Blackbird is Hiring: Portfolio Intelligence Analyst

Thank you for your interest and this position has now been closed.

Blackbird is looking for a quantitative connoisseur of high business performance to help us make great investment decisions. The role is solely focused on our existing portfolio and managing our internal investment decision making process.

About Blackbird

Blackbird is a venture capital firm whose mission is to supercharge Australia’s most ambitious founders. We do this by raising venture capital funds, investing into the best startup companies and helping them succeed. We have half a billion dollars under management and a portfolio of over 60 companies including some of the most successful Australian startups such as Canva, Zoox, Safety Culture and CultureAmp.

We are inspired by investment firms such as Berkshire Hathaway and Bridgewater Associates. Like the companies we back, we want to build a business that lasts for decades and produces excellent returns for our investors. Most of all, we want to support Australia’s most talented founders build category-defining technology companies.

We’ve written a lot about what we love at Blackbird, so check out our Medium for some more information about us, including our Mission and Values.

About the Role

The research analyst role will support the four investment partners of Blackbird in creating a prepared mind on the performance of our current portfolio, particularly those at later stages of their development.

Additionally, the role will be responsible for the analysis of our own decision making. Inspired by the lessons from Ray Dalio’s book Principles, Blackbird has reformatted our decision making process over the last year and thought deeply about what leads to great investments. You will be responsible for managing and auditing this framework and implementing constant improvements.

What this role is not:

• Cold outreach to new companies
• Meeting, sourcing new investments
• External facing

Role Responsibilities

• Financial Analysis: analysing the financial progress of our later stage portfolio companies and their public market comparables. As well as traditional financial statement analysis some other work examples include the “Mendoza line of SaaS” and “Triple triple double double”.
• Operational Analysis: for our software investments you will analyse the underlying operational metrics of each company to help identify greatness. The Social Capital 8-Ball framework is a useful place to start to understand this type of analysis. For our earlier stage investments you will also directly help the founding team instrument their business and be helpful to their internal planning.
• Decision Analysis: The job of Blackbird is to make great investment decisions. As we have expanded our partnership and assets under management we have codified our decision making to record our thoughts and learn how we can make better decisions in the future. You will manage the process of making investment decisions and continually perform analysis on what areas should be weighted higher or lower.
• Bias: We ruthlessly try to root out cognitive bias from our decision making and you will proactively identify the risk of certain types of bias in each decision we make.

Position Requirements

Background is less important than the key skills, which include:

• Financial and operational analysis of software and Internet companies.
• An ability to juggle a number of different projects in many different domains at the same time.
• A curious mind on a mission to find the truth in numbers. The great investment minds of our time — Mary Meeker, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Howard Marks — all look for the uncovered truth and prize independent thought. You should too.
• Ability to work closely with the Blackbird partners to make great investment decisions. We have a sense of ‘Enlightened Hospitality’, which simply means that the whole team has a focus on helping each other and collectively has an obsession for customer service to our founders and underlying investors.
• Passionate about creating, improving, monitoring and implementing investment decision frameworks. A growth mindset and a commitment to getting better every single day.
• Great at communicating both internally and externally.

We’re looking for someone who is as passionate as us about building an iconic investment business. You must have a high ownership mentality and the ability to take responsibility for goals and outcomes.