9 questions reported in Bessemer Venture Partners interviews, organised by the group that asks them. Every question carries a model answer and graded feedback on your own attempt.
Questions
Easy · Medium
Hard
Model builds
Built in the spreadsheet grid
Reference calls, technical diligence, term sheets and preference stacks. 5 questions
Portfolio reviews reveal whether candidates can recognise when a clean-looking metric is misleading.
A founder reports net revenue retention of 118%, but finance calculates 104%. How do you resolve the difference before using the metric in a board meeting?
Portfolio-team interviews test whether you can make a board meeting useful rather than merely reportable.
You are helping a Series A founder prepare the monthly board pack. What must it contain, and what should stay out?
A portfolio-platform case asks you to create value through a customer introduction without substituting a warm email for real go-to-market work.
A Series A security startup asks its VC for introductions to enterprise customers. Build the workflow for deciding whom to introduce and how you would measure whether the support was useful.
A portfolio-support case for an AI application company scaling revenue faster than its infrastructure economics.
A portfolio company has doubled ARR to $20m, but gross margin fell from 72% to 48% as enterprise customers use more inference-heavy features. Management wants to accelerate sales hiring before the…
A VC portfolio-diligence case where an associate must use scarce founder and finance-team access to decide whether a bridge round funds a financeable business.
You are diligencing a proposed $12m Series A bridge for RelayOps, a workflow-software portfolio company. The investment committee meets tomorrow, management can answer only a limited number of…
Cohort economics, CAC payback, net revenue retention and burn multiple. 2 questions
A modelling-screen exercise testing whether a candidate can distinguish top-line growth from the economics produced by that growth.
A software company grows revenue from $24m to $36m while gross margin rises from 60% to 70%. Calculate prior-year gross profit, current-year gross profit, and the incremental gross profit. Why is this…
A growth-stage venture investor diligencing a workflow-software Series B before partner meeting.
You are the associate on a proposed Series B investment in a workflow-software company. Review the staged data room, choose the highest-value diligence actions, and write an investment recommendation…
Unit economics, cohort retention, burn efficiency and minority protections. 1 question
A first-round metric question that tests whether you can explain retention rather than merely define it.
What is net revenue retention, and why do growth equity investors care about it?
Founder assessment, market sizing from first principles and ownership maths. 1 question
A final-round diligence judgement case: decide whether the reported traction supports a seed investment before signing a term sheet.
A B2B software startup reports $1.2m of ARR, up 150% year over year, and is raising a seed extension. You learn that one customer contributes 55% of ARR, all contracts contain 90-day termination…
Write your answer, get it graded on technical accuracy, completeness and communication, and see exactly which mechanic you missed.
Company tags reflect where a question type is commonly reported in interviews. They are not sourced from, endorsed by, or affiliated with Bessemer Venture Partners.