Venture Capital is an activity that consists in financing innovative and new companies. This investment targets start-ups and companies with high development potential. Most of the time, the financial investment is coupled with technical and strategic support for the company. The investment fund, which invests its own funds, becomes a shareholder of the company and thus has a share of control over it. This solution is the most common for the financing of start-ups and new projects that do not have a track record that guarantees their success with banks. Venture capital is then the best and often the only solution to find financing for the development of your idea and/or project.
Venture capital investment funds aim to invest in the best projects in order to make a profit from their investment. This activity involves a great deal of uncertainty, since the sums advanced are in the form of equity capital and the success and therefore the repayment of the financing cannot be guaranteed. Venture Capital, which acts in place of banks that are unable to do so, is therefore required to conduct extensive research and analysis on the start-ups whose development it intends to finance. To do this, they call on the Venture Capital Analyst.
The role of the Venture Capital Analyst is to determine in which companies the money should be invested. To support his analysis, the venture capital analyst will look for information wherever he can find it, because part of his decision lies in his expertise and part in his intuition.
This exciting job has been changing since the emergence of start-ups and high tech digital technologies, which has opened up many opportunities. If it was previously very finance-oriented, it now includes an increasing amount of intuition and projection capacity and thus requires a profile that is very much linked to entrepreneurship and innovation.
He/she must also have a rich knowledge of a promising sector such as :
The positions of VC analysts are rare and important, recruiters offer their preference to prestigious degrees (Grandes écoles de commerce and MBA) but also and increasingly to profiles and personality.
To target Venture Capital, a Master's degree in Finance, Entrepreneurship or Strategy is a must. In order to maximize your chances of reaching the venture of your dreams, the choice of a double master's degree in entrepreneurship and finance is a real plus, both in France and abroad.
These degrees are available at the bac +5 level:
These schools are always preferred by recruiters because they offer generalist training in management and knowledge of the company and business during the first part of the Grande Ecole program before specializing future graduates in Masters degrees dedicated to the three areas that interest them: finance, start-ups (through entrepreneurship) and consulting.
Business schools also offer students the chance to gain internship experience in a prestigious company in order to acquire a first significant experience in private equity, transaction services, auditing, or fundraising and M&A.
Paris School of Business is typically a school that will allow you to access this profile: it offers all the specialized Masters in the field, and puts entrepreneurship at the heart of its programs by relying on its own incubator.
Discover PSB's Graduate Programs.
The average salary for a venture capital analyst in France is €46,800 gross per year + bonuses ranging from 30 to 100%, which gives an annual salary of around €100K. As his career progresses, the analyst can become an Associate and Senior Associate by obtaining the corresponding income increases. He/she may eventually become a Corporate Venture Capitalist, or Director.
