The VC Fellowship

🚀 The Countdown Begins: VC Fellowship's 3rd Demo Day! We are thrilled to announce that the 3rd Demo Day of The VC Fellowship is just around the corner—a culmination of ideas, grit, and innovative problem-solving by our exceptional cohort. 🌟 This time, we’re raising the bar with a stellar panel of industry leaders, and we’re excited to introduce one of our distinguished panelists: 🎙️ Anupam Pandey 💼 Investment & Acceleration Lead, Anthill Ventures Anupam brings unparalleled insights into venture building and acceleration. Her expertise will undoubtedly provide our participants with actionable feedback and open new doors for future opportunities. 📅 Save the Date Stay tuned for more updates as we unveil the agenda, pitches, and the rest of the powerhouse panel lineup. Let’s celebrate innovation, collaboration, and the future of venture capital! 🚀

Who Gets Paid First When a Startup Sells? 💸 Ever heard of liquidation preferences? It’s a term that defines who gets what during a startup exit—and it can make or break the payout for founders and employees. Here’s the breakdown: 1. Preferred vs. Common Shareholders - Preferred Shareholders: VCs and big investors—they get paid first. - Common Shareholders: Founders and employees—they get what’s left. Preferred shareholders often negotiate liquidation preferences to ensure their money is protected. 2. Types of Liquidation Preferences - 1x Liquidation Preference: The investor gets back their initial investment first. - Participating Preference: Investors get their investment back and a share of the remaining proceeds. - Non-Participating Preference: They take either their investment back or their share, whichever is higher. Example: The $100M Exit: If a VC invested $20M - 1x Non-Participating: The VC gets $20M; founders get $80M. - 1x Participating: The VC takes $20M plus 25% of the rest—totaling $40M. Founders get $60M. Liquidation preferences are essential for investors but can heavily impact founders. Would you accept participating preferences for VC funding, knowing it cuts your exit share? Let us know your thoughts below! We cover everything about termsheet clauses in our fellowship. Accepting applications for Cohort 4&5, apply now: https://lnkd.in/gEpRQ3ym

Why do investors sometimes get more than founders in a big exit? 💸 Liquidation preferences. These two words decide who gets paid first and how much when a company is sold. It’s an investor’s safety net—but it can significantly impact founders. A Quick Example: Imagine a startup raises $10M from a VC at a $50M valuation. 1. With a 1x liquidation preference when Exit at $40M: The VC takes $10M first. Only $30M is left for founders and employees. 2. Now, what if the VC had a 2x preference? They’d take $20M, leaving just $20M for the rest. Why It Matters: For VCs, it’s protection against risk. For founders, it can dilute their rewards—even in successful exits. Liquidation preferences are like insurance—but make sure you’re not signing away the whole house. We cover such termsheet clauses in depth in our fellowship, accepting applications for Cohort 4 & 5. Apply now: https://lnkd.in/gEpRQ3ym

Imagine you’ve built a startup. After months of sleepless nights, you raise your first round at a $10M valuation. The future looks bright. But a year later, the market shifts, and your growth slows. You need more cash to survive. The new investor values your startup at $5M—half your original valuation. This is where the anti-dilution clause comes in. Anti-dilution clauses are terms in investment agreements that protect early investors when your company raises money at a lower valuation (a down round). It ensures their ownership percentage doesn’t dilute unfairly. How does it work? There are two main types: 1. Full Ratchet: Early investors get their shares recalculated as if they invested at the new, lower valuation. Example: If they bought shares at $10/share and the new round is at $5/share, they now “own” double the shares. Painful for founders. 2. Weighted Average: A more balanced approach. It considers the number of new shares issued and the new price. Existing investors still get protection, but the impact on founders is less severe. Let’s take an example: Original Round: Raised $2M at a $10M valuation. - Early investors own 20% of your company. New Round: Raise $2M at a $5M valuation. - Without anti-dilution, early investors’ ownership would drop significantly. - With full ratchet, their ownership remains closer to the original. - With weighted average, they get partial protection. For founders, anti-dilution clauses mean giving up more of your company when things go south. It’s like being penalized for external factors, even if you’ve been executing well. But for investors, it’s a risk-mitigation tool—a way to ensure their faith (and money) in your vision doesn’t vanish overnight. Anti-dilution clauses reflect the high-stakes poker game of venture capital. Investors want protection; founders want flexibility. Striking the right balance in your term sheet can mean the difference between retaining control or feeling like a passenger in your own company. So, the next time you negotiate a term sheet, remember this: Clauses like anti-dilution are less about trust and more about preparing for the worst. And in startups, the worst happens more often than we’d like to admit! P.s. we cover all these clauses in detail in our 3 month long fellowship. Accepting applications for Cohort 4 & 5, apply now: https://lnkd.in/gq4rKvXk

We shared a snippet from Ashna’s session on How startup benefit from corporate, on high demand here’s another snippet from session on “Corporate Innovation” Please feel free to DM us if you want any specific piece of information to be covered, we’ll try our best to cover it on LinkedIn. On that note, get access to 40+ sessions led by seasoned VCs, exclusively curated content library and access to flagship events by becoming a part of the fellowship. Apply for our upcoming batch: https://lnkd.in/gq4rKvXk

Super excited to share another milestone Sandhya Sridhar our fellow from Cohort 2 has joined Incubate Fund Aisa’s Legal Team as a first member in India. We are just getting started, many more updates on your way soon! P.s. accepting applications for cohort 4 & 5. Apply now: https://lnkd.in/gq4rKvXk #placementupdate #careerupdate

Super excited to share another milestone Sandhya Sridhar our fellow from Cohort 2 has joined Incubate Fund Aisa’s Legal Team as a first member in India. We are just getting started, many more updates on your way soon! P.s. accepting applications for cohort 4 & 5. Apply now: https://lnkd.in/gq4rKvXk #placementupdate #careerupdate

Have you ever thought of How corporate support startups? Or how does a startup benefit from a small startup? While addressing the vc fellows, Ashna talked about it in detail, here’s a brief snippet from the session. We cover a lot of similar insights and interesting takes in our fellowship. Apply for our upcoming batch: https://lnkd.in/gq4rKvXk

A Managing Partner of a seend fund recently shared an incident with us where he posted an Analyst job and got a lot of people dming him about the role but nobody got shortlisted because all of them were expecting CTC in the range of 25-30 LPA. We feel its’s our responsibility to break this myth: It’s almost like a dream to build a career in VC for all the folks following the ecosystem closely. But they all had some unrealistic world view. For fresh graduates, the starting salaries in VC often don’t match the hype. Many entry-level analysts earn in the range of ₹8–12 LPA. Decent? Sure. But not the six-figure dreams many associate with the industry. Why is that? Because: 1. VC roles, especially at the analyst level, are considered learning-driven rather than compensation-driven. 2. Firms expect analysts to see the bigger picture: deal sourcing, due diligence, and networking are investments in your own growth. 3. Unlike investment banking, VC doesn’t operate on high transaction volume or immediate monetary returns. The payoff comes much later. 4. What Freshers Can Gain Beyond Salary: Exposure to startup ecosystems and top-tier founders. 5. The chance to work on groundbreaking deals that shape industries. 6. Unparalleled learning opportunities, preparing them for future roles in VC, startups, or even launching their own ventures. If you’re joining VC, step in with the mindset of long-term value creation, not short-term financial gains. With that said, we help folks get their expectations right, train them to think like a VC, build hard/sort skills that are essential for the ecosystem. Apply for our upcoming batch: https://lnkd.in/gq4rKvXk #thevcfellowship #breakingthemyth

Pramoth joined us as a fellow in our Cohort 2, when he joined he was working at Oracle as a software engineer. By the end of the cohort Pramoth got into Speciale Invest as an Investment Analyst - this was one of the quickest transition we witnessed for anyone. Here’s what Pramoth has to say about his experience about the cohort. Transition into VC, applications open for Cohort 4 & 5. Apply now: https://lnkd.in/gq4rKvXk #thevcfellowship