Why NEA: Interviews, Careers, & Portfolio

NEA Overview

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is a venture capital firm which focuses on investing in seed to growth stages across different industry sectors.

With over $25 billion in assets under management, NEA is one of the biggest venture capital firms.

NEA is located in Chevy Chase, Maryland, United States and has additional offices in Bangalore, Baltimore, New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Beijing, and Shanghai.

Since inception, NEA invested in more than 2,000 companies with 270 portfolio company IPOs and 450 M&As.

C. Richard (Dick) Kramlich, Chuck Newhall and Frank Bonsal founded NEA in 1977.

When NEA was just starting out, the firm had only $16 million of capital. Over the years, the firm kept on increasing the funds they were able to raise from $45 million in the 1980s and $3.3 billion in 2017.

NEA AUM

As of March 30, 2023, NEA has $25.9 billion in assets under management according to most recent regulatory filings.

NEA Interview Process & Questions

Each candidate may go through a slightly different interview process. However, if you interview at NEA (or a firm like it), you can expect some consistencies in the general nature of the interviews such as:

• 4-6 rounds of interviews
• Junior investment professionals or the HR team handle the initial interviews, while more senior staff supervise the later rounds
• The entire process can last for several weeks – unless it’s “on-cycle” or “on-campus” recruiting

Also, expect to receive a mixture of fit questions, behavioral questions, and technical / investing questions when you interview at NEA.

For more interview lessons, resources, and expert tips, check out my Growth Equity Interview Guide.

Why NEA

“Why this firm” is one of the frequently asked and crucial questions you’ll encounter.

If you’ve met professionals at the firm during your networking efforts, this is the right time to mention whoever you’ve made connections with and share how they’ve made a really positive impression on you.

It’s also important to do some research about the firm before you attend the interview. For this, I suggest you listen to interviews with its founders, investors, and executives.

To start, here’s an amazing interview with Emily Zhen, an investor at NEA:

More interviews

• Ben Narasin, Venture Partner at NEA, on Navigating IPOs, Fintech Investing, & Guiding Founders
• Ben Narasin of New Enterprise Associates speaks about the progress, quality, and substance of the Venture Atlanta companies

NEA Case Study

Interviewers often face case studies during interviews. Case studies is one of the tools that firms use to assess their candidate’s level of technical knowledge and communication skills.

Most case studies at firms like NEA will have you perform financial modeling and investment recommendations. However, for junior roles, cold calling case studies may be required as well.

To gain an in-depth understanding of case studies, check out Growth Equity Interview Guide.

NEA Salary & Compensation

According to Glassdoor, NEA analysts can earn $113,235 per year while NEA associates can make around $100,831 annually. These figures represent the average and can still go higher or lower depending on your level of experience, education, and skills.

Analyst

Associate

From other publicly available sources, recent NEA associates have earned $220,000 per year, while there’s no recent data for analysts.

NEA Careers, Jobs, & Internships

To find open roles at NEA, head over to our job board which also features promising job vacancies at similar firms.

NEA Portfolio & Investments

As per Crunchbase, NEA has made 2,126 investments and manages 14 funds. Some of their notable deals include Tune Therapeutics, Built Robotics, and DataBricks

Notable Transaction: Sana

Sana is an AI-powered platform which allows organizations to share, find, and utilize available knowledge to achieve their goals.

Being supported by some of the leading investors, founders, and operators, Sana has raised over $85 million to date.

In May 2023, Sana announced that it gained additional funding worth $28 million from an investment round led by NEA, with participation of Workday Ventures.

Initially, Sana had no intentions of raising funds when NEA extended its offer since Sana already received $34 million in Series B funding from Menlo Ventures in December. However, Sana’s impressive commercial performance with 3x increase in annual growth has contributed to their interest to receive another funding.

The additional funds were allocated for Sana’s continued expansion, product development, and growing their commercial teams.

Next Steps

If NEA piqued your interest and wanted to land a role at their firm, one of the ways you can increase your chances of impressing your interviewers and getting selected for your target role is to learn from my Growth Equity Interview Guide.

It’s a self-paced online course which tackles interview topics such as financial modeling, market thesis, and many more in great detail and also provides examples, frameworks, and expert tips that can help you during your actual interviews.

Get the course and start learning today!