What Does a Venture Capitalist Do All Day?

Kevin Roose interviewed Marc Andreessen, a partner at Andreesseen Horowitz who is famous for being bald, saying crazy shit on Twitter, and other tech things. The interview is full of gems (Andreessen kind of says he supports a universal basic income?! He concedes that, “yeah, the meritocracy works if you know the right people.”)

Anyway, what do people who are the gatekeepers of SO MUCH MONEY really do all day? I have often wondered this, too, so I’m glad Kevin Roose asked him, especially because the answer is take naps:

This is the first time in my life I’ve had an office with a door, and the reason for that was that this was the first time in my life I’ve had a couch in my office. So, I did have a very nice afternoon nap yesterday, as a matter of fact.
What does a venture capitalist do all day? I’m sure you sit in dozens of pitch meetings a week, but what would I learn if I followed you around for 24 hours?

In a sense, we only really make about 15 decisions a year at the firm.

That’s a nice life.

Yeah. Our output at the end of the day is investment return. We’re a fiduciary for investors. They trust us with a lot of money on behalf of other people. The purpose of the firm is to make investments and then return profit from those investments. And we make about 15 primary investments a year. So, those are the big decisions. At the end of the day, what are we most responsible for? It’s making those 15 decisions and the consequences of those decisions. A lot of my time is working with founders and CEOs of the companies in the portfolio. I’m basically permanently on call to all of them.

Those are not people I would want to be on call to, but I guess if one of them would get me a 18x return on my investment, I’d read their blogs. And go to their board meetings. And tweet. Then take a nap. Good life.

Photo via Flickr

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