Economics

Q&A: A Teenage Venture Capitalist

Alex BanayanPhotograph by Corwin Garber
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Alex Banayan is a very busy young man. He’s attending the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and writing a book on how successful people get that way. And for the last four months he’s been working as an associate with Alsop Louie Partners, an early-stage, high-tech venture capital firm in San Francisco where he sits in on partner meetings and passes along intel on young entrepreneurs. Oh yeah: He’s 19. Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Francesca Di Meglio recently caught up with this SoCal overachiever. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

How did you get the job at the VC firm?