Edition 11: Join The Buzz

Generalist Newsletter for Non-Technical Folks

September 13, 2024

Welcome to the eleventh edition! I am an early-stage investor in New York. I share impactful Biz, Ops, and Investment roles at early-stage startups and VCs.

This edition is fairly long, so here’s a breakdown:

  • Feature: SF/LA Tech Week

  • Useful Links: Unique Opportunities & Interesting Articles

  • Founder Resource: A Way To Spread The Word

  • Cool Early-Stage Companies: Cooking & Delivery Robots

  • Food For Thought: Tried out a text to video tool

  • Job Opportunities: Very early, early, late but impactful

Last week's most clicked links:

Investor roles were particularly popular last edition, so this week I have doubled down on that and tried to to include a wide range of investing opportunities, as well as other positions at venture capital firms.

  • Investor, Will Ventures (VC)

    • Early stage firm investing in sports, entertainments & health.

  • Investor, Geek Ventures (VC)

    • Founded by Ihar Mahaniok, Geek Ventures invests in US startups with immigrant founders disrupting $10B+ markets with AI.

  • Chief of Staff, 25Madison (VC)

    • Early-stage venture firm that both incubates and invests in startups with a focus on healthcare, supply chain & industrials, and AI-native B2B software.

Featured💫 

SF/LA Tech Week is officially the biggest tech week yet with over 850 events.

SF: Oct 7th - 13th | LA: Oct 14th - 20th

Here are my picks of the top events:

  • The Future of Entertainment with Andrew Chen (a16z), Carter Reum (M13), Jeffery Evans (Mantis), David Sabow (HSBC)

  • Founder Fireside Chat with Chris Best (Founder & CEO, Substack) 

  • Game Changers: Breakfast with Fenwick and a16z with Jon Lai (GP, a16z) and Kat Duncan (Partner, Fenwick)

  • How Design, Story, and AI are Changing Software with Siqi Chen (CEO, Runway)

  • AI Breakthrough: Finding Product-Market Fit with executives from Mistral AI, Pinecone, Anyscale, HSBC and a16z

  • SPEEDRUN Demo Day by a16z GAMES

You can see the entire calendar here.

  • Elliott Garlock is recruiting a VC partner into a newly established $50M seed fund focused on investing in Industrial 4.0 enterprise software and data platform businesses. Prominent LPs involved as well as excellent co-founders who I know well. More details about it forthcoming. If you are interested in getting involved at the ground floor of a new VC firm with big ambitions, send me him a DM.

  • Research Analyst to Anand Sanwal, Founder of CB Insights.

    • Anand’s post on this role“You'll work with me on projects in education, entrepreneurship & data/info services. These projects will, once successful, f^ck up the status quo. If this is you or you know someone, check it out. Must be smart, have a high bias to action, and a serious work ethic.”

  • Founding COO Search - Product sits at the intersection of medical device / FemTech / Pharma. Raised a $750k pre-seed to date from A-list names.

  • COO - Dwarkesh Patel’s Podcast. Dwarkesh Patel is one of the most prolific podcasters, consistently producing high-quality content focused on business, innovation, and entrepreneurship. His podcast frequently surpasses a million listens per episode, with growth exceeding 10x annually. He is looking for an exceptional individual to help elevate the podcast to the next level and needs help of someone exceptional to take it to the next level.

  • Uizard - Have an idea? Turn that idea into a UI design with functionality in minutes. Check out this video!

Founder Resource:

Megaphone - Go Viral on Demand

How it Works?

  1. After subscribing to get access to the network, make a deposit into your Megaphone Wallet. Your deposits are how you’ll boost posts.

  2. Post your content on X or LinkedIn like normal.

  3. Share the post’s URL and how much you want to spend to boost it with Megaphone.

You only get charged if our creators engage within an hour of receiving your post.

P.s I have never tried this myself but I am not sure if this type of engagement would be helpful in the long run but thought it was an interesting offering!

  • Cheffee - Robotic Chef that can be embedded into your kitchen. I can see a wold where every home comes fitted with one of these just like a dishwasher. Some other companies in this space Nymble / Moley Robotics

  • Mesa - Get Rewarded for paying your mortgage. In the same vein as Bilt Rewards, Mesa helps its customers pay their debt other home costs while offering rewards for doing so.

  • Coco - On ground autonomous robotic food delivery. We will start seeing them in action again on the roads. It’s been almost six years since I first saw Starship Robots delivering food across the Purdue campus. It will be fascinating to observe how this industry evolves. Despite the length of time Starship has been operational, execution ultimately trumps ideas.

Food For Thought:

  • People who want to break into VC, often ask me how did you transition from engineering to finance, but the reality is that I transitioned from engineering to sales.

    → VC's are focused on two things:

    ↳ Raising money from LPs (sell the fund)

    ↳ Deploying capital to founders (sell the partnership) (Example of a Great pitch of a VC to Founders)

  • New creator economy? This past weekend, I tried out LTX.studio, a tool that turns text into videos, and was super impressed by the results. I’m still refining my first video but hope to share it soon. I highly recommend trying it out! Here’s a quick start guide:

    1️⃣ Choose a unique idea and write a brief script with a plot, characters, and key scenes.
    2️⃣ Use LTX.studio to Design storyboards, characters, and add motion and sound effects.
    3️⃣ Export your project to editing software for final touches.

    I also asked ChatGPT for ways to monetize this skill, and here are some ideas:

    • Partner with brands for sponsorships.

    • Sell merchandise related to your videos.

    • Use Patreon for fan support.

    • Join the YouTube Partner Program to earn from ads.

    • Sell or rent your videos on platforms like Amazon Direct or Vimeo On Demand.

Fewer Than 10 Employees:

Remote:

  • Analyst, igniteXL (VC)

    • Global seed fund investing in health, technology, and consumer experiences. This role will involve gaining hands-on experience in how the Venture Capital, entrepreneurial, and startup ecosystems work. Applications are due by Sunday, September 15th.

  • Chief of Staff / Director of Ops, Kairon Health (HealthTech)

    • Software platform that helps physician practices succeed in value-based care (VBC) while growing their core business. They are the first platform to focus on parsing and aggregating qualitative practice operational data alongside patient clinical, financial, and outcomes data.

New York:

  • Chief of Staff, Luma Group (Investment Firm)

    • Investing in breakthrough scientific discoveries with a focus on next-generation therapeutics, AI/ML enabled drug discovery platforms, early disease detection and patient care technologies, and advanced data capture and analysis tools.

  • Investment Associate, Outsiders Fund (VC)

    • Early-stage VC firm supporting founders with outside perspectives disrupting overlooked, antiquated and long-standing industries.

  • Director, Business Development, New York Life Ventures (CVC)

    • Looking to bring someone on board who's passionate about startups and accelerating innovation within a large enterprise. The role is critical to driving change throughout NYL via development of strategic partnerships between NYL business units and startups.

  • Founding Account Executive, Cassidy (Enterprise)

    • an innovative no-code platform enabling businesses to create custom AI assistants that automate complex workflows. They are looking for a resourceful and agile Founding Account Executive to join their growing team, drive innovative sales strategies, and provide exceptional customer service and product expertise.

  • Strategic Finance Principal, Kimblewick (Advisory), NY

    • Boutique Strategic Finance & Operations advisory firm focused on exceptional, private companies. As the first Strategic Finance Principal, you will play a critical role in shaping strategies for our diverse client base.

  • Investment Partner, Joyance Partners (VC)

    • The firm invests in early-stage and growth companies in healthcare, longevity, consumer, software, and frontier tech – all with the underlying theme of promoting health, happiness, longevity, and delightful moments in everyday life.

California:

  • Investment Associate, The Schmidt Family Foundation (Impact Investing)

    • This is an exciting opportunity to join a team making investments across sustainable agriculture, clean energy, human rights, circular economy, and marine conservation.

  • Chief of Staff, Roame (Consumer Tech)

    • Roame is a flight search engine for your credit card points. Tim, Founder of Roame is looking for a 2nd pair of hands. The hire will have a front row seat on building a startup. This is a great role for people who want to eventually become a founder or COO.

Others:

  • Venture Analyst, RevTech Labs (VC), NC

    • Their investment thesis focuses on post-revenue, Fintech and Insurtech startups from around the globe with a heavy US/Canada focus. Average investment size is $200-$400k.

  • Principal, Earth Foundry (VC), IL

    • Investing in the future of ClimateTech.

Early But Not Too Early:

Remote:

  • Growth Marketing Manager, Certificial (Enterprise)

    • Backed by Cofounders Capital, Fin Capital, Certificial’s patented software uses real-time data to ensure businesses have continuous, compliant insurance coverage in their supply chains.

New York:

  • Strategy & Operations, Tandem (HealthTech)

    • Tandem works with all doctors, insurance, pharmacy to provide your with prescriptions hassle free.

California:

  • Operations Manager, Primary Venture Partners (VC)

    • Primary is a leading VC firm with a billion in assets under management The team commits unreasonable resources to create unfair advantages for the world’s top founders. The Ops Manager will work hand-in-hand with the Chief of Staff and other cross-functional team members on both portfolio-facing matters and internal operations.

  •  Investor, Index Ventures (VC)

    • A top tier VC fund focused on investing in people. Index Ventures is an international venture capital firm with offices in New York City, San Francisco, and London. They are looking for a new investor based in NYC. They develop investors in an apprentice-like manner with domain concentration. This role will be focused on infrastructure, security & AI, partnering closely with me.

  • VP of Credit, Gynger (Enterprise)

    • Recently raised $20 Million from PayPal Ventures, Gradient VC, BAG Ventures to build an embedded financing platform built for buyers and sellers of technology. They simplify the end-to-end purchasing process by enabling businesses to pay, finance, and manage all of their technology expenses from one platform. For sellers, they provide an opportunity to extend flexible payment options to their customers while still getting paid upfront.

  • Manager, Venture Builder, Capital One (VC)

    • Unique opportunity to work with senior leadership across Capital One, along with external entrepreneurs and investors, to identify, support and launch a series of new, strategically relevant, high potential technology businesses.

  • Program Director, First Round Capital (VC)

    • The role of the Program Director on the Founder Success team is leading the ideation, curation, planning and execution of programs and events that fill in those gaps and help founders develop new, crucial competencies. This could look like planning and hosting a 3-day retreat for B2B founders or producing a half-day fundraising best practices workshop.

  • Marketing Manager, Sapphire Ventures (VC)

    • Sapphire ventures is tech investment firm with over $10B in AUM. They have invested in more than 170 companies globally resulting in more than 30 IPOs and 45 acquisitions. Open to folks in Austin as well.

  • Customer Success Manager, Bland AI (Enterprise)

    • Backed by the founders of founders of Twilio, Affirm, ElevenLabs, Bland AI help enterprises make AI-phone agents at scale.

Late But Still Very Impactful :

  • Chief of Staff, National Geographic, DC

    • These roles don’t come about very often. If you are into media, especially into documentaries this role would be a perfect fit.

  • Impact Investing Associate, Centre on Rural Innovation, VT

    • The Center On Rural Innovation (CORI) is a nonprofit organization advancing economic prosperity in rural America through the creation of inclusive tech economy ecosystems that support scalable entrepreneurship and tech job creation.

  • Venture Associate, Wellington Management (Investment Firm), NY

    • As part of the continued expansion of our Private Investing capabilities, they are hiring a Venture Associate for Wellington Access Ventures (WAV), a venture capital fund focused on early-stage technology investments.

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