Why Operations Experience is Useful in a Venture Capital Career

In Chapter 4 of 11 in his 2010 interview with Capture Your Flag host Erik Michielsen, East African venture capitalist and conservation investor Josep Oriol shares why operations experience is useful in providing value in a venture capital career. Operations experience helps Oriol structure and manage growth and planning as well as manage the personal relationships that come with fast pace and high stress that comes with early stage companies.

Why Operations Experience is Useful in a Venture Capital Career Eric Michielsen: Why is operational experience so important to have when going into a venture capital career? Josep Oriol: Having a good idea is much more of a commodity than most entrepreneurs or one of the entrepreneurs think, a lot of people have good ideas and we assume 10% of the population is very smart and very creative. We have over 600 million people with good ideas. It’s important to be able implement and it’s important to be able to lead a team through high gross stage that usually stresses people’s skills and people’s morals and people’s ability to cope with this stressful situation and even their family life. So being able to half the ability to structure the operations in a way that’s efficient and can cope with growth and can plan ahead increases the demand for the product and service that are unexpected is fundamental because the worse thing you can do as a growing company is over promise and under deliver. And you start disappointing your customers and six months in the line you might be bankrupt.