A cold email to Matan Hazanov led to drinks, a meeting, and a paid VC internship. Hazanov has a policy of responding seriously to outreach. The speaker credits persistence and genuine networking for breaking into venture capital.
After university, I really wanted to work in venture capital. I think I must have reached out to every single firm on the planet. And so, like, the advice everyone gave me was like, oh, you got to go to San Francisco. You got to meet somebody there. That's probably where you'll get to it. And I kind of always lean into networking. I think I somehow, through a friend of a friend, heard of Matan and shot out a cold email or something like that kind of came in the first day. And I actually very clearly remember this moment, which was we sat down. I should have been nervous, and I don't think I was for some reason. And you should have.
Definitely.
I should have been nervous. It was. You know. But I remember just we sat down in an office, and you're like, can I get you a drink? And I said, sure, I'll have a scotch. And I think you actually came out and came back with a bottle of something, and we both had a drink. And probably at that point, I was like, yeah, yeah.
We had a file in one of the cabinets called the Scotch file, and there was a bottle of scotch there for special occasions and people that were too nervous.
So it all worked out.
So, yeah, that's really good. Was I the only person to respond to your cold emails?
Yeah, no, I was doing a lot of networking.
Yeah. It's interesting because I had a policy for a very long time, which is I respond to everybody that reaches out in a sincere way, and I always agree to meet up with someone for advice. And sometimes it gets very difficult because the more you progress in your career and you have a fancy title, people want your time. So I remember that's the kind of policy I had with you. I'm like, okay, this random guy's reaching out to me. Okay, let me give him 20 minutes, half an hour, whatever it was. So we gave you a paid internship. Unpaid internship.
Yeah, it was paid.
Paid internship. Which, my goodness, back then, for. In venture capital was probably, like, the only paid internship in the country.
Get the jackpot.
It was exciting.
I was thrilled.
