As an Investment Associate, you are joining a Techstars team responsible for sourcing and accelerating the growth of brilliant portfolio companies. You have been a founder yourself (whether successful or otherwise) or you have been a founding member of a start-up’s management team, and you have demonstrable experience in early-stage startup operations, especially fundraising, product development, customer acquisition and/or business development. You are attuned to the specific challenges that underrepresented founders have, and you are passionate about overcoming them. You are founder-first, have entrepreneurial empathy and can’t imagine anything better than spending your days meeting, analyzing, investing in and supporting founders and their start-ups. You are well-connected to and perhaps even well-known in the start-up and investor ecosystems. You relish the idea of creating a recognized brand and being seen as a thought-leader in the start-up and investor ecosystems. You have demonstrable experience sourcing and screening founders as an angel investor, as part of an accelerator or as part of a fund. You have mentored founders in a recognized program. Your dream is to be a key member of a fund that unlocks social and financial capital for underserved founders or even someday to manage your own fund.:Sourcing
- Research and identify trends to help create a strong pipeline of startups related to our target verticals (i.e., healthcare, health and beauty, fintech and edtech);
- Actively recruit and meet companies through various channels such as online research, networking events and referrals from our network;
- Build a strong brand tied to our verticals, to underrepresented founders or to start-ups and/or investment more generally, including on social media. You are or you are eager to become a thought leader in your space, from writing white papers and op-eds, to speaking at conferences;
- Build relationships with founders, investors, alternative funding sources, mentors, service providers and other ecosystem partners to underpin a support network around underrepresented founders and/or NYC-based start-ups;
- Contribute to investment memos and specific company diligence for the class selection process; and
- Manage the pipeline of deal flow to help to structure and close investments successfully.
Portfolio Support
- Help to create, organize and execute a best-in-class content calendar designed to help our portfolio companies access the learnings, commercial relationships, mentors and investors that they need to grow their businesses and to raise follow-on funding within 12 months of graduating from the program;
- Develop and execute a calendar of internal and external events to support our portfolio companies and alumni;
- Build a database of mentors and service providers and manage the relationships with them to ensure that they provide reliable, world-class support to our founders;
- Provide ongoing program management and assistance to our companies; and
- Create an extraordinary founder experience that accelerates the success of portfolio companies across the globe.
Qualifications:
- Demonstrated passion for working with underrepresented and/or NYC-based founders, whether as an investor, a founder or an ecosystem builder;
- Deep understanding of, empathy for and experience with the zero-to-one entrepreneurial process. You quite likely have:
- Been a co-founder or early employee at a startup and have ideally been involved with a successful fundraise or two; and/or
- Have prior early-stage tech investing experience;
- 4+ years of prior experience in the tech industry. Prior experience in product development or go-to-market experience is especially valued;
- Familiarity with the construct within an investment memo and the research required to build one;
- Strong emotional intelligence, with a particular focus on entrepreneurial empathy and the charisma to be able to convince others to join us on our collective journey (e.g., mentors, service providers, etc.);
- A bias towards action. You are entrepreneurial in everything you do, including being able to work in a loosely structured, flat organizational structure that requires everyone to be willing to get their hands dirty and to be able to juggle various balls at once, all while being expected to execute at the very highest level of excellence;
- A systems thinker with an eye for things that do not scale and the capability to design new processes and systems for implementation across programs;
- Razor-sharp verbal and written communication skills;
- Expertise with Excel or Google Sheets, Docs, and Slides;
- Experience working with “No Code” and automation tools like Airtable, Notion, etc.
- Ability to travel 6 weeks per year, as necessary; and
- MBA preferred, but not required.
Compensation Range: TBD 10% Bonus
