaS-focused funds

   Say this

   A small number of large accounts are expanding hard while a long tail of small accounts is falling out the bottom. The 140 is real but it is concentration, not health, and the business has two entirely different customer bases being reported as one.

   Then walk it

   1. Mechanically: if your top 10 percent of accounts double and your bottom 30 percent disappear, dollars grow while customer count shrinks. Both numbers are honest and together they describe a business that only works upmarket.
   2. The first thing I would ask for is the retention table split by initial contract size. I would expect something like 130 percent net retention above $100k ACV and 60 percent below $20k. That split is the actual finding.
   3. Why it matters: the company is spending sales and marketing to acquire small customers who leave, which drags the blended payback out. If they stopped selling to the bottom segment, revenue growth would slow and efficiency would jump sharply.
   4. The risk in the 140 is concentration. Ask what share of revenue the top ten accounts represent. If it is over 40 percent and the expansion is usage-based, one customer's budget cycle can flip the whole retention number negative.
   5. Also test whether the expansion is real adoption or a pricing artefact. A seat-based product growing with customer headcount compounds. Expansion driven by a one-time land-and-expand from a pilot to an enterprise licence does not repeat.
   6. The conclusion I would take to the partnership: this is probably a good enterprise business wearing a bad SMB business as a costume. The diligence question becomes whether they can kill the low end without breaking the growth story they have sold to previous investors.

   Where candidates lose it

   Reading the 140 as unambiguously good and stopping. Paired with 30 percent logo churn it is a signal about segment mix, not quality. The candidates who do well here immediately ask for the metrics split by cohort and contract size rather than commenting on the blended figures.

   Expect next

   • What would you tell them to do about the low end?
   • How much customer concentration would make you pass?
   • How do you tell adoption-driven expansion from a pricing artefact?
8. 026If revenues get hit in a quarter, what would you do as CFO to preserve cash flow?Unit economics and cohortsIntermediatetechnicalSilver LakeTechnology, Media and Telecom · San Francisco · 2022

   Say this

   Work in order of reversibility and speed: first the levers that cost nothing to pull and can be undone, then working capital, then discretionary spend, then headcount last. And before any of it, establish whether the quarter is a timing issue or a demand issue, because the answer is completely different.

   Then walk it

   1. Diagnose first. A slipped enterprise deal that closes in six weeks is a timing problem and you do not restructure the company around it. A cohort that stopped converting is a demand problem and you act hard.
   2. Fastest reversible levers: freeze discretionary spend — travel, events, consultants, new tooling — and pause the hiring pipeline without touching existing staff. That typically finds 10 to 15 percent of operating expense within a quarter and can be switched back on.
   3. Working capital next, because it is cash without cutting the business. Tighten collections and chase the ageing receivables, move new contracts to annual upfront with a discount rather than monthly, and stretch payables where the supplier relationship tolerates it. Annual prepay is the single biggest lever in a software business.
   4. Then capital expenditure and committed spend: defer the office build-out, renegotiate the cloud commitment, and look hard at the software stack, where most companies are paying for 30 percent more seats than they use.
   5. Headcount last, and if you do it, do it once and deeply enough that you do not have to come back. Repeated small cuts destroy more value through uncertainty than the cash they save. And protect the revenue-generating and product functions, because you still have to grow out of this.
   6. Then the financing side, which is the real CFO job: extend runway to at least eighteen months, open a venture debt or revolver conversation while the numbers still look fine rather than after they do not, and tell the board in the quarter it happens, not the quarter after.

   Where candidates lose it

   Going straight to layoffs. It signals no sense of sequencing and it is the slowest source of cash once you account for severance. The structure they want is reversible-before-irreversible, and the diagnosis — timing versus demand — before any of it. Mentioning annual prepay and receivables is what marks out someone who has actually looked at a cash flow.

   Expect next

   • How much runway would you insist on holding?
   • When would you take venture debt instead of cutting?
   • How do you decide whether it is a timing problem or a demand problem?

   Reported by candidates at Silver Lake (Technology, Media and Telecom, San Francisco, 2022). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

9. 032A fund invests twenty million dollars for thirty percent with a 2x participating preference. The company sells for sixty million. Who gets what?Term sheetsHardtechnicalGrowth equityLate-stage VC

   Say this

   The fund takes $46m and the common holders share $14m. The 2x preference pays $40m off the top, then participation gives the fund its 30 percent of the remaining $20m, which is another $6m. So a 2.3x for the fund, and the people who own 70 percent of the equity take under a quarter of the proceeds.

   Then walk it

   1. Step one, the preference: 2 times $20m is $40m, paid before common sees anything. Exit is $60m, so there is $20m left.
   2. Step two, participation: because it participates, the fund also takes its equity share of the residual. Thirty percent of $20m is $6m.
   3. So the fund takes $46m on a $20m investment, a 2.3x. Common — founders and employees — splits $14m, which on a $60m exit is 23 percent of the proceeds for people who own 70 percent of the equity.
   4. Now the check the interviewer wants: would the fund ever convert instead? Converting gives 30 percent of $60m, which is $18m. Far worse than $46m, so no. The preference dominates all the way up to the point where 30 percent of the exit exceeds $40m plus participation, which never happens with uncapped participation.
   5. That is the real insight to state: uncapped participating preferred means the investor always prefers the preference route, so the structure never converts and the common is permanently subordinated. This is why participation caps exist — typically at 2x or 3x of invested capital, after which the investor must convert.
   6. And the behavioural consequence, which is why founders fight this term: at a $60m exit the founding team gets very little, so they would rather roll the dice on a bigger outcome. Heavy structure creates exactly the misalignment that kills reasonable M&A.

   Where candidates lose it

   Fumbling the arithmetic under pressure, and forgetting to check the conversion alternative. Do it in two clean steps out loud — preference first, then participation on the residual — and always state the convert-versus-preference comparison, because that is the part that shows you understand the option rather than the formula.

   Expect next

   • At what exit value would the fund prefer to convert?
   • How would a 3x participation cap change the answer?
   • What does this structure do to the founders' incentive to sell?
10. 037A founder has raised four million dollars of SAFEs at caps of eight, twelve and twenty million, and now raises a twenty-five million dollar post-money Series A at eighty million. What happens?Term sheetsHardsuperdayEarly-stage VCSeed funds

    Say this

    All three tranches convert at their caps, which sit far below the round price, so they buy a much larger share than the founder expects. Roughly: the SAFEs take about 36 percent of the company before the round, the Series A takes 31 percent, and after conversion and a pool top-up the founders are left around a third rather than the sixty percent they assumed.

    Then walk it

    1. Work each tranche at its cap. Say $1.5m at an $8m cap, $1.5m at $12m, $1m at $20m. Treating each cap as a post-money valuation, that is roughly 18.75 percent, 12.5 percent and 5 percent of the pre-round company.
    2. That sums to about 36 percent of the company from $4m of money — before the Series A has put in a rupee. That number is the shock, and it is the point of the question.
    3. Then the Series A: $25m at $80m post-money is 31.25 percent, which dilutes everyone else by about 31 percent. So the SAFE holders land near 25 percent post-round and the founders plus pool share the remaining 44 percent.
    4. Take a 12 percent pool top-up out of the pre-money and the founders are down to roughly a third. A founder tracking only the headline caps would have assumed well over half. This is the standard SAFE-stacking accident.
    5. Note who bears the conversion dilution: with post-money SAFEs, the SAFE holders' percentages are struck after all SAFEs convert, so the cost of the cheap paper lands on the founders rather than being shared with the incoming Series A. Pre-money SAFEs shared it.
    6. Two second-order mechanics that matter in practice. If a most-favoured-nation clause sits in any of the SAFEs, that holder may take the best terms in the stack, making the $20m-cap holder convert at $8m. And the option pool top-up usually comes out of the pre-money too, which compounds it.
    7. What I would actually do as the incoming lead: build the full conversion waterfall before agreeing a price, quote my ownership on a fully converted, fully diluted basis including the new pool, and if the founders are left too thin, restructure — either more pool, a founder top-up grant, or renegotiating caps with the SAFE holders who all want the round to happen.

    Where candidates lose it

    Quoting your ownership off the headline post-money without converting the SAFEs first. Your 31 percent is not 31 percent once $4m of cheap paper lands. Every real term sheet is priced on a fully converted, fully diluted basis, and getting this wrong in an interview is the clearest possible signal you have never seen a cap table.

    Expect next

    • What if one of those SAFEs has an MFN clause?
    • How would you fix a cap table where the founders are down to 25 percent at Series A?
    • Would you rather the company had done a priced seed instead?

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.