I Have Found "Navigating the Partnership" a Particularly Difficult Challenge

[General] partners operate fairly autonomously and, if one is to attempt to get a deal in front of the general partnership for investment, it requires an understanding of which partner to work with and how to 'sell' the deal to them. Knowing the preferences and investment style of a particular person is tantamount to being able to push it through to investment successfully. In my personal experience, not having a very strong advocate for your deal before the partnership views it is a recipe for disaster. I view this as a variant on the concept of 'managing upward' and requires a few doses of people smarts and a dash of salesmanship.

Challenges Juggling the MBA-Friend and VC Firm-Allegiance Roles

There’s such hunger amongst the HBS graduate population to start companies that suddenly being on the VC side of the table presents tricky situations with classmates. Section friends start pitching you their startup ideas, and they’re just as (un)likely to be investable ideas as the rest of the startups out there. Juggling the HBS-friend and VC firm-allegiance roles is not easy. You want to be honest with friends, and you want to encourage their entrepreneurial aspirations, but it’s hard sometimes to balance telling friends how cool their ideas sound with the reality that they’re not cool/ready/big enough for you to go to bat in front of the general partnership on their behalf.