The Analyst Program

At Bessemer, we believe venture capital thrives in an apprenticeship model. For almost twenty years, we’ve been fortunate enough to bring on three to four bright, ambitious, and aspiring investors each year to join the program as a foray into their careers.

While there are skills and lessons you can learn in school, many elements of venture capital, such as developing investment judgment, sourcing emerging new startups, and refining roadmaps for the future, are uniquely learned on the job by engaging with entrepreneurs and experienced investors.

Analysts typically join our selective, two-year program directly from their undergraduate studies or soon after. The program is based in our New York office, but analysts will collaborate on projects with Bessemer partners across the globe and work with emerging founders and exceptional operators.

Our partners and the broader investing team provide hands-on training to gain the foundational skills for your investing career, mentorship on the art of the industry, and invaluable experience. Our analysts are critical, valuable members of the team; they participate in our weekly partnership meetings and make a tremendous impact on the firm.

About the program

Analysts are oftentimes the first touchpoint startup founders have with Bessemer. They play a role that requires an enterprising spirit, empathy, and a deep understanding of what makes a business work under the hood.

A day in the life of an analyst

Your daily schedule and responsibilities include sourcing new companies, deep research in the diligence, roadmap and dealmaking process, and working alongside Bessemer investors to help our portfolio companies flourish. The skills and experience you gain in this program are foundational to your career. Whether you pursue additional opportunities at Bessemer or elsewhere, your analyst experience will be formative and open endless possibilities.

  • Interact with 100+ CEOs in an effort to identify seed-stage to Series C startups disrupting a wide range of industries: from consumer internet and e-commerce, to mobile and cloud computing, to business software, healthcare and cleantech.
  • Work closely with the firm’s partners to conduct due diligence on the investment opportunities you discover and help to develop new investment roadmaps.
  • Develop an eye for identifying the most exciting sectors and business opportunities in the innovation economy, build a deep understanding of business models, and grown an extensive network of entrepreneur and VC colleagues.

Where are they now?

When you join Bessemer’s Analyst Program you become part a close-knit community of investors, experts, and operators who are on the cutting edge of technology and are shaping category-defining companies.

Former analysts have gone on to take senior roles at Bessemer, join later-stage firms in venture and private equity, start their own funds, and join or found startups.

How to apply

We will kick off our recruiting process in March 2024 for Bessemer’s 2025 Summer Analyst Program, intended for members of the Undergraduate Class of 2026. To learn more, read our Summer Analyst position description, attend one of our upcoming info sessions, and check back here for more updates!

 Penn/Wharton (In Person)

  • Monday, February 26, 2024 (6:30 pm – 7:30 pm EST) 
  • Wharton School – Steinberg-Dietrich Hall, Room 213, 3620 Locust Walk, Philadelphia (RSVP here)
  • Speakers: Andrew Hedin and Alexa Grabelle

MIT (In Person)

  • Tuesday, February 27th 2024 (5:30 pm – 6:30 pm EST) 
  • Stata Center, 32 Vassar St, Cambridge, MA 02139 (RSVP here)
  • Speakers: Kent Bennett, Bhavik Nagda, and Alexa Grabelle

 Info Session (Midwest Schools) 

  • Tuesday, February 27th, 2024 (5:00 PM EST) 
  • Zoom (RSVP here)
  • Speakers: Charles Birnbaum, Jason Scheller, John Drake and Libbie Frost

 Info Session (General) 

  • Wednesday, February 28th, 2024 (4:30 pm – 6:00 pm EST) 
  • Zoom (RSVP here)
  • Speakers: Jeremy Levine, Alexa Grabelle, Madeline Shue, and John Drake

Info Session (California Schools)

  • Thursday February 29, 2024 (5:00 PM PST)
  • Zoom (RSVP here)
  • Speakers: Grace Ma, Jason Scheller, and John Drake

Morehouse + Spelman (Virtual) 

  • Tuesday, March 26, 2024 (5:30 pm – 6:30 pm EST)
  • Zoom (Register here
  • Speakers: Elliott Robinson and Alexa Grabelle

Our application is live!

application button for BVP's summer analyst program

Application Review Process: Our application process operates on a rolling basis, which means we will be reviewing and considering applications as they are submitted. The application window will close once we have received a sufficient number of qualified applicants. Therefore, we encourage interested candidates to submit their applications promptly to ensure consideration. You will receive an automated confirmation email after you submit your application. Because of the volume of applications we receive, it may take weeks for us to review your submission. We thank you for your patience while you wait for our correspondence! 

Contacting Us

We receive a high volume of email requests from students seeking various engagements with Bessemer Venture Partners. While we value your enthusiasm, we unfortunately are unable to accommodate individual internship requests or coffee chats outside of our formal recruiting process at this time. However, if you have questions about our application process, please contact recruiting@bvp.com.

Alumni highlights

Sourcing Hall of Fame

Twitch: Mackey Craven created an Alexa Tracker which helped him source Twitch, the live streaming platform. After a few “near-death” experiences after Twitch pivoted from Justin.TV, the startup eventually saw amazing growth among gamers. By 2014, Twitch was acquired by Amazon for $970 million and positioned itself as a platform where culture thrives and gamers, entertainers, and even politicians continue to congregate.

Truebill: In 2019, after countless attempts to get someone else on the team to join a call, Alexandra Sukin sold Kent Bennett on a meeting with brothers by blood and founders by choice, Haroon and Yahya Mokhtarzada. And after two years of following the company closely before and during the COVID pandemic, Alexandra had deep conviction that Truebill was going to change how consumers thought about their monthly spending. Bessemer invested in Truebill’s Series C and D before the company was acquired by Rocket Companies for $1.275 billion in December 2021.

MindBody: Believing that vertical software could enable small to mid size businesses in the health and wellness space, Brian Feinstein went down the INC 5000, eventually finding this solution for yoga studios, salons, and spas. We first invested in the San Luis Obispo-based company in 2010, and by 2018, MindBody was acquired by Vista Equity. (However, Brian continues to use the tool when booking the occasional workout class!)

Diapers.com: In 2007, Mitchell Green tracked the founding team over the course of nine months and persuaded the Bessemer partnership to pursue e-commerce. Eventually, the parent company changed its name to Quidsi and sold to Amazon for more than half a billion dollars in 2010.

Wikia/Fandom: Once again, known for his tenacity, Mitchell Green cold emailed Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame about a dozen times before the founder agreed to host us for a meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he was based at the time. In 2006, Bessemer led the $4 million early-stage investment.

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Brian Feinstein - Partner at Bessemer

“Bessemer’s analyst program was the perfect training for a career in venture capital. The opportunity to meet with hundreds of startups across a variety of stages and sectors provided an extraordinary breadth of knowledge and pattern recognition. This was the foundation upon which the rest of my career at Bessemer was built.”

 

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Talia Goldberg - Partner at Bessemer

   

“My time in the program helped me develop foundational investor skills from sourcing to diligence to supporting portfolio companies. But most importantly, it helped me hone my intuition. The funny thing about venture capital is that it is full of paradoxes. It’s comprised of exceptions and outliers yet pattern recognition is critical. I’m constantly trying to strike a balance between being opportunistic and being roadmap driven.”

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Aman Kandola - Business Operations Manager at Courier

“The program is a great opportunity to gain a holistic education on the fundamentals of tech startups—things like team building, product strategy, and go-to-market approaches. Having since moved into an operating role at a portfolio company, I’ve found that examining top performing startups as an analyst has given me insight on best practices across a range of business functions and the tools to implement them.”

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Emily Lu - Chief of Staff, Growth & Commercial at Nilus

    

“As a Bessemer analyst, I learned how to distill large amounts of information quickly, ask the right questions, and form educated opinions. These are skills that I rely on today as a product manager – to be roadmap-driven, drill down to what really matters, and make decisions with discipline.”

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Josh Benamram - CEO of Databand.ai

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Jenny Gao - Senior Advisor, White House

    

“There is truly no better place to gain this hands-on experience than at Bessemer – I had immense ownership and autonomy in my work while also getting mentored by and working closely with some of the best partners in the venture world. And as I’ve gone on to work in other sectors and other roles, I have realized that it’s the “intangibles” I gained at Bessemer – the hustle, the judgment, the first principles thinking – that have continued to serve me really well.”

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Sarah Tavel - General Partner at Benchmark

    

“Young people interested in VC: If Bessemer offers you a job, take it.”

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Anna Khan - General Partner at CRV

    

“There is no better place to start your venture career than Bessemer. I learned everything I know from the firm—from how to run a great diligence process, all the way to being an upstanding and thoughtful board member. Don’t think twice, BVP is the place to be.”