Dear Platform Pal: Creating & Landing a Role in VC Platform

How Do I Convince a VC to Create a Platform Role and Hire Me for It?

👋 Hey, it’s Olivia, and welcome to the first edition of Dear Platform Pal!

So much of platform work is figuring it out as we go and building the function from scratch. That’s exactly why I started this segment, to answer the real questions platform leaders (and those looking to break in 🥳) are navigating every day.

If we haven’t met, I’m Partner & COO at Forum Ventures, where I’ve spent the last 6+ years building a platform function that actually moves the needle for our founders, LPs, and investors. I’ve learned a ton along the way (sometimes the hard way), and my goal is to share these learnings, so you don’t have to figure it all out alone.

If you have a question for the next edition of Dear Platform Pal, submit it here.

Alright, let’s get into it. 🚀

This Week’s Question:

“I’ve worked at several InsurTech startups, and have an intimate understanding of how to scale a company in this space.

There are smaller, niche VCs investing solely in InsurTech. There is one in particular that I personally think I’d be a great fit for in a platform role... if only they had one!

In your opinion, what are same major talking points to convince smaller VCs that a platform role—where someone can provide hands-on operational advice—could be beneficial to their portfolio companies?”

Dear InsurTech Operator:

I love this question!

Before you reach out, start with some self-reflection to get to the heart of why you want to make the move from operating into VC platform. On the operating side, you go deep with one organization. A VC platform role, especially one focused on hands-on portfolio support, allows you to work across many companies. But unless you’re truly embedded in portfolio companies for an extended period of time, it can be harder to drive impact than when you’re in-house at a startup.

It sounds like you already have a firm in mind, but if you didn’t, it would be helpful to think about the type of environment you want.

The support early-stage startups need is vastly different from later-stage ones. Just like a platform function looks very different depending on the firm’s investment pace—whether they’re writing 3-5 checks a year, 10-12, or 50+. The volume and velocity of deals directly impact your ability to go deep and work closely with each company.

Before developing your talking points or making your case, it’s important to understand how much operating capital the firm has. Lack of budget is one of the biggest reasons firms don’t grow (or start) their platform teams.

In the long run, VCs makes money through carried interest, but in the short term, they finance operations through management fees. You’ve probably heard of the “2 and 20” model—which means 2% of the fund annually goes toward operational expenses, while 20% of the total profits go back to the GPs.

Here’s why understanding this math matters:

If the firm you want to join just raised a $20M Fund I, their annual operating budget is $400k—and that has to cover salaries, health insurance, office space, software, and anything else they’re planning. Knowing this helps set realistic expectations about compensation and hiring capacity.

The good news is that if you’re able to build trust and demonstrate value, GPs will often find ways to get creative with potential talent.

Instead of pitching the role cold, I would try reaching out to one of the GPs via LinkedIn or email and offering some sort of one-off value for the portfolio. It could be a workshop or office hours related to your experience as an operator. Within that email I would hit on a few key things:

• What you like or admire about the firm

• Your unique experience within the industry

• An outline of your “give” and why it would be valuable for their portfolio

VCs hold the feedback of their portfolio companies in very high regard, so if you’re able to demonstrate value to the founders, it can unlock greater opportunities within the fund. At my firm, Forum Ventures, we ended up hiring one of our top-rated sales mentors as a full-time employee. And when I was looking to hire a Community Director one of the candidates that applied came with multiple recommendations from our portfolio companies—we ended up hiring her too!

For example, if you’ve spent the last 6 years as a technical recruiter for early-stage InsurTechs, maybe you could run a workshop on best-practices for hiring founding engineers, or offer 1:1 support to help structure technical hiring processes and review job descriptions.

Since you have an intimate understanding of how to scale an InsurTech company, you likely already know the most critical areas these startups need to focus on. Ideally your offering is positioned around one of these priorities to make it immediately relevant and valuable.

Once you deliver this initial support and start building rapport with the GPs, you’ll be in a much stronger position to bring up idea of platform. I would try to ease into the conversation organically, rather than making a direct ask.

Here’s a simple way to start:

Thanks so much for inviting me in for a session! I really enjoyed it and received some great feedback from [insert company names] on how impactful it was. It’s great to help unlock [insert your specialty] for founders—I know how critical this is for scaling toward Series A. I’d love to chat about what else you guys are doing on the post-investment side of things, as I’m hoping to do more of this work with founders over the next year.

This framing tees up the platform conversation well. Once you’re having a follow-up meeting, try to further understand their needs:

• What are the biggest priorities for the firm over the next 6-12 months?

• What kind of support do your founders ask for the most?

• How do you currently handle post-investment support?

• How are you thinking about growing the team? Have you thought about building out a platform function?

The answers to these questions should allow you to position yourself well for a potential role and support the firm and their founders across key areas. Be open to something non-traditional.

Not every firm is ready to hire a full-time lead, but that doesn’t mean there’s no opportunity. Some firms bring in EIRs —former founders or operators who work with the portfolio over a fixed period of time. Others have fractional platform roles, venture-partners, or contract-based advisory positions. Or maybe you could even build out your own portfolio career, working across a number of InsurTech VCs!

One thing to keep in mind, that’s especially important in early-stage, is that it takes many years before a VC firm actually generates realized returns for the LPs. This is measured as distribution to paid-in capital (DPI) and internal rate of return (IRR).

In the short term, firms rely on leading indicators to convince LPs to invest in future funds. The most common leading indicators are total-value to paid-in multiple (TVPI) (the current value of investments relative to capital invested) and early mark-ups on investments—meaning one of your portfolio companies raises a subsequent round of capital.

Ideally you can position your hands-on support as a driver of these leading indicators, making it easier for the GPs to raise their next fund. That could mean helping companies drive revenue, hire key talent, or navigate fundraising—anything that moves them toward the next milestone.

From my perspective, the key is to demonstrate value before making the ask, understand the early goal posts for a firm, and be flexible in how you position the opportunity! Good luck.

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