How I Got and Lost a VC Job Offer in 72 Hours

This is not an article about VCs. It's an article about rookie mistakes.

1. Employers expect the first pushback. Afterwards it becomes annoying. Yes companies are cheap and they suck.

2. Not enough leverage.

3. I've tried going over the recruiter before. That just annoys the recruiter. It depends on the company.

4. Can you imagine sending a 4th message to a woman on OkCupid or Match.com. "We are a good fit. You just need to see the bigger picture."

Going to link this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km2Hd_xgo9Q

The important quote is they should like you more each time.

He said it himself - it took years of prep work to get that job offer. Why did it take so long? Because there is a strong desire to get into the industry, lots of potential candidates, and he didn't seem to have any connections that would get him an easy foot in the door. Plus zero experience in that role other than internships.

In his situation, I would have just taken the offer and cranked for a year, then demanded more money. And if they refused, it should be far easier to find a new job with actual experience. A year of being frugal isn't that bad for entry into your dream career.

Doesn't sound like a terrible outcome to me.

If you really can't live for whatever amount of money is on offer, there's not much choice but to pass. The negotiation didn't take long either.

It sounds like the company wanted to pick up someone, but they didn't think that it was terribly important to get this particular candidate. And they knew there were a lot of MBAs wanting this kind of role, so they decided to low ball it and someone would come. This is a perennial problem for people coming out of education: there's a lot of people just like you, with the same skills and ambitions.

The problem as a newcomer is you are asked to take a paycut to "prove yourself". By paycut I mean that you can probably come close to the productivity of someone slightly more senior quite fast, but there's the market working against you: there's plenty of people with no experience other than a degree, and some of those are going to turn out to be numpties. So the hiring firm can pay less because there's supply, and they want to pay less, because having the wrong person can be worse than having nobody.

In a negotiation like this where you know you're being lowballed, I think it's better to just state your case (including preferred figures) and then walk rather than go back and forth for days on end. If the market rate that people like you and with your level of experience are generally being hired at is higher than the offer, why not walk away and get one of those offers instead?

Entitlement, for lack of a better word, can be good. When you don't get your basic needs or rights fulfilled or when you have done a good job, but are undervalued, and say "show me the money". In this case though, I think he got stuck in an academic mindset were success is almost guaranteed based on past achievements and some effort.

All of his lesson seem to be focused on them not understanding his proposal and that he would have gotten what he wanted if he had just presented it differently. In reality they probably just had some standard compensation package that most people accepted so they could get in and pay their dues.

Yes, low initial compensation in certain industries can be bad. But it's mostly bad for the people who can't take the opportunity.

The core mistake here is that the applicant thought that he had far more leverage than he had. From the companies point of view they are taking on an entry level employee and they feel he should be grateful for the opportunity they presented. They want an entry level person to be low maintenance.

Instead, by the end of the week, they had the impression he was a major pain in the backside. They are thinking to themselves, this man is going to be high maintenance and constantly thinking about himself and not the team or the long term. I would have rescinded his offer as well and considered myself lucky to had dodged a bullet.

The experience gained from a junior position is more important than the money. But Omar signaled strongly that to him, the money was more important.

Given that mismatch of priorities, this was the right outcome for both sides.

I appreciate that the OP fesses up to his lesson in humility. Getting into VC is very hard. There are thousands of newly minted MBAs who want to get into the field. If you have an offer that is 15-25% below market, take it. There are thousands who will go cheaper. Then if you perform, you are coming from a position of strength.

If he had other offers for more money, it's not clear to me why he didn't seem to leverage that more. And if he did and they didn't budge, that would seem a pretty strong signal that they had reached their max and he should just decide whether that was enough. I didn't take a bschool negotiating class though.

He already has a job at a VC firm. If new offer is lower, keep on looking. If the offer is higher, then take the job and grind for a minute until a better offer comes along. It's not like he wasn't doing that before. For someone who is VP at a VC firm, he sounds like he's whining for no apparent reason.

The negotiation process worked successfully. OP didn't want to work for less than $X, and he isn't!

Ruled by emotions. Great VC in the making.