About Spero

Spero is Latin for hope. We help founders build a hopeful future.

We’re a team of former startup founders, operators, and investors from landmark companies including eBay, Tesla, and Stripe.

We invest in determined founders building mission-driven technology companies in three focus areas: wellbeing, sustainability and climate, and learning, work, and play. We are conviction-based investors who play the long game.

We prefer to lead or co-lead a $3-$10M round, late seed or Series A. We aspire to be a trusted partner to our founders; the investor that is on speed dial in tough times. We make a small number of investments per fund relative to our peers and try to engage deeply with the companies we back.

How you’ll spend your time

At Spero, we believe that venture capital is a team sport: we work together to identify, evaluate, and support our portfolio of mission-driven companies. We have an egalitarian work environment in which all voices around the table hold significant weight in the key decision to manage our portfolio. We are building a firm with intentional effort to help mentor the next generation of investors.

This role is a member of the investment team. You will spend most of your time learning about the latest trends and emerging technologies in Spero’s focus areas, identifying new opportunities in those spaces, and analyzing potential investments..

Specifically, you will:

• Source, analyze, and support early stage companies across Spero’s focus areas;
• Work closely with Spero’s principals and partners to evaluate new markets to explore and map, and in the process, writing publicly in a way that develops expertise in your area of focus;
• Connect and build relationships with the key leaders in the markets you cover via industry events, conferences, and other networking opportunities. This helps source new investment opportunities, unlocks business development relationships for the existing portfolio, and identifies executive talent for our portfolio to recruit;
• Represent Spero as a board observer for portfolio companies when you build a deep relationship during the sourcing process.

Who you are

You might be a good fit for this role if you:

• Are innately curious and get excited about learning the latest trends in innovation;
• Enjoy meeting new people and are energized by talking with the next generation of startup founders;
• Like rolling up your sleeves and digging into the research;
• Can digest and synthesize a lot of information, including communicating it clearly to others both verbally and in writing;
• Thrive in a self directed environment;
• Are willing and able to travel and attend events regularly.

Strong candidates might also:

• Already be thinking/writing publicly about their interests in technology. If this is you, include an example with your application!
• Work in proximity to start up founders and/or tech in general;
• Have unique access to a high potential pool of talent (startup alumni, solar car club at a university, live in a hacker house, started an online community, etc.)
• Be an early adopter or maker who is thinking about the next steps of innovation;

Highly qualified candidates might bring experience in one of the following:

• A couple of years as an analyst or associate at another VC;
• A couple of years at a startup, ideally across one or two rounds of funding; or
• Been a founder of your own company that you have since wrapped up.

Logistics

Spero is a fully remote firm. That said, given this role’s responsibilities we would prefer to hire someone who spends a lot of their time in a US tech hub.

To be considered for the role, please complete this form by EOD pacific time on April 1, 2024.

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