Masamba Senghore

Masamba graduated from BSc Economics in 2020 and is now an Investment Associate at a venture capital fund.

Tell us about your career path, from graduation to where you are now

I spent time at university meeting investors in the Venture Capital industry, through a few initiatives on campus.

After I finished my final exams, I made a list of everyone I had met and started emailing them in search of internship opportunities. The second person I emailed came back and offered a few weeks of experience at his fund, called Episode 1, and I ended up staying for almost half a year. 

Whilst there, I was lucky enough to meet one of the investors who worked at my current fund on a group call targeted at aspiring VCs, ran by a collective called 10x10. I had luckily listened to a podcast episode that he was on earlier in the week, without knowing he was going to be on the call. So I peppered him with questions and followed up on email afterwards. And when he was hiring for an investment analyst, he gave me a heads up and I threw my hat in the ring. 

I was successful in the process and joined MMC Ventures 2.5 years ago. 

What are your core duties and what skills are important to your role?

As an Associate on the Investment team, my core duties include: sourcing new companies to invest in; meeting founders; market research; deal execution (i.e. due diligence on companies); supporting our portfolio companies at a board level alongside our Partners. 

How did your time at UCL prepare you for the workplace?

There were various streams of support at UCL that helped me prepare for entering the workplace. 

I was also lucky enough to spend time studying Entrepreneurship and Management for a summer at one of UCL’s partner universities in China, Zhejiang University. This experience gave me a taste for business building in one of China’s most entrepreneurial cities, and home to giants like Alibaba, Geely and more. 

I caught the bug there and was keen to spend time in London’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Instrumental in this was the UCL Entrepreneurs Society. I joined the group in my second year, upon my return from Zhejiang. And at the time we were running our own ”venture capital fund” – raising from various sponsors to then provide equity-free funding to students building interesting companies. 

We would invite professional investors to judge these companies at our demo days, which provided plenty of interaction and opportunities to get to know people in the industry. Off the back of this, we had a training programme where we’d invite investors in to educate us on the different aspects of venture capital.

This opened the door to me getting involved in an actual Venture Capital fund run by students, called the Creator Fund. In my final year of studies, I joined a team of 11 student investors, tasked with backing the most exciting, student-led startups across the UKs top research-driven universities. This gave me further license to be curious, spend time with founders and get an end-to-end experience in running investment processes, from sourcing to due diligence and sitting on an investment committee.

Internships in other industries along the way also gave me some insight into what I enjoyed and what I didn’t. 

In terms of central resources, I made a lot of use of UCL Careers resources, from CV templates and feedback sessions, to the lunchtime careers talks, and the jobs board. The careers talks were particularly useful. I remember feeling very anxious throughout my final year about having a job lined up for when I graduated. And they were helpful in providing guidance on how to present myself, how to reach out to people, and highlighted the breadth of opportunities available to us. 

Were there any challenges in your job hunt? How did you overcome these?

I didn’t have a job lined up for when I graduated. I had managed to find an internship through reaching out to people, but it took a few months of looking and interviewing (and some stubbornness to stick to this idea of working in Venture Capital) to find something that I wanted to do and have success in the recruitment process. 

Top tips for current students:

1. Try many different things! I did internships across industries, from the Civil Service to Real Estate, and casting such a wide net at first really helped me refine later on. Let your curiosity lead you. 
2. Get involved on campus. There are so many fun and amazing things happening right on your doorstep in first year, throw yourself into life as a UCL student by engaging with activities and societies. Not just all the professional and career related things. Try sports, arts, find new hobbies. It’s all a part of enriching yourself, not just making you a better future employee. 
3. People want to help students, they have sympathy/empathy for them and want to pass on their knowledge. Use this as your license to ask a lot of questions and learn from people in industry.