Job Drop 010

Week of 9/3/23 // Platform & Venture Ops, Weekly Jobs Roundup

Business Development Associate @ Catalyst Investors // 0-2 yrs exp // NYC // $75-$125K

Administrative Assistant @ Initialized Capital // SF // 1-3 yrs exp // $70-$85K

Administrative Assistant @ Initialized Capital // NYC // 1-3 yrs exp // $70-$85K

Investor Relations Associate @ Coinbase // 2+ yrs exp // Remote // $96-$113K

Operations Associate @ S2G Ventures // 3+ yrs exp // Chicago

Manager, Corporate Development @ Pfizer // 3-5 yrs exp // NYC // $90-$151K

Senior Investment Ops @ Iterative // SF or Singapore

Investment Operations Specialist @ [undisclosed investment firm] // Gresham, OR // $20/hr

Head of Finance @ Comcast Ventures // NYC // $166-$249K

Digital Marketing Director @ [undisclosed investment firm] // Austin

Managing Director, Capital Venture Cane Angel Network @ the University of Miami // 5 yrs exp // Miami

Investment Manager @ Techstars New York City Powered by JP Morgan // 7+ yrs exp // NYC // $100-$130K

HYBRID // Principal & Director of Operations @ Stray Works // NYC

Head of Communications and PR @ [undisclosed VC firm] // SF

Portfolio Manager @ WEX Venture Capital // 8+ yrs exp // Remote // $107-$142K

Director, Finance & Operations (Specialty Funds) @ Brookfield Asset Management // 9+ yrs exp // NYC // $160-$190K

PLATFORM-ADJACENT

Manager, Investor Relations @ Aurora // 5+ yrs exp // SF // $135-$216K

Account Manager, Startups – Healthcare and Life Sciences @ AWS // 5+ yrs exp // NYC // $73-$177K

USA Director, Asset Protection - Supply Chain AP Operations & Vertical Startups @ Walmart // 7+ yrs exp // Bentonville, AR

District Sales Manager, Startups @ AWS // 10+ yrs exp // SF // $149-$278K

Senior Account Manager, AWS Startups @ AWS // 10+ yrs exp // NYC // $114-$212K

👉 Missed last week’s Job Drop? Read it here

Platform Spotlight 🔎✨

⚡ FAST FACTS

# Years in Platform: 9
Size of Platform Team (including you): 1
# Years in VC prior to current Platform role: 0

1 // How do you define Platform?

Platform is creating and sustaining infrastructure behind the firm's brand and approach to portfolio support. This can vary significantly based on fund focus, maturity, resources, and goals. Platform means something different at each firm, and to be effective in a Platform role, it is essential to understand and align on what your firm leadership wants to achieve with Platform. Then design and deliver a program to make that happen.

2 // What was your Path to Platform?

After a few years at GE Capital, the financial services division within GE, I looked around to find the coolest thing happening at the company. At that time, this was definitely GE Ventures, and there was an open role as the second hire on what was then called the “commercial development” team (still early days in Platform back in 2014, before Platform was “Platform.”). For three years, I helped GEV’s ~100 portfolio companies navigate the parent company to further commercial opportunities and also managed programs for portfolio company leaders that leveraged GE’s reach and expertise (think roadshows in foreign markets, leadership training, brand workshops).

In 2018, I took a less conventional Platform role in joining the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), leading member relations for the trade group that supports the VC industry. Essentially, my job was “Platform for the venture industry” (vs. portfolio companies). I learned a ton about VC and met many great leaders across the venture ecosystem. But I always knew I wanted to get back to working more closely with young companies building their businesses, and late last year, I reunited with a former GEV colleague who was a co-founder of a new fund, Ironspring Ventures and was able to land an incredible opportunity as the team’s first head of Platform.

3 // Favorite part of the Platform role?

Working with so many brilliant people and exercising so many parts of my brain. On any given day, I’ll find myself getting smarter on the LATAM logistics market to further our team’s thought leadership, partnering with go-to-market leaders within our portfolio to create knowledge-sharing programs, designing network-building events for the firm, making connections with members of the media, and supporting key team operations and activities. As Ironspring’s first Platform leader, there is a ton of whitespace, and I love crafting new initiatives to accelerate the growth of our portfolio companies and help our team achieve many goals.

4 // What part of the Platform role surprised you?

How unbelievably supportive this community is. While I’m a Platform team of one, I feel like I have a solid 10-15 peer Platform leaders I consistently bounce ideas off of and ask for help – and I’m meeting new people to add to this list almost weekly. Platform people immediately understand each other, and you can knock down roadblocks and source new ideas very quickly by keeping up with groups like VC Platform and nurturing relationships you build on your own. I’ve never once had a peer Platform contact turn down an ask for guidance or a quick brainstorm.

5 // Break down your Platform role by function.

• Marketing: 50%

• Portfolio Support: 20%

• Community: 15%

• Operations: 10%

• HR/People: 5%

6 // Pitch a founder on the value of your firm’s Platform in 280 characters or less.

The Ironspring Ventures Platform is high touch and high impact through bespoke and programmatic efforts. As a sector-focused fund with deep expertise and relationships across the industrial ecosystem, we bring knowledge and resources hyper-relevant to our portfolio and network.

7 // What is your advice to Platform job seekers?

Be prepared to talk about how you’ve had exposure to and worked with startups, GPs, and key stakeholders across the VC landscape. To be successful in this role, it is valuable to understand the perspectives and needs of each group and prove that you can speak their language. Also, don’t count yourself out if you haven’t worked in venture or at a startup before. You can definitely make the case that you’ll be effective in Platform if you’ve built up a skillset that is applicable to what a firm is looking to accomplish with their Platform strategy – even if that means helping a team to figure out what they want Platform to be!

Reading 🗞️

Good Generalist/Bad Generalist 
Posted by: Christian Keil (@pronounced_kyle), via Twitter

I have been the Chief of Staff at Astranis for about four years now — so I have learned how to help a startup succeed when you're a non-technical generalist.

Spoiler: the answer is not "strategy."

Good Generalist/Bad Generalist 

Bad generalists use “80/20” as an excuse to do low-quality, incomplete work. Bad generalists give themselves passes when their version of "final" requires additional work before it is ready to be released into the world. Bad generalists rely on others to tell them what excellent work looks like, and begrudgingly slog through the hard parts of making great things.

Good generalists can crush both the 80/20 of a project and the 20/80: they work fast to deliver high-quality products, and excel at finding things to improve in products that other people consider complete. You can throw a good generalist onto any team and expect their work product to improve. Good generalists love polishing as much as sculpting, and have incredible attention to detail. Bad generalists ask “what is everyone asking for?”

Good generalists ask “what is nobody else doing?”

Bad generalists are terrified of turning anything in.

Bad generalists work in the shadows until they have generated a product that they “can stand behind,” which invariably look like well-polished turds. Bad generalists fail to get actionable feedback, causing their projects to stall at “good” without ever becoming “great.”

Good generalists are fearless. Good generalists stare at a blank page, and get something, anything, written down with incredible haste. Good generalists aren’t afraid to share their shitty first drafts. In fact, good generalists excel at generating shitty first drafts, and make incredible, step-change improvements in quality with every cycle of revision.

Bad generalists are wanna-be specialists. Bad generalists compensate for their lack of specialized skills by working slowly and tentatively. Bad generalists never get anything done, because they are afraid to be vulnerable and afraid to look incompetent.

Good generalists have concrete, specialized skills that can be brought to bear on a wide array of potential projects. Good generalists are effective communicators, rigorous systematizers, and know how to get shit done. Good generalists work quickly.

Bad generalists learn things that help themselves.

Good generalists learn things that help the company.

Bad generalists live at the surface level, and never dive deep enough to understand how things really work. Bad generalists can parrot what they’ve been told, but never know deeper “whys” behind those superficial explanations. To a specialist, a bad generalist is useless because the generalist knows nothing more than what the specialist already knows.

Good generalists know more about “the rest of the company” than everyone else. Good generalists ask great questions, and often know a startling amount about a startling number of topics — or at least immediately know who can help them when they get stumped. To a specialist, a good generalist is a resource for getting context about what the rest of the organization is doing.

Bad generalists hold onto their LEGOs — because they want to luxuriate in the knowledge they’ve built up, and fear becoming a beginner again.

Good generalists actively and enthusiastically hire their own replacements — because it means that their time is freed up to learn something new.

Are you hiring? 💼

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