VC Professional @ Financial Venture Studio in San Francisco, CA

The Financial Venture Studio is currently recruiting for a full-time employee on the investment team in our San Francisco office. This role presents a unique opportunity to help us build the company, raise our second investment fund, recruit new entrepreneurs, negotiate deals, build our program and, most importantly, help our portfolio companies be successful. This role will be critical to our future success, and we are looking for candidates who share our passion for improving financial services in the U.S. Our goal is to build the home for founders who share this vision. Ideally, whomever we hire will learn everything we know about this industry and more, helping to drive innovation in one of the world’s largest and most complex industries.

The Venture Studio invests in great teams who are seeking to improve how Americans conduct their financial lives. From more efficient savings and superior investments to faster payments and better information, the promise of today’s financial products has never been higher.

You will be the eyes and ears of the company. We will look to you to help us scout out those entrepreneurs who have the ideas and drive to positively impact the financial services industry. Expect to drink a lot of coffee (or tea!) and excitedly listen to lots and lots of pitches.

. . . and you’ll also be the arms and legs (hey, we’re a small team). You’ll work closely with our entrepreneurs and help us provide them with world-class support. Our mission is to be the most helpful early-stage investor in fintech, and we help our teams with problems big and small.

What we believe this position requires:

• Someone who cares deeply about helping to reinvent America’s financial services industry. Currently, this industry falls short for most consumers, small businesses, large businesses, investors, and pretty much anyone who can’t afford to hire someone else to deal with it for them. This is in part because there aren’t nearly enough new ideas and competition. We’re focused on encouraging new entrepreneurs who can leverage superior technology skills and business savvy to create massively scaled businesses that can challenge incumbents.
• Someone who is passionate about helping entrepreneurs. Our job is to help founders achieve their goals. We’re a small investor in an industry awash in capital. Our capital does not give us influence. Instead, our ability to help founders gives us influence. At its core, this job is about helping our customers — entrepreneurs — achieve great things. The ideal candidate will share this passion and the following traits and skills.

We believe that good entrepreneur support requires the following traits: inclusiveness; humility; compassion; honesty; and discipline. You should value these traits in yourself and others.

The tasks of the job require the following skills: the ability to listen; set and effectively communicate expectations; create plans; organize resources against those plans; and the ability to communicate results and receive feedback. Very, very few people are good at all of these things. We’ll help you get better at each of them and, ideally, you will do the same for us.

• Someone who has a different background than we have. We have a strong bias towards diverse perspectives, personal backgrounds, and career paths. It’s possible that the ideal candidate went to a fancy school or three and had a bunch of prestigious jobs, but it’s also likely that their personal and professional journey is far more interesting and required them to overcome many barriers and encounter many different types of people. If you’ve had to overcome challenges in your life, you’ll be better able to connect with founders, build their trust, and help them. Also, if you can tap into networks that we don’t have, you’ll be able to expand our deal pipeline.
• And finally, some background in financial services or technology. We help our companies solve the most elemental problems associated with building a technology company in an industry in which esoteric knowledge of idiosyncratic bureaucracies, complex processes, and regulation is critical. If you know anything about financial services — tax, payments, credit, operations, regulation, etc. — you will have an edge. Similarly, one of the biggest problems facing this industry is a shortage of high-quality tech talent. That also would be useful.

Notably, we’re not looking for leading experts. We’re looking for fast learners who know enough to know what they don’t know and be curious about the rest.

This role will essentially be our first hire. You’ll be the most junior person on a small team that will always be understaffed. This has pros and cons.

• The pro is that you’ll have a huge impact on creating this company and an inordinate amount of responsibility. We want this job to be the defining professional experience of your career. Where you take this opportunity is up to you, but our hope is “up and to the right” for long into the future. You will be involved in nearly everything we do.
• The con, of course, is that there will inevitably be some mundane and administrative work that is decidedly not glamorous. It’s unlikely you’ll have a direct report anytime soon, but we will all be in the trenches together building this fund.
• While cash compensation may be a bit below market in the near-term, you’ll have significant upside exposure in our funds.
• We don’t have a job title for this role* — mostly because we don’t know you, and the title will reflect the personality and experience of the person we hire. We’ll work it out together. It’s a role for someone who wants to build, learn, work hard, and have a fun time doing it. If you’re excited by investing in amazing teams and want to build something from the ground up, this might be the role for you.