Top Highlights

• The founders can't and shouldn't outsource their involvement in a financing to their lawyers.
• For now, we'll consider VCs as humans and talk about the people. The most senior person in the firm is usually called a managing director (MD) or a general partner (GP).
• These VCs make the final investment decisions and sit on the boards of directors of the companies they invest in.
• Principals, or directors, are usually next in line. These are junior deal partners—they are working their way up the ladder to managing director. Principals usually have some deal responsibility, but they almost always require support from a managing director to move a deal through the VC firm. So, while the principal has some power, he probably ca...
• Associates are typically not deal partners. Instead, they work directly for one or more deal partners, usually a managing director. Associates do a wide variety of things, including scouting for new deals, helping with due diligence on existing deals, and writing up endless internal memos about prospective investments. They are also likely to be th...