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2L at CCN w/ solid enough grades coming up on OCI, and very interested in VC/EC work. The dream of course is to go in-house to a small company after a few years and make a chunk of change when it IPOs/sells. I’m not talking Snowflake millions - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=309283&p=10468112& ... #p10468112 blew my mind– but in a perfect world I’d come close to making up for a few years of missed biglaw salary. I’ve got no idea how possible this is...

Assuming that plan doesn’t work out, will the VC/EC practice have limited my other exit options as compared to a PE/public M&A mix at a firm with more big company work (which to my understanding is the best platform to go F500 in house)? A subsidiary question would be to what extent can you get useful experience on bigger public company deals as a VC/EC associate at a Cooley/Goodwin/WSGR? Or any general input/advice on comparing exit ops from these two practice area routes?

In practice, I think this will come down to choosing between Ropes/Debevoise/White & Case types vs. Cooley/Goodwin/WSGR/Gunderson.

Thank you! This site has been extremely useful for me in the past.

You probably already know this from the name, but a snowflake job is just that, a snowflake, so I would not make the decision based on that. I do think a firm like Cooley/Gunderson would give you a better shot at going in house at a EGC, but that is simply because you will have more direct relationships working with EGCs at these firms. Your shots at landing a unicorn job offer probably won’t be much different between well established corporate forms—that is luck in my opinion.

In terms of mixing practices, I can’t speak for the Cooley/Gunderson firm types, but I work at one of the other firms you listed, and have a healthy split of VC work and private M&A work. Personally, I really like the split. It’s the best of both worlds and I don’t have to worry about pigeon holes…

Certain EC/VC firms probably set you up better for a jump to a F500 than a traditional white shoe firm, particularly a FANG type large public tech co (many of these cos are also long time clients of “EC/VC” firms). For instance, at a Cooley or a WSGR, you’d start as not necessarily a EC/VC lawyer but a general corporate associate so you’d be doing a mix of pure EC/VC, M&A, capital markets and public company representation.