The anti-sell for Bloomberg Beta

Reasons to avoid working with us

The below gives prospective candidates for roles at Bloomberg Beta a window into all the reasons not to work with us. As part of our zealotry about transparency, we intend to set expectations accurately, and attract only people who are up for the warts-and-all experience to join our team.

The team at Bloomberg Beta have all contributed to this document over several years. (And any current member of the team is welcome to comment privately or otherwise. We’ll continue evolving this document.)

For many candidates, venture capital can sound exciting — and it’s a privilege to get to do this work. We want candidates to understand the (sometimes harsh) realities of doing this work at Bloomberg Beta.

Painful things about working with Roy:

• Partial communication — he’ll often share half a thought and expect you to fill in the rest.
• Emotional ups and downs — he cares a lot about the work, and therefore gets attached to doing an exceptional job. This creates a high-pressure, fast-moving environment.
• Listening skills — it often seems like he isn’t listening, even if he is; and other times he’s just not listening. So you might have to shake him to get him to hear you.
• Interrupts constantly — Roy is a chronic interrupter. He’s aware of it.
• Changes his mind — from week to week, his views change. Sometimes it’s in response to new information, sometimes… not. You’ll need to push back if you want to avoid being whipsawed.
• Quick to question — often this comes across as criticism. Roy wants to get to the root of the question quickly. People on the team can often minimize this reaction by setting context at the beginning of a conversation and being explicit about where you would like Roy’s input.
• Reaches for the first person — he will ask you to do something even though it might make more sense for someone else to do it. You’ll be responsible for load balancing with other members of the team, vs. doing something yourself just because Roy happened to request it from you.
• Tone — sometimes his tone comes across as short. Again this is Roy trying to move things forward quickly. You’ll have to learn to take it with a grain of salt.
• Finished products — sometimes you may be unclear whether “done is better than perfect” or perfect is necessary. You’ll have to ask questions to understand how to move a project forward. This may come with a lot of incremental edits / feedback from Roy. He can be extremely particular about certain details (e.g., consistency of grammar in writing to founders).
• Personal development — beyond the regular twice a year conversations in a normal performance review, you won’t get regular scheduled career chats without requesting them. Roy is open to it — you just have to set them up.
• Philosophical framework — while you don’t have to agree with Roy’s philosophy, and are welcome to challenge it, sometimes Roy will ask you to apply his approach in your work (e.g., about why he might be unwilling to take certain meetings).

Painful things about Bloomberg Beta:

• Autonomy comes with ambiguity and pressure — you’ll have plenty of freedom in how you spend your time, at the price of less direction than you’d expect and always having too much to do. If you’re used to working in a big team, you might be lonely. You’ll spend a lot of time focusing on supporting Roy and collaborating asynchronously with the team.
• Responsibility for issues without sole control — e.g., you’ll draft an email invite, Roy and others will completely re-write your work, and you’re still responsible for any errors when it finally goes out. The buck may stop with you, but others will play with it first.
• Have to push yourself into conversations — rarely will someone stop and ask what you think, even though they want your views. We expect everyone to assert themselves.
• Logistics, logistics, logistics — we often spend time figuring out all the details, particularly when supporting founders. This may include office visits, swag, listmaking, hiring (a lot of LinkedIn searching!).
• Big company pros and cons — as magic as you may find the Bloomberg office views and global reach, it’s still a large organization with all that comes with that. Bloomberg also has policies by which Beta abides (e.g., use of the Bloomberg Terminal, regular trainings, compliance requirements like personal stock trading restrictions, wearing name badges, submitting details to security for every office guest, etc.).

Painful things about venture capital in general:

• Frequent gear shifts — the work is a strange mix of frenetic (too many things happening quickly all the time) and lonely (often times the team is out of the office, or in the office but in meetings, though there are plenty of other friends of the fund around who share our office) — testing both inner calm and inner motivation.
• Unglamorous work — a lot of the value is in rote work like getting invite lists right, or re-formatting a slide for a presentation; it’s much less about “discussing the future of technology” or giving founders advice (in fact, we’re somewhat allergic to advice) than most candidates expect. Yes, we go to nice dinners, conferences, and have expense accounts, but that is <10% of the work. While we have assistants for scheduling, every member of the fund does grunt work. This might include keeping lists up to date, managing vendor details, etc. The least-levered tasks are done by those whose time is least precious. If it’s “your time or a partner’s time,” then… it’ll be your time.
• Can be a dirty game — there are sharp elbows, dishonest people, and outsized egos. Other venture teams can be brash, elitist, and downright rude — you need thick skin to survive, and thicker skin to win. (Some of our team members — pleasant and kind — are anomalies!) It’s our job to cut through the noise, stay on task, and seek to drive change in the industry — in part by setting a new example. We always strive to take the high road and exhibit model behavior in all our dealings.