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Interview Prep > Motivation/behaviour questions VC > Flashcards

Motivation/behaviour questions VC Flashcards

1
Q

Walkthrough resume

A
  • Medicine: I enjoyed having the opportunity to test ideas out and take calculated intellectual risks. Interest in tech, big picture with thesis
  • Bioengineering: unrestricted in how you approach questions within the department, taught me the value of resilience/anti-fragility -> having to switch project during lockdown
  • Media: Varied core businesses within coverage, good post-degree, exposure to lots of economy. Seeing the business side of products already familiar with
  • Utilities: Deepened interest in environment/sustainability. Genuinely changed my outlook on the world. Not just about whether you should be moving in a direction, you just need to find people where they currently are.
  • Pharma: Long-view, confident forming view. Importance of doing the work
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2
Q

Why this fund

A
  • Align with the values, mission of the company. Example -> Utilities/Pharma
  • Clear investment strategy laid out. Do my best work when there is clear link to higher goal I am passionate about
  • Good fit in terms of my previous experience
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3
Q

Why VC

A
  • Interest in innovation
  • Rewarding seeing companies achieve goal with support
  • Exposure to briliant entrepreneur
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4
Q

Role at Synthesis

A

Develop Synthesis’ research and understanding of disruptive technologies and their impacts on the food sector, as well as the implications on relevant agricultural markets, informing Synthesis’ investment strategy.

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5
Q

Motivation

A
  • Working on stuff that I feel has an impact, e.g. report on therapeutic area or climate policy
  • Coming up with creative ideas to cut through data (e.g. Novo cost-effectiveness) - feeling that you have an edge on the market in terms of insights
  • Learning, being challenged
  • Completing difficult task seeing it towards the end (e.g. master’s project)
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6
Q

Responsibilities at a VC

A
  1. Investment Analysis: Conducting due diligence on potential investments, analyzing financials, market trends and competition, and making recommendations on investment opportunities.
  2. Portfolio Monitoring: Tracking the performance of portfolio companies, attending board meetings, and working closely with portfolio companies to help them achieve their goals.
  3. Deal Sourcing: Identifying potential investment opportunities, reaching out to entrepreneurs and founders, and building relationships with the start-up community.
  4. Financial Modeling: Building financial models to support investment decisions, including projections for revenue, expenses, and cash flow.
  5. Market Research: Keeping up-to-date with industry trends and developments, conducting research on specific sectors and geographies, and synthesizing information for internal reports.
  6. Reporting and Communication: Communicating with internal stakeholders, preparing presentations and reports, and helping to manage relationships with limited partners.
  7. Administrative Tasks: Supporting the investment team with various administrative tasks, such as scheduling meetings, taking notes, and preparing documents.
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7
Q

Proudest achievements

A
  • Master’s project
  • ICER note
  • UMG initiation
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8
Q

Group dynamic behaviour

A
  • Quite keen to dissect ideas collaboratively
  • Try to leverage skills/expertise of everyone. I tend to be quite flexible in terms of the type of analysis/area I enjoy, advantage in collaborating with others
  • Initially was not natural to proactively seek out help from teammembers this has been something i have focused on quite a lot
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9
Q

Strengths

A
  • Ability to apply deep scientific understanding to assess the commercial potential of opportunities
  • Flexibility
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10
Q

Weaknesses

A
  • Leadership experience (more during pharma)
  • Attention to detail: If you tend to overlook small details, something actively improved, by double-checking your work or taking more time to review details - after some time.
  • Work-life balance
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11
Q

Investment books

A
  • Irrational exuberance
  • Boom and bust (interesting seeing how complex narrative underlies financial markets, with various stakeholders having different interests and goals when participating)
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12
Q

One word

A

Skeptical (do not always accept things at face value without sufficient evidence)

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13
Q

Long-term career

A

Portfolio manager - at the heart of investment decisions, wide view of market, key node in internal/external debates around company, industry and wider market

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14
Q

Quant accomplishments

A
  • Cost-effectiveness
  • Master’s project
  • CD Projekt work for downgrade
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15
Q

Track record

A
  • Global power model
  • Key role in UMG & Adevinta launch. Helping to understand the economics. Finding alternative datasets.Thought leadership on
  • Coding
  • During internship found alternative data (LYFT)
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16
Q

Being split

A
  • Balancing expectations, with scarce time
  • More focus on organisation, hitting ground running, orientation, prep before moving etc
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17
Q

Underdog

A
  • I had just started with utilities did not know anything about the power industry and
  • was told to revamp and update our global power model (which encompasses around 30 countries)
  • Three things I focused on finding good data sets and cleaning them up, rapidly learning VBA to automate the boring parts and in off time/homework read essential elements of each technology and country policy
  • Successfully upgraded the model, integrated new countries, so successful we pushed on with doing a US model
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18
Q

Synthesis Investment Philosophy

A

Synthesis Capital’s investment strategy targets investments in the food sector, and specifically in companies that are developing solutions to transform the global food system, with a focus on transitioning away from livestock production and towards alternative proteins as a more sustainable and efficient method of feeding the growing global population.

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19
Q

Synthesis Focus

A

Synthesis’s investment focus is primarily on seed to series C stage food technology companies that directly or indirectly replace animal products across the supply chain.

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20
Q

Synthesis Key Vertical 1

A

Plant-based: Conversion of crops to biomimics of animal products. Focusing on TASTE, TEXTURE, and NUTRITION

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21
Q

Q’s for interviewer 1

A

What are your expectations, for first year

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22
Q

Q’s for interviewer 2

A

What’s the most important thing to accomplish in the first 90 days

23
Q

Q’s for interviewer 3

A

Who will I work most closely with

24
Q

Q’s for interviewer 4

A

What skills are most valuable for an analyst

25
Q

Q’s for interviewer 5

A

Can you talk about the firm’s approach to value-add and working with portfolio companies?

26
Q

Q’s for interviewer 6

A

How does the firm approach risk and what are the key considerations when making investment decisions?

27
Q

Synthesis Vertical 2

A

Single Cell: Ingredients and whole product manufactured by fermentation of micro-organism

28
Q

Synthesis Vertical 3

A

Recombinant: Individual ingredients through precision fermentation or molecular farming

29
Q

Synthesis Vertical 4

A

Cultivated: Creating food product identical to animal counterpart through cell culture and tissue engineering

30
Q

Redefine Meat

A

Redefine Meat has built a proprietary 3D-printing platform to create “whole-cut” structured meat products that are unrivalled in their ability to emulate the taste, texture and juiciness of meat. With most plant-based companies reliant on subpar, decade-old existing processing methods such as extrusion, Redefine’s novel platform presents a credible, scalable solution to create products that meat-eaters will love. The company has launched commercially across Israel and Europe and is rapidly growing its distribution through foodservice and retail.

31
Q

Perfect Day

A

Perfect Day is the first mover and leader in creating real dairy without the cow. Harnessing fermentation and recombinant protein technology for novel applications, Perfect Day turns microbes into dairy protein factories. Dairy ingredients from their production platform have already been commercialised in several products in the US and Asia, both through its own B2C subsidiary and in partnership with multinationals such as Nestle and Mars, in applications all the way from milk to ice-cream and cream cheese.

32
Q

Culture Biosciences

A

Culture Biosciences has built a platform which enables synthetic biology companies to launch new products sooner and with less capital. The company is developing a biomanufacturing-as-a-service platform with proprietary hardware and software tools, that runs, monitors and analyses fermentation testing and scale-up. Culture has the potential to become a key enabler of the alternative protein industry and the biomanufacturing sector more broadly.

33
Q

Arkeon Biotech

A

Arkeon is developing a unique gas fermentation technology that uses archaea (a domain of single-cell organisms) to convert carbon dioxide and hydrogen into all twenty amino acids, the building blocks of protein. The company’s differentiated technological approach has the potential to be highly impactful from climate / carbon-fixing perspective, and to be versatile in terms of end-product application.

34
Q

UPSIDE FOODS

A

UPSIDE Foods is the leading cultivated meat player globally – producing real meat without the animal. Following the demonstration of their pilot facility (EPIC) in Emeryville, California, UPSIDE are now in the process of building the world’s first full commercial scale facility for cultivated meat. UPSIDE also recently became the first company in the world to receive a “No Questions” letter from the FDA for its cultivated chicken product, ahead of its much-anticipated launch in the US.

35
Q

Mozza Foods

A

Mozza is harnessing a molecular farming platform to produce real dairy proteins in soybeans. Their dairy proteins have the potential to be cost competitive and indistinguishable from their conventional animal-derived counterparts. Mozza’s initial product focus is dairy cheese, which is an area where plant-based alternatives have so far underwhelmed. Specifically, Mozza is focused on producing casein proteins, which are critical as caseins provide the primary functional component of cheese.

36
Q

Equinom

A

Equinom is developing the next generation of non-GMO plant-protein ingredients from legumes, starting with pea. Built on a decade of R&D, the company’s platform combines computational biology and predictive analytics to naturally breed proprietary varieties of legumes. Equinom’s yellow pea is both functionally superior as well as cheaper and less resource-intensive to process, easing key pain points faced by the plant-based sector today.

37
Q

Artificial Ice Takeaways

A
  • Key takeaways
    • Cost parity is crucial to adoption, and the easiest way to do this is with scale.
    • Innovation does not stand still, with alternative proteins we are seeing continued technological innovations to mimic different aspects of meat eating experience
    • Scale-out and scale-up was vital to lowering costs. Proof-of-concept is now complete, so it is not about just building large facilities but investing in enabling technologies
38
Q

Predictions for meat industry

A
  1. Bubble bursts - opportunity in downturn
    2.Cultivated Meat to reach American consumers
  2. Government initiatives will drive progress globally
  3. Hybrid foods are here to stay
  4. Increased focus on fermentation efficiency
  5. Data is king
39
Q

Tip for walk me through questions

A

When an interviewer asks you to “walk me through your resume,” they are looking for a comprehensive overview of your education, work experience, and accomplishments. This question is an opportunity for you to highlight your most relevant skills and experiences, and to explain how they make you a strong candidate for the position you are interviewing for.

40
Q

Resume Points - Medicine

A
  • Critical thinking skills.
  • Thesis on non-invasive brain-computer interfaces, this was really exploring the input (e.g. brain/sensor side) instead of the output side, which is much less constrained. Thinking what’s possible etc.
    • The choice between NI vs invasive was in-part because of my view
  • With my research project, saw first hand how disruptive biotechnological advances could be. In the lab, had a plethora of different hypotheses we could test, thanks to very recent new techniques.
41
Q

Resume Points - Bioeng.

A
  • Took as many elective courses as possible, was fascinating all the different approaches that could be taken to solve problems
    • E.g. in biomimetics looking at how insights from gecko biomimicry to improve adhesives
  • Here the techniques you use are experimental within themselves, quite liked the approach of applying tools of engineering to biological systems (design, model, fabricate, and control living systems). I found the process of applying knowledge and new techniques (e.g. computing) to problems extremely rewarding.
  • Wanted to use more rigorous tech to approach scientific questions. Original project disrupted by COVID closures, but quickly came up with alternative suggestion which was outside of scope of what supervisors had attempted. Very experimental process where I had to write all the code for the model and learn a new programming language and new computational concepts to optimise the model. Result is one of the fastest neuromuscular computational model, continuation of research part funded by Meta
42
Q

Resume Points - Internship/Special projects

A
  • Internship
    • Precision fermentation
  • Special projects, rapidly learn about industries I was not familiar with. Often had to manage the progress of the project.
    • For the IVD project contributed to thought leadership using my previous knowledge from my degree. Talking to industry experts
    • THG got to dissect a consumer business, saw importance of brand, different M&A strategies
    • Allegro
43
Q

Resume Points - Media

A
    • CD Projekt helped move towards downgrade by decomposing earnings margin, sales growth and P/E ratio contributions to performance
    • Advertising sector found European agencies had grown less than industry growth, but had reversed post-covid after restructuring (especially at WPP), this lead to us upgrading WPP to market perform
    • Adevinta and UMG launches
      • UMG interesting, a lot of market power with intermediary buyer, but limited on consumer
44
Q

Resume Points - Utilities

A
  • Industry models for US and Global
  • Generally running the franchise with model updates, previews, client requests etc.
  • Had to focus on keeping up to date with all new events, for example cutting through the noise on Russia-Ukraine crisis and looking at company exposure
45
Q

Resume Points - Pharma

A
  • Very event driven, the volume of news was on a completely different level
  • Applying scientific background to quickly understand company products
  • Lots of long view stuff, very nascent field and talking about what works in it
    • Obesity pipeline
    • Cancer vaccines
46
Q

Why are you interested in VC

A
  • Develop Synthesis’ research and understanding of disruptive technologies and their impacts on the food sector, as well as the implications on relevant agricultural markets, informing Synthesis’ investment strategy.
  • Exposure to cutting-edge technology and innovative startups: Working in a VC firm gives you the opportunity to see and evaluate new ideas and technologies before they become mainstream.
  • Chance to help shape the future: By investing in startups and working with entrepreneurs, VCs have the opportunity to help shape the future and have a real impact on the world.
  • Opportunity to learn: Working in a VC firm is a unique opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship, business, and finance from experienced professionals.
47
Q

How background relates to VC

A
  • Media
    • Logic of investing in artists similar to venture capital
  • IVD
    • Looking at long-term structural trends in an industry
    • Here was heavily involved, looking at a cross-section of the industry, analysing technological trends
  • Utilities
    • Sustainability very long-term view
    • Re-developed the Global Power Model, and designed and created the US Power Model, which both ran to 2050.
    • Had to integrate technological, economic, policy, social factors and the interplay between these factors to inform our forecasts.
    • Exposure to sustainability, concept of planetary boundaries
  • Pharma
    • Needed to assess the potential of new products, before they had come to market
    • With this very much a marketing size game.
      • How many patients
      • What are they paying atm
      • Competitive factors
      • Separating out different risks, biological vs chemical/molecular vs commercial
    • Industry thrives on innovation, important to have an understanding of the technology how it can be applied and how it is applied for companies, its impacts
48
Q

Difficult Decision

A
  • Got to 2nd year realised I had enjoyed medical science but not so much a career in medicine. I like thinking about problems, being exposed to events and trends in the outside world where people are interacting. Do not get as much of this in medicine.
  • Wanted to take a fresh approach, thinking in the framework of with a blank slate what career would I want. Leveraged resources to help assess my options, including career advisors and through networking (e.g. reaching out to school alumni network). Learnt about the different career options in finance. Priorities were
    • Where you are rewards for critical thinking, thought leadership
    • Can apply analytical tools
    • Relatively unconstrained in where that information comes from (not an island)
  • Going in having thought about what I want gave confidence to tutors and family that it was the best decision.
49
Q

High 5

A
  1. Philomath
    1. Philomaths love learning. They explore many interests, follow new paths and acquire as much knowledge as possible. They don’t enjoy the company of so-called ‘know-it-alls’, people with little curiosity and no desire to explore new ideas.
  2. Self-believer
    1. Self-Believers are independent, self-sufficient people who inspire others with their confidence and certainty. They cannot stand when others tell them what to do or try to control their actions.
  3. Winner
    1. Winners turn any mundane task into a game or challenge because the feeling of competition is essential for them. They feel lost in environments that have no defined measure of success.
  4. Analyst
    1. Analysts get energized when searching for simplicity and clarity within a large amount of data. They become frustrated when asked to follow their heart rather than proven facts and logic.
  5. Problem solver
    1. Problem Solvers love uncovering flaws, diagnosing problems and coming up with solutions. It is difficult for them to simply sweep unresolved issues under the rug and keep going as if everything is fine.
50
Q

Plant-based Meat Market Size

A

$7bn

51
Q

Why other vertical better than plant-based

A

Innovation is on the manufacturing side, whereas with plant-based more of a recipe/process innovation

52
Q

Interesting challenge because…

A

Not all based on 1st order logic, consumer preferences, positioning all important, as well as price.

53
Q

Market size of meat

A

$1.6tn

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