Acumen is seeking a Summer Venture Capital Associate with a passion for investing, impact, and technology to help support our growing U.S. portfolio. This is an outstanding opportunity for someone with strong investment judgement, financial analysis skills, exceptional energy, and a proven commitment to social change.
Acumen
Acumen is changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies, leaders, and ideas. We invest patient capital in businesses whose products and services help people living in poverty to transform their lives. To date, Acumen has positively impacted 300 million lives by investing $132M in 136 innovative, early-stage companies in Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and the United States. But investment isn’t just about capital, we’ve been investing in relationships for years, connecting with emerging leaders in their own countries and engaging them in extended collective dialogue, moral inquiry, and skill building.
Acumen America
In the U.S., inequality and poverty are persistent barriers to progress across the economic and social landscape. To that end, Acumen America makes venture investments in disruptive, early-stage companies that are improving the lives of low-income Americans. The entrepreneurs we support are building market-based, technology-enabled solutions to increase access to high-quality products, services, and opportunities for economic mobility. Through our work with our portfolio companies, we aim to be a laboratory for entrepreneurial solutions to poverty in America. We invest in three sectors that we believe are interconnected and critical to helping low-income people move out of poverty: workforce development, health, and financial services. Acumen America is a small team based in our San Francisco office.
Position Summary
The Summer Associate will help generate investment themes, source new investment opportunities, evaluate and support entrepreneurs, conduct due diligence on transactions, and support internal projects to help drive portfolio growth. The Summer Associate will use his or her business skills to evaluate the market positioning, scalability, and defensibility of mission-driven startups that aim to generate market-based returns and lasting social impact.
More specifically, the responsibilities of the Summer Associate may include the opportunity to:
- Conduct research to support Acumen America’s key investment sectors (Health, Workforce Development, Financial Inclusion)
- Meet mission-driven entrepreneurs to evaluate new investment opportunities and promote Acumen America’s investment strategy
- Generate actionable investment themes based on research, networking and personal conviction
- Create succinct investment summaries on potential investments; incorporate feedback from diligence sources to provide recommendations to the investment committee
- Conduct due diligence on potential investments to validate assumptions, including product demos, customer calls, investor calls, and market size analysis
- Research potential resources to support Acumen’s current portfolio companies in areas including capital raising, hiring, and business development
Qualifications & Characteristics
A successful Summer Associate will bring:
- Minimum of 3 years of professional experience (exclusive of any graduate education)
- Personal motivation to build a more inclusive economy and address issues of poverty and inequality
- Deep interest in entrepreneurship, technology ecosystems, and venture capital
- Proven experience in financial analysis and modeling
- Strong investment judgement and understanding of competitive markets
- Understanding of venture capital investing, including terms, capital structure, and investment process
- Strong ability to take initiative with research and analysis and produce valuable results in conditions of uncertainty
- Ability to present investment ideas clearly in memoranda to senior management and advisors
- A Bachelor’s degree is required
Additional characteristics we look for in all roles at Acumen:
- Commitment to and enthusiasm for the organization’s mission to change the way the world tackles poverty, and respect for our core values: generosity, accountability, humility, audacity, listening, leadership, integrity and respect
- Ability to thrive when there is ambiguity, remain cool-headed when there are curve balls, and withstand the tests of a rapidly changing environment with resilience and resolve
If interested, please apply here.
