Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

discovering my passion for venture

17 May 2023 · 1 min

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In this personal monologue, the speaker recounts how they fell in love with venture capital. Their journey began with binge‑watching the TV series Silicon Valley, which sparked curiosity. They then entered a venture‑capital competition at San Diego State University, later becoming a coach for the event. The competition directly led to an internship at a San Diego growth‑equity firm. During their senior year, feeling socially isolated, they turned to Twitter, where they posted about woodworking projects with their dad, shared venture‑related memes and threads, and engaged heavily—spending seven or more hours daily responding to tweets, DMing, and writing. Twitter filled a social and intellectual gap, cementing their passion for venture capital.

Chapters

I discovered my passion for venture through binge-watching Silicon Valley, competing in a venture capital competition that I now coach at SDSU, and working at a growth equity firm in San Diego. And that internship I landed through doing the VC competition. But my girlfriends from college at the time were all living together in Pacific Beach, and I was craving social time. So I ended up turning to Twitter, and I was posting about different things I was reading about, woodworking with my dad, and my love and interest for venture through memes and threads. So Twitter for me filled a gaping hole in my senior year of college, and that summer it became my world. I must have spent like 7+ hours a day responding to tweets, laughing at memes, DMing people, and writing.