Venture capital is a very niche industry with very limited roles, and it is pretty hard to break into.

In my 5th semester at IIM Ahmedabad, most folks go on exchange and course curriculum is quite light. I had almost 2 months free at hand and I thought it might make sense to get some experience on the VC side.

I did a cold reach out to the Guild team for doing a short internship and they got me on board. After a good 6 weeks, I had a discussion with my (now) boss about how I was thinking of my future. He mentioned that it might make sense to get some experience at a top tier consulting firm before joining a VC firm. I mentioned to him that the BSchool experience was a good substitute for consulting, and I had always been excited about VC.

As I went back to campus and was looking at investment banking and consulting opportunities, Guild made me an offer to join. I had a problem of plenty - and of limited data points to decide. Given that I had no work experience, I would be taking a leap of faith with virtually any decision I took. Venture capital seemed exciting, working in small teams always attracted me and I wanted to be close to entrepreneurs.

I took up the Guild offer and opted out of the placement process. Given that Guild didn’t recruit from campus, I technically did not get placed from IIM Ahmedabad. Most of my friends were quite surprised, because I was the only one in my entire batch doing something like this.

It was a very non linear decision, but non linear decisions have the greatest risk and greatest reward.