Interview with a 7 year old

Last weekend, my daughter, 7 years old, had to prepare an interview with one of her parents about their job.  She chose me, lucky her - I am a venture capitalist. Explaining what a venture capitalist does to most people is not an easy task to start with...imagine what it's like for a 7 years old. 

It would have been much easier with my husband who is in the retail business. You buy things and you sell them and make money in between. So for the first time, I really tried to explain in simple terms what we do. Here is what her transcript looked like: 

"My mother is a venture capitalist. She meets people that have ideas for software, like Word and games and Barbie.com. She then chooses the one she thinks are good and gives them money (I don’t like the give part, but invest seems to be a very strange concept for her). Then those people work on their idea, mostly writing on the computer. When they sell their idea and receive money, they give it to my mother. That’s it." 

Sounds very simple, doesn’t it? Of course, we did not get into details like ownership, Limited Partnerships, value creation, liquidity constraints and patents etc. But she got the basis of it. It is all about great ideas and great people.

Comments

[Melissa Burns]

Hi Sophie,

Thanks for sharing your story. Isn't it funny how our kids digest what we tell them?

I recently had the opportunity to present at my 7-year-old son's career day. I own a public relations agency and have to admit my own parents have no idea what I do for a living, so I knew it would be a challenge to try and get a bunch of 1st graders to grasp the concept of PR.

It ended up being a wonderful experience (both for me and my son). After I presented what I thought was an overly-simplified description of PR I had the kids participate with me in a mock brainstorm on how we might launch and promotoe their ficticious lemonade stand. The kids were amazingly creative, and came up with all kinds of great ideas. I walked away thinking they could all describe, without a doubt, what PR was.

That was until I got the stack of "thank you letters" sent to me from the students. During my talk I shared with the students that SONY was a client of mine, and for some reason that was the single fact that many of them retained. So I receieved several thank you notes that said things like, "I think it is really cool that you work for Sony making Playstations. Maybe you can bring one home from work someday," and "That's neat that you build PS2s at your job." Oh well!

The ultimate reward though was when my son came home to tell me that two of the "cool" kids in his class told him that they wanted to have a job just like mine when they grow up. He was so proud.

Thanks again for your cute story!

[Jenny Y]

What a coincidence, my daughter (6) did a mother's day card at her school last week and she had to write down what her mom does for a job. Guess what she wrote? ... "she makes money". Pretty accurate! I'm not sure how she came to this conclusinon as I've never really explained what what a VC does but I guess it really shows that the kids pick up much more than we think.

[Fearful Entrepreneur]

Well to me it looks like your daughter did get the basis of what a VC does,

"When they sell their idea and receive money, they give it to my mother. That’s it."