Venture Capital internship experience. The human side of finance.

When I told my friends I was busy during the holiday doing a venture capital internship, almost all had the same question. "What is venture capital?" Few of us realize that venture capital is what makes many of your giants companies come to life. Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, just to name a few. Venture capital is what makes the startup seed grow. How someone's dream becomes a reality.

I was really fortunate that my dad had a friend he met in the army many years ago that started a small venture capital firm. Leveraging my connections, I offered to intern for free as an analyst during my long school holiday between o level and polytechnic starting, after my work at Fairprice. I only had basic knowledge on finance from self studying in secondary school.

I did the basics of due diligence, data collection, being a placeholder in meetings and doing presentations from collected data, just like many finance jobs. Something about venture capital that stood out to me was the human side of things. Venture capital isn't about betting on startups to get rich, its making someone's dream a reality. Making their life goals they've sacrificed so much for achievable. A startup isn't a lottery ticket for the venture capitalist, it's a dream in the form of endless slides, data and spreadsheets.

Venture capital stood for what I believed in, empowering others. Helping other's achieve what they want. Seeing the joy startup founders feel after many nights sleeping on office floors with their idea pushed into reality.