回答者：纪源资本（GGV Capital）风险投资人克里斯特尔·黄，来自Quora。

作为招聘初级职位的风险投资人，我认为，为别人免费工作不一定会伤害自己，但也确实无法让你脱颖而出，原因如下：

不是一种彰显独特性的推销方式：事实上，主动提供免费工作，是一种常规的做法，因为主动提供帮助的障碍较小。许多人能够，而且确实主动提出免费工作，因为这样做不需要你具备任何经验或其他什么价值。

负面信号：你在发出一种负面的信号，即你不是特别重视自身的专业知识、经验或网络，因为你只是表示自己愿意在较为不利的条件下工作（而且不提及与风投工作更为相关的才能）。对于大多数资历较深风险投资人来说，一位分析人员的薪水并不是大数字，他们可能更担心聘用错误人选有可能带来的生产力及培训时间损失。头衔也是如此：头衔很廉价，可以随便授予，硅谷庞大的非一般“合伙人”队伍便可以证明这一点。有鉴于此，表示自己愿意接受任何职位并不会给他们带来太多帮助。

初级风险投资人必须找到创造价值的方法，而非仅仅接受指引：风险投资人进入这个行业，不是来管理员工的，而一般合伙人通常忙于履行其董事职责，分析交易业务前景，他们不会投入过多时间向初级专业人员详尽介绍不同的工作流程。当你说愿意免费工作，却不介绍你能够采取何种创新方式来帮助公司赚取更多的真金白银时，那就会给他们（至少对笔者来说如此）造成一种印象：你需要通过这份工作的培训来获得经验。设计任务，清晰地传达任务，并提供后续反馈，需要花费时间。如果他们认为在你为公司带来成效之前，公司需要预先投入大量的培训时间，他们会对录用你持警惕态度。我面试过的一些优秀员工首次参加会议时，会就如何让公司做得更好提出许多可行的观点和方案，其主题可能涉及交易机会、营销方式、投资组合管理或报告等多方面。他们给人留下的印象是，第一天上班时，他们会在自我指导和内部激励因素的驱动下，自行推动项目的发展，而不需要我提供过多的建议，这是很有吸引力的。

当然，有些公司从实习生中招聘员工，特别是MBA暑期实习生。如果你能进入这个招聘流程，那么这是一条可靠且稳妥的入行路径。但是，即使在这种情况下，你也不会因提出免费工作而获得全职工作机会。

笔者将介绍几种让你脱颖而出的建议，特别适合来自非传统背景的人员（例如，你原来不是一位小有成就的创始人、产品经理或投资银行家）。有人会建议你先在初创公司获得工作经验，这种建议不错。但是，由于也存在通过自身努力直接成为风险投资人的可能性，笔者将重点回答你的问题，同时假设今天的重点是成为风险投资人：

1. 使用特定领域的研究平台展示市场知识

因为你不具备传统的投资背景，你需要证明，你有能力独立学习足够的知识，以便确定有兴趣的初创公司，形成论点，并针对特定投资开展有说服力的辩论。我建议制作简单的演示文稿（或详细的电子邮件），分类简要介绍医疗保健行业的投资建议（可以以医疗器械、EMR软件、医院管理软件即服务、健身追踪器和健康保险的购买为例）。涉及的话题包括市场规模、竞争形势、哪些初创公司获得了风险投资、由谁进行了投资、商业模式及其他任何不易获得的有用信息。

当我要求一位被面试者调查一家公司时，他给这家公司的20位客户打电话，要求与副总裁级别的产品最终买家沟通，以便获得直接反馈和合同规模的预估值。他非常勇敢，当然我很喜欢这一点；除此之外，我希望他在既定时间内完成调查。一旦你制定了简要的演示文稿，你可以把它发送给任何风险投资人，使之成为未经邀请的邮件或后续沟通的一部分，以表明你能立即提供哪种研究和观点。这样做可以展示你掌握的知识和你的主动性，你的文件也很容易被其他合伙人看到。这会帮你在公司中获得“传播式影响力”。

2. 今天就开始寻找机会

你不需要为了获得工作机会而“尝试着帮助寻找”交易，因为寻找仅仅意味着通过有辨识力的筛选，引入可能的投资。现在，你可以通过会面、会议或大学网络，了解一些有趣的医疗保健初创公司，主动把它们介绍给你正在沟通的风险投资人。除非你没有进行筛选，否则所有风险投资人都会喜欢这种做法。此外，你可以在随后的数月中，不断地向他们介绍有吸引力的机会，为他们占领制高点，特别是当你能够以有说服力的方式证明这些公司值得考虑时。即使这家公司没有立即聘用你，当他们开始招聘时，你将成为他们熟悉的候选人。

3. 今天就风投公司的投资组合创造价值

与第2点相同，你可以制定战略，为那些获得风投支持，并且具备招聘、营销和业务开发机会的公司提供帮助。作为一位年轻人，你的老同学现在可能是软件工程师、设计师、营销人员或销售人员。可以重新联系他们；如果他们有兴趣，主动把他们介绍给风险投资人投资组合中的初创公司，使他们成为潜在的求职者。招聘是风险投资人应该提供的主要附加价值，但是找时间为公司寻找和审查求职者困难重重。有人帮我们兑现承诺，先于我们的投资组合公司做好判断，这是一件大事。

此外，你可以建立第1点中提到的简要平台，以便比较投资组合公司的竞争对手，为某个特定的投资组合公司提出有关产品特征或增长战略的建议。即使你的建议未能得以实施，风险投资人可能会重视你提出的一些有意义的观点。在最佳情况下，他们会把你的建议转交投资组合公司，并对你使他们能从小事上帮助该公司解决困难表示感谢。

4. 今天就培养自身欠缺的技能

你提到你没有任何实际金融经验。说实话，在投资银行或私募股权层面，特别是初期阶段，风险投资人几乎不需要专家级别的金融模式。你可以从教材、Vault等求职宝典、在线企业融资培训课程、甚至公共金融模型模板中学到很多东西。就拿风投金融领域的知识来说，如果你能轻松谈论基本收入乘数估值法和条款清单中的主要条目，你已经把很多初级求职者远远甩在身后了。（财富中文网）

翻译：乔树静/汪皓

审校：任文科

Answer by Crystal Huang, VC at GGV Capital, on Quora.

Speaking as a VC who interviews for our own entry-level roles, I don’t think your current pitch will necessarily hurt you, but it won’t really help you stand out either for these reasons:

Not a unique pitch: It’s actually the opposite of nonconventional to offer to work for free because the bar for making this offer is low. Many people can and do offer to work hard for free because you don’t need experience or any other value to be able to offer this.

Adverse signaling: You’re sending the negative signal that you don’t particularly value your own expertise, experience or network since you’re only pitching your willingness to work under relatively unfavorable terms (and are not mentioning other qualities that would be far more pertinent to a VC job). For most VCs that are not on their first fund, an analyst salary is not a huge amount of money, and they are likely much more concerned about the potential lost productivity/invested training hours from hiring the wrong person as opposed to paying the right person. It’s the same idea for title: A title is cheap and easy to give out, as evidenced by the large number of non-GP “partners” in the Valley, so saying you’re willing to take any title doesn’t do them a particularly big favor.

Junior VCs must find ways to create value, not just take direction: VCs don’t enter the industry to manage employees, and the GPs are usually too busy with their board memberships and deal pipelines to spend much time actually specifying discrete workflows for their junior professionals. When you say that you’re willing to work for free, but don’t describe any creative, differentiated ways in which you can actually help the firm make more money, you’re really creating the impression (at least for me) that it would require work to manage and train you. It takes time to devise tasks, communicate them clearly and then provide feedback afterward, and if they believe that you will require a large upfront time investment before you start becoming productive, then they’ll be wary of hiring you. Some of the best people I’ve interviewed have shown up at our initial meeting equipped with actionable ideas and plans for how the firm can do better, whether that’s on the deal sourcing, marketing, portfolio management or reporting fronts. These people give off the impression that on day one they would have the self-direction and internal motivation to drive their own projects through without needing much input from me, and that’s an attractive proposition.

Some firms do hire from their intern pool, especially if you’re an MBA summer associate, so if you can get into those recruiting processes, it’s a solid and well-traveled path into the industry. However, even in those cases, you won’t win the full-time job offer on the basis of the pitch you’re making in your question.

Below, I’ve written out some ideas for standing out, especially if you come from a non-traditional background (i.e. you were not previously a semi-successful founder, product manager or investment banker). Some people would advise you to earn work experience at a startup first, which is fine advice, but since it’s also possible to go straight to a VC with some effort on your part, I’m going to focus on answering your question, which I assume focuses on getting into VC today:

1. Demonstrate market knowledge with research decks around specific focus areas

Since you do not have a traditional background for investing, you’ll need to demonstrate that you can learn enough on your own to identify interesting startups, develop a thesis and argue convincingly for certain investments. I would recommend putting together some simple presentations (or detailed emails) that outline investment recommendations in a few categories within healthcare (examples could be medical devices, EMR software, hospital administration SaaS, fitness trackers and health insurance shopping). Topics to cover include market size, competitive landscape, what startups have been VC-invested and by whom, business model and any other useful data that are not easily obtainable.

One of my prior interviewees, when I asked him to look into a company for me, actually called 20 of their customers and asked to speak to the VP-level end buyer of the product to get direct feedback as well as estimates of contract sizes. That was pretty gutsy — outside of what I would have expected him to do on that timeframe — and of course I loved it. Once you have these mini-presentations, you can send them to any VC as a part of a cold email or follow-up conversation to convey what type of research and insight you’ll be able to deliver immediately. This demonstrates both knowledge and pro-activeness, and the document will be super easy to forward onto other partners, which helps you gain “virality” in an organization.

2. Start sourcing today

You don’t need to get a job offer to get “a shot at helping source” deals, since sourcing just means bringing in possible investments with a discerning filter. You can get to know a few interesting healthcare startups now via meet-ups, conferences or your college network, and offer to introduce them to VCs you’re talking to. No VC will be annoyed by this unless you’re not filtering the companies at all, and you can stay top of mind for them over the course of several months by consistently pinging them with attractive opportunities, especially if you are able to make a persuasive argument for why those companies are worth a look. Even if the firm is not hiring immediately, you’ll be a familiar name to them if they start looking.

3. Benefit their portfolio today

In a similar vein to point number 2, you can start thinking up strategies for helping the VC’s portfolio companies, potentially with hiring, marketing and business development opportunities. As a young person, you probably have a network of ex-classmates, at least some of whom are now software engineers, designers, marketers or salespeople. Reconnect with these people and if they are interested, offer to introduce them to startups in the VC’s portfolio as possible hires. Hiring is a key value-add that VCs are expected to deliver, and yet it’s very challenging to find the time to actually source and vet candidates for our companies. Having someone help us fulfill that promise and look good in front of our portfolio companies is a big deal.

You can also generate the mini-decks mentioned in part 1 to compare portfolio company competitors, recommend product features or suggest growth strategies for a given portfolio company. Even if none of your recommendations gets implemented, the VC will likely appreciate that you surfaced some interesting ideas. Best case scenario, they’ll send along the suggestions to the portfolio company and feel grateful to you that they were able to help that company out in some small way.

4. Build the skills you’re lacking today

You mention that you don’t have any real finance experience. To be honest, VC rarely requires hardcore financial modeling at the level of investment banking or private equity, especially at the early stages. There is a lot you can learn from textbooks, career guides such as Vault, online corporate finance training classes and even public financial modeling templates. If you can speak comfortably about basic revenue multiples-based valuation and key items that appear in a term sheet, you’ll already be ahead vs. many entry-level applicants in showing an understanding of VC finance.