Dragonfly Partner Shares: How Young People Can Break Into the Crypto VC Scene Without Elite Credentials

Author: Haseeb

Translation: TechFlow

If I were a young person wanting to break into the VC industry, here's what I'd do:

Write.

Write short analyses on Twitter. Don't write generic market philosophy pieces—those will be seen as AI-generated garbage or secondhand research. Unless you're exceptionally talented (which you probably aren't), no one will read them.

Do original research, focused on a specific company or niche segment. If you want to write about robotics, that's still too broad.

Narrow it down further—humanoid robots, medical robots, military robots, etc. Go extremely granular, so granular that most people won't care. If you can find it through a Google search, it's not granular enough.

You can't easily figure out how to do "original research." This isn't something you can accomplish sitting in a university library.

You have to talk to employees at these companies, journalists covering them, subscribe to paid industry-specific research/newsletters, and follow every employee/anon account gossiping on Twitter. Piece together a picture that people reading TechCrunch will never see.

Then write about the sector and its leading and emerging startups, tagging or DM'ing every mainstream institutional investor who covers your space (you can find them because they've invested in a company in your sector).

If they show interest, proactively schedule coffee chats with everyone you can. Someone will always say yes.

Do this enough times and you'll build a reputation. Eventually, a VC firm will offer you a job. No need for business school, no need for an impressive angel portfolio—nothing.

"Getting good deal flow" is great, of course, but most people simply can't do it. If you're already embedded in Stanford's undergraduate network, you might not even need advice on breaking into VC. But the strategy above—anyone can do it in principle. It just requires extraordinary execution and the willingness to do a junior VC's job without being asked.

(While doing this, the best option is to work at a company within the sector you're pursuing. But depending on your background, this isn't always feasible. The good news is, VC doesn't require any specific background. There are many oddballs in VC—including myself.)

I promise you, everyone wants to hire someone who can do the above. But very few candidates possess this level of execution.

VC isn't a "standardized" career. Hiring is ad hoc, firms are usually small and don't scale, and there's no standard path. If you're willing to be an "oddball," that works in your favor. What VCs share is passion for startups and understanding emerging industries. If you demonstrate that you already have this, the door to VC will open for you.