Visiting Analyst Programmes: Venture Capital's Real Hiring Calendar

"Visiting Analyst" is not a marketing label one fund invented for its internship. Creandum, Lakestar, Antler, Seedcamp and Earlybird all use the identical title for the same kind of seat, and several more European funds run a comparable programme under their own name: a paid, fixed-term place on the investment team, typically five months to a year, opened on a fund's own schedule and closed on a date that is published once and rarely repeated in the same wording.

That is the single fact most candidates miss. A visiting-analyst posting is not a rolling internship that sits open year-round. It is a dated cycle, usually run once or twice a year, and a candidate who checks a fund's careers page in the wrong month sees nothing and wrongly concludes the seat does not exist.

Treat the programme as what it actually is: an institution a cluster of European funds runs on a schedule, with a real application gate, real day-to-day work, and an honest, mixed answer on whether it leads anywhere permanent. Every specific date below is a historical record for calibrating the pattern, not an invitation to apply immediately.

At a Glance: What a Visiting Analyst Seat Actually Is

The range runs from five months to a full year, and the cadence splits cleanly into two groups: a handful of funds that name a cohort and a deadline in advance, and a larger set that posts the same title whenever a specific team needs a pair of hands. Both groups call the role a Visiting Analyst. Only the first group gives a candidate a calendar worth tracking.

Several more funds fall into that second, per-need group without publishing enough detail to tabulate here, but the split itself is the durable pattern worth knowing.

Not an Internship, a Graduate Scheme, or a Residency

Three adjacent categories get confused with this seat, and the differences matter for how a candidate should prepare.

• A generic internship is often short, sometimes unpaid, and rarely puts a candidate inside real deal flow rather than admin support.
• A graduate scheme is a multi-year rotation, the kind several larger funds and financial firms run, that hires a coordinated class and moves people through several business lines on a fixed timetable.
• A founder residency, such as Antler's, funds a candidate to build their own company as a prospective founder. It is a different job entirely: the residency evaluates a candidate's own idea, not their judgement about someone else's.

A visiting analyst seat sits apart from all three. It is paid and fixed-term like an internship, but the candidate joins the actual investment team and is measured on the same output a junior investor produces: companies sourced, memos written, diligence supported. Antler runs both an employee investment track and the residency under overlapping branding, which is exactly why the confusion recurs there most often.

Why Funds Bother Running a Named Programme at All

The seat solves a specific, structural problem for a small investment team: real sourcing and screening capacity, at low cost and low commitment, without the overhead of a permanent hire neither side is ready to promise yet.

Creandum's own postings show the flex directly. Its H1/26 cohort placed one Visiting Analyst each in Berlin, Stockholm and London, three seats total. Its very next cycle, H2/26, narrowed to a single Stockholm seat, with the posting stating plainly that the fund only takes "one intern at a time" in that half. The programme scales up or down with the fund's actual need each cycle, which a permanent headcount line cannot do nearly as cheaply.

H1/26 (Oct 2025 deadline)

3

H2/26 (Apr 2026 deadline)

1

H1/27 (Sep 2026 deadline)

3

Three seats, then one, then three again. The swing tracks the fund's own need each half, not a shrinking or growing programme.

Some funds frame the reasoning as deliberate talent development rather than only staffing. Lakestar's Enrico Mellis, a Principal at the firm, put it this way in the firm's own announcement of its relaunched programme: "I've personally helped many interns transition into great roles, both within and outside our ecosystem. Now, with our Visiting Analyst program, we're doubling down on this culture of great mentorship."

Not every fund frames it as a pipeline at all. Seedcamp's own 2025 posting for the role stated outright that the fund did not expect to hire the Visiting Analyst at the end of the placement, while still describing the seat as valuable exposure to how the fund operates. The honest range runs from "this is how we find our next hire" to "this is useful work and a real credential, independent of whether we ever hire you."

The Pattern: Windows That Open Once and Close on a Fixed Date

The durable fact is the shape of the cadence, not any single deadline. Across the funds that run a genuinely dated cycle, three things hold roughly true: cohorts open about twice a year, deadlines cluster in spring and autumn rather than scattering randomly, and the number of seats on offer varies from cycle to cycle rather than staying fixed.

Lakestar states this shape explicitly, in its own words, more precisely than any other fund in this research: "Platform opens on 1 October (3 February for H2) and remains open for 2 weeks," with interviews running the following three to four weeks and offers following. That is a structural calendar a candidate can plan around a year in advance, independent of which specific year is being read.

Every Documented Cycle on Record

Some funds have run a comparable twice-yearly or annual cadence for years without each cycle being individually documented here. The pattern above is the reliable signal, not an exhaustive list of every date any fund has ever posted.

A Shared Title, Not One Firm's Brand

The same exact job title recurs well beyond the five funds profiled in depth here. Several more European funds, some considerably smaller and less known than the ones above, run a "Visiting Analyst" posting on their own careers pages, each describing a comparable fixed-term seat on the investment team.

None of those postings were documented here in the same depth as the funds above, and whether any of them runs a dated, recurring cycle rather than posting per need is still an open question. Their existence still supports the same conclusion: "Visiting Analyst" functions as a recognised category across European venture, not a name one firm coined for its internship.

That matters practically. A candidate researching "visiting analyst programmes" is not researching a niche gimmick at two or three firms; they are researching a hiring mechanism used widely enough that preparing for it, the video, the test, the memo, transfers across more than one application.

The title can also be run very differently fund to fund. Some funds post a "Visiting Analyst (Intern)" role separately for each investment team, in a different city and at a different point in the year, with no evidence of one fund-wide date at all. The title is shared; the calendar is not.

The Gate: Tests, Videos, and a Memo Before You Ever Meet Anyone

Several of these programmes add a real filter beyond a CV and cover letter, and the filter itself teaches what the fund actually values.

Creandum's video requirement is the more distinctive mechanic. The posting asks specifically for a company that has raised no round or, at most, a seed round, based in Europe, with the applicant explaining "why it could be an interesting investment case." That prompt is not a personality test. It is a direct check on whether a candidate can already do the fund's core job, spotting and arguing for an early company, before being paid to.

The Multi-Stage Process, Beyond the First Gate

A first gate, a video or a timed test, only screens out the weakest applications. Several of these funds add a second layer after that: a live interview built around real investment judgement, not general conversation.

Lakestar's process is the most detailed on record here. After the CV and questionnaire screen, it runs through four rounds, including a case-study interview, before an offer is made, a structure the firm confirms directly across its own hiring pages.

Antler's employee-track process for its investment-team roles works to the same end but compresses more of the judgement test into a single session: a working-session-style interview built around a prepared investment memo or a structured founder and product assessment, worked through live with the team rather than submitted cold in advance.

The shape recurs even where the specific mechanic differs: a resume filter, then a live or written test of judgement on a real company, before a fund will put someone in a room with founders on its behalf.

A Day in the Seat: Sourcing, Screening, and the Memo

Regardless of which fund's posting a candidate reads, the actual task list converges on the same handful of activities. Lakestar's own posting describes the role as conducting "first high-level evaluation of companies" and building "a short-list of most promising investment opportunities," then supporting "company valuations, exit scenario modelling, and investment case analysis."

Seedcamp's own listing adds reviewing inbound opportunities, presenting them to the wider team, and maintaining data on the portfolio. Several smaller funds' postings name the same cluster of work in their own words: desk research, reference calls with founders, and preparing fund-reporting materials.

• Sourcing: building and maintaining a list of companies worth a first look, through inbound flow, outbound outreach or events
• Screening: a first-pass judgement on which companies deserve a real conversation, the exact task a working-session interview is built to test in advance
• Diligence support: reference calls, market research, and competitor mapping once a company moves further into a fund's process
• Memo writing: synthesising research into the short document that actually moves an investment decision forward
• Portfolio and reporting work: engaging with existing portfolio companies and helping prepare internal or investor-facing materials

That mix is the job, in whichever fund's own words describes it: sourcing, screening, diligence support, memo writing, and staying close enough to the existing portfolio to be useful there too.

Conversion: The Honest Answer

None of the funds here publish a number for how often a Visiting Analyst becomes a permanent hire. That absence is itself informative: a genuinely strong conversion rate is the kind of statistic a fund would use to recruit, and none of them do.

5

funds profiled here

0

publishing a conversion rate

2×

most common cadence, per year

The evidence that exists points in two directions at once. Some funds frame their own track record in career terms rather than hiring terms: alumni who went on to join other venture firms full time, became operators, or moved into further study, a claim about a career outcome rather than an offer from that fund itself.

Lakestar frames its programme the same way, promising to support a candidate's growth "whether you aim to become a founder, join our portfolio companies, or embark on a career in venture capital." That description points to an outcome somewhere in the ecosystem, not necessarily a role at that fund.

Seedcamp's own current listing separately notes that past investment-team members have gone on to found other funds, become partners elsewhere, and build companies including Citymapper, though that describes the broader investment team's alumni rather than a claim specific to Visiting Analysts alone. The honest synthesis: treat the seat as a credential and a network that opens doors across venture generally, not as a five-month trial for a job at that specific fund.

The Visa Question, Answered Before It Costs You a Cycle

A pattern shows up across every fund in this research that states a position on the question at all: none of them sponsor a work visa for this seat. Lakestar's posting states applicants "must have the legal right to work in the respective country... for the duration of the program," adding plainly, "no visa sponsorship will be provided."

Several other funds in this space give candidates the same reason for filtering early: a temporary, junior seat is rarely one most of them are set up to sponsor.

How to Be Ready Before the Next Window Opens

The funds that run a genuinely dated cycle have, between them, opened windows in early October, early February, September and April across the cycles documented here. A candidate serious about one of these seats can build a real calendar around that pattern rather than discovering a deadline the week it closes.

Creandum is the clearest illustration of why that calendar is worth building. Its H1/26 deadline landed on 5 October 2025, H2/26 followed on 19 April 2026, and H1/27 landed on 13 September 2026, a rhythm of roughly six months between each that slides a few weeks earlier or later cycle to cycle rather than repeating on the same date.

A candidate who logs that rhythm after watching two cycles can predict the shape of a third within a few weeks of it opening, without needing a live posting to confirm it first.

1. Note the approximate month each target fund has opened applications in past cycles, and set a reminder two months ahead of it rather than waiting to see a live posting
2. Draft and record a 90-second pitch for a real, current European pre-seed or seed company before any Creandum-style prompt appears, so the format itself is not the obstacle
3. Take a free practice version of a timed cognitive or numerical reasoning test, so a 30-minute assessment window does not cost time to unfamiliarity with the format itself
4. Write a short-form investment memo on a real, public pitch deck as practice, in the same one-or-two-section structure several of these take-home memo tasks ask for
5. Confirm your own visa or work-eligibility position for each city on your shortlist before applying, given how common a no-sponsorship policy is across this seat type
6. Keep a running, dated list of the specific postings and deadlines you find, since most of them will not reappear in the same wording next cycle

The Fit Question: Why This Seat, and Why This Fund

Because both sides already know the seat is temporary, a fit interview here is not testing whether a candidate will stay a decade. It is testing whether the candidate will produce real, usable sourcing and screening output inside a short window and represent the fund credibly to founders in the meantime.

A working-session interview built around a real memo names exactly this: it reveals how well a candidate works independently and without much guidance, precisely because a short seat has no time to build that independence on the job.

A strong answer to "why this fund" leans on specifics the fund itself has published: its stage focus, a portfolio company the candidate has a real view on, and the particular mechanic of its own application, rather than generic enthusiasm about venture capital as an industry.

The Bottom Line

A visiting analyst seat is a real institution in European venture, not a euphemism for an unpaid internship or a consolation prize next to a graduate scheme. Creandum, Lakestar, Antler, Seedcamp and a growing list of funds beside them run it as a paid, dated, fixed-term place on the actual investment team, gated by a video, a test or a memo that most candidates never see coming.

What it is not, honestly, is a guaranteed door into that specific fund. No programme documented here publishes odds of conversion, and at least one states outright that conversion is not the point. The seat's real value is the work itself, the network it builds, and the credential of real sourcing and screening on a live investment team, which travels to whichever fund or company comes next more reliably than a promise of a permanent offer ever would.

Preparing for one of these seats months before a window opens, rather than the week it closes, is the single largest edge available to a candidate who has read this far.