Internship journal – My first two weeks in IDG Ventures Vietnam

It has been 2 weeks since I officially signed the offer letter to be an intern in IDG Ventures Vietnam. I have been very busy for the last 2 weeks, therefore, I could not spare enough time doing other things like learning Financial Statement Analysis or Accounting as I have planned before Tet Holiday.

About my internship in IDG Ventures Vietnam, there is only one word that is able to describe my feeling “Awesome”. Although it is an unpaid intern, I believe that it is worth expending my whole days at work to learn new things.

First of all, I would like to tell you about how I get into IDG Ventures. In the final week of December 2012, I happened to see the job vacancy posted on LinkedIn group with reference to the post of Research Analyst Intern for IDG Ventures Vietnam. I sent my curriculum vitae immediately to the email of HR Department and just 2 days later; I received an email from HR assistant that I would have an interview on December 24. I had to go under a painful recruitment process, which includes 2 interviews, 1 writing assignment and 1 research assignment for more than 1 month. I burst into tears sometimes but I quickly came over the most terrible moments to try harder and harder. The final result is that I was offered a 3-month internship position in IDG Ventures Vietnam. The lesson that I draw from this experience is the resilience to deal with any arising challenge. Life may push me hard but I will push it back 10 times harder.

The second part of the story is that I officially joined IDG Ventures Vietnam as a research analyst intern. It is really an eye-opening experience for me when I am first immersed with investment, with venture capital. I learnt how venture capital runs its own business, investment philosophy, limited partners, general partners, learning about the large private equity and venture capital funds all over the world. I have the opportunity to do my favorite things, which is research analyst. Every day I am assigned with loads of tasks and I found it interesting to bury myself in work. My mentors are also very helpful and inspiring somehow when I know more about how they have developed their careers. It is so weird to know how I am excited to go to work every day even when I have to pay transportation cost on my own. It is such an amazing feeling when I receive complimentary on my work from my mentor and enjoy the training about exit strategy for the whole investment team. After spending my first 2 weeks at IDG Ventures, I realized that I love investment. And investment, to a certain extent, is like B2B sales in the sense that you have to raise fund from limited partners and you have to sell your companies to private equity or other large corporations. I am not scared much more about the uncertainty that I have to face 3 months later but endeavor to get the most from my internship period here.

Thirdly, I realized that my communication skill is still not too good. I am used to being confident about my ability to network among student community; however, it is a totally different experience when I have to communicate with people at different ages and different background from me. At IDG Ventures, not everyone shares a same age with me, not everyone comes from Foreign Trade University and not everyone comes from a business school. I still find it difficult to handle conversations with other seniors in my company and I hope that I will fix it soon.