My Internship at Auxano Capital

It is often very scary when being an amateur you are looking out to take your first step into your career progression. And your first experience can have a huge impact on all your future decisions.

I had been fortunate enough to get an amazing opportunity to work with a Venture Capital Firm and its extremely supportive and encouraging team in my second year of college. My time in the firm had been of tremendous learning. 

My Experience includes:

 1. Pitch Deck Review- This was undoubtedly the most interesting part of my internship. I worked on the pitch decks in industries like gaming, live e-commerce, healthtech, content, and agritech. 

The overall analysis consisted of the following: 

• Business Model: Reviewed the pitch deck to understand what the company does, problem it solves and value addition that it provides through its products or services 
• Competitive Analysis: Performed competitive mapping of the companies against similar other company in the market highlighting various similarities and differentiating points 
• Relevance of the problem statement 
• Management: Experience and strength of the management team. 
• Industry potential 

Learnings- This gave me a strong sense of entire process and what all things needs to be considered while taking an investment decision. It made me realize that it is not always black and white but grey most of the times and so taking such decisions require lot of work, in-depth analysis, detailed research and a judgement call. My mentor helped me lay a strong foundation in the same. Going through different business models was another interesting part of the work that helped me broaden my overall outlook. 

2. Blogs- This gave an opportunity to research on different concepts alien to me and develop an understanding of the same. I worked on a number of interesting categories.  

Learnings: This really helped me in developing that x-factor in the writing. Like my mentor told me several times that the article needs to provide some insights that are not available anywhere else, I tried to inculcate that in my writing and I believe that change will stay with me forever. I think I increased my knowledge to a large extent by researching and writing about various different topics 

3. Data Presentation: By the tasks, I came to know about different business models, sectors that can be invested in that pose a good opportunity. It helped me improve my overall presentation skills. 

After two months, I found myself more organized and presentable. All the work that I did at 

the firm and the way we approached different things helped me become more organized. I can now structure my thoughts better and understand the overall flow, which I believe was lacking earlier. This helps me a lot in managing my commitments. I also believe collating all the information on portfolio companies in the form of videos and one-pagers helped me become more presentable when it comes to expressing thoughts. 

Also, time management! This was one of the biggest learnings I had. When I look back, I really feel good about being able to manage work with college and other committees. I did receive a lot of help from my mentor in organizing and targeting each day’s work. But the skill of doing so will stay with me. 

All-in-all, it was genuinely a terrific experience for me filled with learnings- I developed a fair understanding of how the venture capital ecosystem works, what are the processes involved, and I learnt some of the essential skills as a person that will stay with me forever. 

With this, my interest in this space has quadrupled! And my first experience will definitely have a positive impact on all my future decisions.