Red Sea Ventures

 

Chief of Staff

Red Sea Ventures is a leading NY-based, pre-seed and seed stage venture firm investing in tech-enabled, user-centric consumer startups. The firm’s portfolio companies include Allbirds, Casetext, Genies, Nest, Prose, Range, Sweetgreen and Sundays. We are looking to partner with mission driven founders seeking to transform the economy and the lives of their teams and users. We are an entrepreneurial firm that values friendliness, humility, camaraderie, collaboration, determination, independence, and hustle with a commitment to performance. We are building RSV as a platform for community; bringing together our visionary founders, LPs, and relationships at large, to support the companies we choose to partner with.

This role is a balance between strategy and sharp execution with 6 key areas of responsibilities: 

(1) Fund Operations & Internal Strategic Initiatives 

(2) GP Support

(3) Portfolio Support

(4) Fundraising Support & LP Communications

(5) Marketing, Communications, and Firm Brand Awareness 

(6) Events

This role is NOT an investment role. The position is a strategic and essential one requiring full attention to succeed. However, given the collaborative and boutique nature of our firm, you will be exposed to all facets of venture capital as a critical team member, participating in our weekly team meetings where we review new deals and existing portfolio companies. 

The ideal candidate is a self-motivated, multi-talented player, that is highly detail oriented, process minded, and above all action and results driven. The candidate is someone who thrives on keeping the trains running on time, learning new things quickly and determining the most efficient solution to meaningful challenges for our firm and our entrepreneurs. 

We are asking you to commit to the role for a 2 year period. We expect that after 2 years, you would be well prepared to (1) take on more senior leadership building out the operations and portfolio team for our firm, (2) build a startup with our support, or (3) join a portfolio company or other startup in an operations or BD role. 

1. Fund Operations & Internal Strategic initiatives
   • Execute on special projects and project manage internal initiatives that come through the partnership. Examples include:
     1. Support team in research projects
     2. Build proactive deal sourcing and screening tools
     3. Automate internal workflows and evaluate external tools that could provide the team with additional leverage
     4. Develop portfolio facing firm knowledge base
   • Run point on team meeting agenda and pipeline review (pipeline prioritization, next steps, etc)
2. GP Support
   • Managing email inbox and communication
   • Acting as an extension of the GP on all needs of the firm, including attending meetings on his behalf, acting as a liaison with the team’s CFO & fund admin, leading projects surrounding the team’s tech stack, partnering on hiring processes & the onboarding new employees, etc  
   • Work with GP to build internal processes & best practices 
3. Portfolio Support
   • Activate high-quality New York networks & team’s relationships to foster and leverage strategic relationships for our portfolio founders, constantly seeking ways to add value to the teams we back 
   • Develop RSV community tools (best practices’ guidebooks, network of service providers, product and service offers for portfolio companies)
4. Fundraising Support & LP Communications
   • Manage CRM of existing LPs and prospective LPs
   • Identify prospective LPs that match our firm’s stage & thesis and hone in on avenues to get in front of those LPs (cold outbound, Linkedin sourcing, etc)
   • Lead efforts to effectively deliver updates to our existing LP base and engage with them on a consistent basis
   • Collect quarterly updates from our portfolio companies in order to report out on traction developments or new rounds raised to existing LPs
   • Map out fundraising (GP/LP) events with high ROI for GP to attend 
   • Lead logistics & agenda planning for our AGM (Annual General Meeting), where we gather our LPs in person to provide updates on the venture market as well as our portfolio’s performance
5. Marketing, Communications, and Firm Brand Awareness
   • Communicate our firm’s mission to the world. Manage all RSV external communication (social media, website, monthly community newsletter, LP newsletter, etc)
   • Develop and share our insights. Assist in development of Red Sea Ventures content for distribution to broader community on recurring basis including deep dives and blog posts
   • Increase RSV’s presence at key ecosystem events. Plan team’s involvement at broader tech and industry events in NY and across the country
6.  Events 
   • Create an environment that consistently brings great people together. Strategize on, plan and produce RSV events with LPs entrepreneurs, high-level technology executives, and the greater NYC venture community
   • Develop master plan for large scale ecosystem events (planned 1-2x per year) and execute on the vision 
     1. Design the programming and speaker line up in partnership with the team
     2. Create budget, identify venue and sponsors 
     3. Handle invites & guest list, ensuring high quality attendance
     4. Liaison across all vendors and act as main POC throughout the planning process as well as on the day of the event 
   • Lead the planning & logistics for our smaller scale events planned on a quarterly basis (speaker dinners for emerging GPs & breakfast fireside chats for founders)
     1. Identify venue & sponsor
     2. Handle invites & guest list, ensuring high quality attendance 
     3. Research guest speaker and prepare guiding points for the discussion 

Requirements

• 2–4 years of experience, ideally in and around startups, especially in an operations, marketing, communications, PR, or business development role
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Editorial experience (personal or professional content) is a plus
• Ideally you have experience building a community (school, non-profit, professional…) and are an active contributor to the NY venture community with an extensive network across technology startups

Below are some of the qualities we are looking for: 

• Determined to Win: You rise to the occasion and push yourself to win. 
• Dynamic and Full of Hustle: You think like an “owner” with a determination to get things done. You spring to action and are not afraid to get your hands dirty. When facing obstacles, you find ways around them to get results for your team.
• Intellectually Curious, Critical Thinker: You love learning new things and going deep on new topics / disciplines. You frequently question the status quo. You exhibit a relentless willingness to pursue the truth.
• Passion for Creativity, Technology, and Startups: You likely started coming up with business ideas in high school and may have founded a company early in your career. When you hear about new technology companies, you are filled with enthusiasm for what could be. Many of the people you surround yourself with are people who work in tech, research, innovation, or are creatives.
• Independent and Self-starter: While you’ve worked well in teams and thrive on a collective mission, you understand that to move fast you often have to move alone. You don’t need frequent positive reinforcement but you appreciate feedback and transparency as a means to self improvement. This is also demonstrated by your strong opinions that are well-informed and have the ability to defend those opinions and the flexibility to adapt them when faced with new information.. 
• Community Builder: You thrive in group settings and always want to contribute to the community. You’ve likely built a community in the past (at school, via volunteering for a charity or some other social setting). 
• Multi-Tasker, Able to Prioritize: You are able to juggle multiple projects at once and have a system for completing your tasks/projects while able to constantly re-prioritize according to evolving needs. 
• Happy and Humble: Your friends, family and colleagues would describe you as gregarious, eager to experience the world, optimistic, pleasant to be around, flexible, helpful/always looking to assist those around you, determined to succeed but not at the cost of doing the right thing or treating people well. 

Apply Now: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdj5d7ZwxOKRvqxEr0RzThSaf4DDOaVxp8hnx6TDUpzIdMujA/viewform