Become a key part of the small but mighty Cowboy Ventures (Linkedin, Crunchbase) team to deliver excellent returns and enhance our reputation as a premier seed fund.
Responsibilities
Help us identify, decide on, and win opportunities to invest in the best tech startups:
- You will quickly evaluate and respond to a high volume of initial introductions, including holding initial screening conversations with ventures and evaluating those opportunities
- Execute world-class due diligence including meeting notes, references, product and technical due diligence, competitive landscape research, market sizing, and financial evaluation
- You will help our team identify and track the most promising frontiers and specific companies for potential investment using existing and new systems
- Partner with our team to improve our sourcing strategy, help execute and track against it
Enhance our firm’s network, marketing and communications
- Be a general force for good and needle mover in our interactions with entrepreneurs seeking investment, to improve the quality of our deal flow and win rate
- Help with organizing events and information to make companies in the Cowboy community more successful including our “nerding out” events, our founders list, and other internal efforts to assist portfolio companies
- Help with regular LP updates on our portfolio and firm progress
- Help with any relevant research to help support blog posts, speeches or presentations by members of our team
- Contribute to keep the firm’s website and social media activity current and awesome
Help improve our portfolio companies and their outcomes
- Identify and execute opportunities to propel key portfolio companies to greater success. Examples include helping with key hires, business development assistance, customer introductions, financial and fundraising planning, and being a generally highly respected, trusted confidant to our founders
- Help us deliver high levels of entrepreneur satisfaction/referral as measured by NPS score
Assist with general firm strategy and execution
- Evaluate and identify tech trends on an ongoing basis thru reading, research and synthesis
- Help manage/monitor progress against our investment goals or other goals via weekly discussions and regular offsites
- Contribute to our general activities to build an enjoyable work rhythm and culture, strong follow up, and awesome results
- Always endeavor to pursue Cowboy Ventures’ agenda and be careful to protect the interests and privacy of our team, portfolio, and how we operate
Skills required
- Utmost enthusiasm for technology, entrepreneurs, and business learning
- Desire and willingness to learn, give and take feedback and challenge conventional thinking
- A great nose for important tech trends and emerging businesses that will be big
- Detail orientation
- Strong diligence skills. Ability to quickly evaluate the key questions, risks or upside to an opportunity, prioritize and execute diligence to flesh out these issues
- Strong financial analysis skills. You will be able to dive quickly into a business plan or financial model, identify and judge key drivers or vulnerabilities
- Digital product fluency. Assess strengths and areas of improvement for any web or mobile product, targeted at consumer or enterprise customers
- Technical dexterity. Ability to product manage a website and/or identify and work with technical talent to build and handle internal tools if appropriate
- Strong business and personal judgment
- Extraordinary written and verbal communication skills
- Strong critical thinking and discussion skills. Unafraid to advocate for and debate your opinion
- Self-motivated and highly productive. Someone with an awesome work ethic who is able to envision, prioritize and complete parallel projects without requiring much guidance in a fast paced, fluid environment. Excellent multitasking skills without dropping balls
- Entrepreneurial spirit to be part of a small team
- Socially outgoing and a people person
- Sense of humor, smarts, and a positive attitude
- The ability to consistently come up with new ways to make us better.
Prior Experience
- At least 4 years of fulltime work experience ideally in a role requiring research, analysis and strong written and verbal communication skills, with a strong digital component
- Technical undergraduate degree preferred
- 2 years of venture-backed operating experience preferred
- Experience being a top 25% performer in a highly ambitious academic environment (we need to bring up our average)
- Track record of succeeding academically while demonstrating leadership roles in extracurricular activities, ideally in team and social environments
If interested, please apply here.
