Since starting USV in 2004 (we actually started USV in the summer of 2003, but it took Brad and I over a year to raise our first fund), we have had a two year analyst position. The idea is we bring in a young talented person early on in their career, they learn a lot about the startup world from inside a VC firm, and we get leverage from having a person who can do a lot of the support work that the partners need to do our jobs. The job gets stale after a few years and since we don’t have a career path at USV, they leave after a couple years.
It has worked out well. Our first analyst Charlie O’Donnell, has gone on to do a number of things and now runs his own seed fund, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. Our second analyst, Andrew Parker, is now a partner at Spark Capital in Boston. Our third analyst, Eric Friedman, is now Director of Sales and Revenue Operations at our portfolio company Foursquare. Christina Cacioppo came next and she has been working on her own startup since leaving USV eighteen months ago. Here’s her online profile if you want to see what she’s been up to. Zander and Brian are still with us, but will be moving on this year as their two year stints are coming to an end. These two young men are super talented and if you are interested in hiring the very best into your company, you should reach out to them. Tweeting at them should work (I linked to their twitters above).
I like to think of this two year stint as the USV MBA. We don’t issue diplomas but we pay salaries instead of charging tuition. You learn similar things but the cases are real time, not after the fact. And I would assert with a fair amount of pride that a USV Analyst stint on your resume is worth as much as a top tier MBA, maybe more. And the alumni network, while small, is fantastic.
All of that is to provide the setup to the news that we are hiring for our next two year analyst. Zander blogged about it last week and it’s been highlighted at the top of usv.com for the past week, so many of you probably already know about this. But there is only one more week to apply as applications are due by April 1st at 11:59pm eastern time. So I thought I’d make sure everyone who reads AVC knows about this position.
The application is pretty simple. You give us some links to your online presence, you answer two questions over a video interview app called Ziggeo (which is my partner Albert’s wife Susan’s startup), and you hit submit. We take it from there. We look at the links and the videos and select a bunch of people for in person interviews. We hope to have the position filled by the end of April/early May.
If you want to apply, go read Zander’s post and the detailed instructions are at the end of the post. If you are like me and like to skip the instructions and just get on with it, the application page on usv.com is here.
