Job title: Principal, Investments (AUS)
Company: Blackbird
Job description: About the role
Blackbird is hiring a Principal to invest in Australia’s most ambitious founders, right at the very beginning.
Working alongside 14 others in our investment team across Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland, you will help us invest the $1B we’ve raised in 2022 into Australia’s greatest founders.
Why we’re growing our Australian team
Finding and investing in exceptional founders is our reason for being at Blackbird.
Blackbird was founded in 2012, with a small first fund of $30M from the community of Australian technology founders. That fund invested in the very first rounds of Canva, Zoox, Culture Amp and SafetyCulture, and has . We’ve invested in
100 companies and our portfolio is worth over $7B. In 2022, we raised Australasia’s largest venture fund: .
Your job will be to invest our $300m core fund and $650m follow-on fund into the most ambitious founders of early stage, generational companies in Australia.
You’re someone who has profound empathy for the journey of a founder, a mindset of enlightened hospitality, and a hunger to uncover the next great Aussie talent, wherever they are and whatever their background.
You have a high ownership mentality, deep comfort with autonomy and ambiguity, confidence in your thought process and gut instincts, a willingness to adapt it to new information, a hunger for finding the truth, and a desire to help founders bring their better version of the future into the present.
You’re passionate about growing, strengthening and diversifying Australia’s tech ecosystem.
What you’ll do:
Generating Dealflow – You will create your own initiatives to magnetically attract the best founders to you. In the past, other Blackbirds have created things like (our annual, in-person, love letter to founders), , , or our .
Making Investments – You will be responsible for leading investments, including due diligence, running the process to get Investment Committee approval, negotiating the term-sheet and convincing founders to choose us as investors, getting agreement from all parties on the legal docs, and finally wiring the money.
Supporting Founders – As a board member, observer, shareholder, or advisor, you will provide exceptional support to the teams you interact with.
Doubling Down – For our best portfolio companies, you will help identify which companies we should continue investing in, and support follow-on investments into the companies we back.
Representing Blackbird to the World – You will become known to founders as someone they can trust, someone who treats founders with the highest level of integrity and care, and someone who people regularly send new, and interesting companies to meet.
Building Community and the Ecosystem – You will be a core part of building up our Blackbird community not only of founders but also operators, and LPs to connect the dots and make Australia and New Zealand the best place to build a startup.
Making Us Better – You will constantly question, and seek to improve our investment decision making processes, strengthen our culture, and lift up your colleagues in every way you can.
Supporting the Investment Team – Reporting into Blackbird’s General Partners, you will form an integral part of our 14-person strong investments team across Australia and New Zealand, including mentoring and managing junior investors.
The skills we’re looking for:
Your background is less important than your key skills (and you don’t have to tick every box to apply!). These skills might include:
Relationships
Leading projects you are passionate about, and building community around them
Advising and helping founders who go on to be successful
Investments
Articulating what you think makes products great and companies valuable
Having strong opinions on what are the greatest businesses and markets of tomorrow
Evaluating the psychological traits that lead founders to create the greatest companies ever built
Measuring the culture of an organisation and what environments lead the best people in the world to join and do their best work
Making investments into startups – both new and follow-on
Managing the investment process – from negotiation, to execution
Hospitality Mindset
Either having been a founder, or worked closely with them
For more info, check out our blog on , and our which we use to measure performance and make promotions.
Working at Blackbird
We believe that building a diverse and inclusive team is critical to Blackbird’s success. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. We use to ensure every applicant gets an equal chance of success.
We offer:
Flexible working: Whether it’s working from home or leaving early to pick up the kids from daycare or school.
Generous parental leave: We know family comes first, and we are proud to offer 20 weeks of parental leave for all parents (an additional 4 weeks for the birth parent), with no minimum tenure. In addition, we offer IVF, adoption and surrogacy leave. We also continue to pay superannuation and vest carried interest for up to 12 months of parental leave, and offer a supportive return-to-work policy to help with the ramp back.
Learning & Development Budget: Our team is hungry to continuously learn and you’ll receive a budget to spend on books, conferences, training, coaching and courses relating to your profession.
Wellbeing: We think in decades not days. To support our Blackbirds over the long haul we offer a range of holistic wellbeing benefits including a monthly healthy living allowance, 24/7 access to wellbeing support, a home office allowance, personal kit-kat days, and more!
Unplugged weekends: We work hard without letting work get in the way of life. We’ve implemented no Slack or emails on weekends, so you can switch off and enjoy yourself.
Connection: While being big fans of a fully distributed workforce, we value our vibe and time to connect online and IRL through team and company offsites, monthly social activities, weekly lunches and our many social clubs (#fun-manis, #fun-fantasybookclub, #bb-craft just to name a few!).
A share of Blackbird’s success: We think it is important to share successes with the whole team. All Blackbird employees receive carry in funds raised and ownership in management companies formed while they are at the firm.
Blackbird is a member – we pledge 1% of our time, equity and profits to help not-for-profit causes in our community. Through Pledge 1%, we established the to supercharge the creative capabilities of young people.
We are also very proud to have won the award in three categories including Overall winner. In 2022, we became certified as one of .
About Blackbird
Blackbird is an Australasian venture capital firm whose mission is to invest in wild hearts, with the wildest ideas, right at the beginning. We back generational ambition with generational ownership by raising funds and investing in the best startup companies all the way through their journey from idea to beyond IPO.
Our portfolio is worth over $7B and includes more than 130 companies across Australia and New Zealand, from Canva and CultureAmp to rising stars like Halter, Partly, Carepatron, Gilmour Space, Eucalyptus, Fleet and Tracksuit.
We’ve written a lot about what we love at Blackbird, so check out our if you want some more information about us. In particular, you should Blackbird VC to founders, read about , ) and .
Expected salary: $170000 per year
Location: Australia
Job date: Fri, 15 Mar 2024 08:37:48 GMT
Apply for the job now!