Join our small but mighty team at Cowboy Ventures and play a key, senior role in supporting our two partners and the growth and future of our firm. Help us deliver excellent returns and enhance our reputation as a premier seed fund.
Responsibilities
Support partners to help 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
- You will identify and track the most promising frontiers and specific companies for potential investment using existing and new systems
- Work with partners to quickly develop plan and help execute world-class due diligence including meeting notes, references, product and technical due diligence, competitive landscape research, market sizing, and financial evaluation
- 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
- Help 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
- Deliver high levels of entrepreneur satisfaction/referral as measured by NPS score
Help drive general firm strategy and execution
- Contribute to our general activities to build an enjoyable work rhythm and culture, strong follow up, and awesome results
- Evaluate and suggest tech trends on an ongoing basis thru reading, research and synthesis
- Always endeavor to pursue Cowboy Ventures’ agenda and be careful to protect the interests and privacy of our team, portfolio, and how we operate
Required Skills
- Utmost enthusiasm for technology, entrepreneurs, and business learning
- You are service and detail oriented, and enjoy supporting others
- 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, informal team
- 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
- Executive presence with a demonstrated ability to work effectively in a dynamic, fast-paced environment across multiple projects.
- Proficiency in modeling company financials, performing valuation analysis, as well as deal structuring and negotiation.
- 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. Able to quickly 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
- 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
- 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
- 7+ years of full time work experience with some combination of finance, tech and VC experience.
- Specifically some combination of work experience to include investment banking or management consulting, operating experience and ample experience within a Venture firm.
- Previous experience requiring research, analysis and strong written and verbal communication skills, with a strong digital component
- Passion for technology and software with an understanding and evolving opinion and/or investment philosophy on the landscape and trends.
- Technical and/or VC-backed operational experience at an enterprise or consumer tech company.
- Technical undergraduate degree 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
To apply, interested candidates should complete this brief form and we will follow up with you.
