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Blackbird is hiring a Growth Investing Associate

Date Published:

March 31, 2021

Blackbird is searching for an Associate to focus on growth investments in the Blackbird portfolio.

Applications for this role have now closed

About The Role

Blackbird’s mission is to invest in the best Australian and New Zealand tech companies from the earliest stages and all the way through their lives. Last year we raised $650M for our fourth fund and have earmarked a lot of this capital for follow-on investments in our later stage companies. These include some of the most successful Australian startups such as Canva, SafetyCulture, Culture Amp, Propeller and Baraja.

You will play an important role in how we support the later stages of our startup’s journeys. You’ll help the investment team make decisions by becoming an expert on these companies, bringing together all the data and creating investment reports. You’ll also be part of the late stage deal teams, helping us and our co-investors throughout the transaction process.

Key Responsibilities:

Be the expert on late stage portfolio companies

Become the expert, akin to an in-house equity research analyst, on a handful of the late stage companies in the Blackbird portfolio (eg: Canva, SafetyCulture, Culture Amp, Propeller).

Build a strong relationship with these companies and a process for receiving, storing and analysing the data from these companies in an efficient way that provides excellent service to the companies.

Build models, dashboards and presentations for these companies to effectively update the rest of the investment team on the progress of the companies.

Benchmark the performance and valuation of these companies.

Late stage transactions

Using your expertise in our late stage companies, you’ll be proactive in deciding whether Blackbird should consider a follow-on investment in the company. In a nirvana-state we could say yes after the first meeting because we are wholly prepared.

Be an important part of the deal team for later stage transactions, overseeing the data analysis that goes into making follow-on investment and exit decisions and leading the writeup of our investment committee papers for these transactions.

Responsible for preparing the co-investment materials and liaising with our institutional investors to help them make their decision.

Work with the legal and operations team to help the transaction process to close the investment.

Ad hoc projects

Help with data gathering and analysis for ad hoc projects such as secondary sales and fundraising.

Work closely with team members in the investment and operations teams on data projects that overlap with late stage portfolio companies.

This is a full time role based in our Melbourne or Sydney offices.

Key Skills Required
Your background is less important than your skills, which should include the ability to:

Build a deep understanding of a company’s underlying business

Understand company financial statements

Understand the key performance metrics of businesses in different markets

Analyse and interpret data to synthesize key insights

Communicate well and create effective presentations and investment reports

Use core work tools in the role such as Excel and Powerpoint to deliver highly useful data analysis

Build relationships with key people at portfolio companies

Work independently and execute effective project and time management

Position Requirements

Non-negotiable values and attributes:

Truth - You have a deep discomfort with data not being in a clean, truthful state and once you have wrangled it into a good place, are process-driven to ensure that it will always remain so

Entrepreneurial - do, don’t tell; you are biased to action. When we make mistakes, we fess up to them, solve them and don't dwell on them. It is more important to move quickly than to be perfect. You must be able to come up with the idea, refine it into the most minimally viable yet awesome version and build it yourself.

Humility, low-ego - we are a small team, no-one is too good to do anything/everything. We all take out the trash.

Hospitality Mindset - In our dealings with founders and investors, we take a hospitality mindset. We serve our founders, not the other way around. We are about people, not companies. Similarly, we treat our colleagues with generosity and respect. One team, one dream.

Product Mindset - Can you scale it exponentially (rather than linearly)? Things that are scalable: culture, communities, protocols, languages, directories, playbooks, software etc. Things that are not scalable: service relationships.

We’re looking for someone who is as obsessed as we are about building an iconic investment firm. In this role, you’ll be able to build relationships with some of Australia and New Zealand’s best technology companies and play a meaningful role in our Blackbird can support their success.

You’ll bring your skills in modelling and data analysis to supercharge our systems, working closely with our investment and operations teams, including the Partners responsible for the late stage portfolio company and leading the investment decision.

**Inside Blackbird's Melbourne office.**

Applications for this role have now closed

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 Applied to ensure every applicant gets an equal chance of success.

Our December 2020 Culture Amp engagement score was 93.

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 generous parental leave — 16 weeks for primary carer and 6 weeks for a secondary carer, subject to a 12 month minimum tenure. This includes a continuation of super payments while on unpaid parental leave and a supportive return-to-work policy.
Learning & Development: Our team is hungry to continuously learn and you’ll receive a budget to spend on whatever you’d like to learn — from coding courses to meditation.
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.
Sharing in Blackbird’s success: We think it is important to share successes with the whole team. All Blackbird employees receive carry in our funds and are the equivalent of owners in the management company.

Blackbird is a Pledge 1% member — we pledge 1% of our time, equity and profits to help not-for-profit causes in our community. The Blackbird Foundation has been set up explicitly to partner with organisations that believe in the potential of young people, and the importance of creativity.

About Blackbird

Blackbird is a venture capital firm whose mission is to supercharge Australia and New Zealand’s most ambitious founders. We do this by raising venture capital funds, investing into the best startup companies and helping them succeed. We have more than a billion dollars under management and a portfolio of 68 companies including some of the most successful Australian startups such as Canva, Zoox, SafetyCulture and Culture Amp.

Like the companies we back, we want to build a business that lasts for decades and produces excellent returns for our investors.

We’ve written a lot about what we love at Blackbird, so check out our blog if you want some more information about us. In particular, you should read about our mission and values, our master plan, and what we look for in founders.

Good Luck!