VC Associate (New York)

COMPANYON VENTURES

New York City · Full-time

We're hiring an Investment Associate in New York to help us find and back the audacious founders of AI and software startups transforming how businesses thrive.

About Companyon: Companyon Ventures is a Boston and New York firm that leads and co-leads Seed and early Series A rounds in B2B software and applied AI companies. We back companies with real traction, typically $1M to $5M in ARR and growing more than 3x/year, with first checks of $1M to $4M, and we usually take a board or observer seat. We make only four or five new investments a year, so we can go deep with every founder, and our Expansion Team keeps helping companies grow long after we invest. We don't invest in consumer, healthcare, or life sciences.

The portfolio includes Micro1 ($4B), Flex ($1.2B), Posh, Sent, North and more.

The team is split between Boston and NYC, but this seat will be in NYC.

The Role

This is a sourcing role first. You will learn and do everything else — diligence, memos, board meetings, portfolio work — and we will teach you. But the reason this seat exists is that the best B2B founders should hear from Companyon about how we can help them scale as quickly and sustainably as possible.

What You’ll Do

• Source relentlessly. Meet founders constantly. Build the network that makes you the person a founder calls first. Building genuine connections, going to conferences and events etc.
• Run diligence. Own the work: market sizing, competitive maps, customer and reference calls, financial models, technical assessment, memo writing. 
• Be a public face. Write, host dinners, speak at events. Build Companyon’s brand in New York as your own.
• Build the machine. Own our pipeline and CRM, and use AI to do this job at a scale one person shouldn’t be able to. We expect this seat to be running agents and automations across sourcing, research, and diligence.

Who We’re Looking For

Your path here could look like a lot of things; you might have been a founding growth team member at a fast-growing startup, founded something that didn’t work, or invested somewhere else. Titles and logos matter less to us than how you think, how founders respond to you, and what you’ve built on your own initiative. The title on this seat is flexible — we’ll set it to the person we hire.

• You’re AI-native, and we’ll know within ten minutes. Not “I use ChatGPT.” You can walk us through something you shipped in the last month and what broke when you did. If you’re not already using AI to do more than your peers, this is the wrong seat.
• You’re obsessed with startups. You know what’s happening in early-stage B2B without anyone assigning it to you: who just raised, who’s quietly beating incumbents. 
• You’re excellent with people, and you can sell. Founders choose their investors, and at our stage they are choosing the person as much as the fund. 
• You’re high agency. You don’t wait to be told. You saw what needed doing and you’ve already started.
• You have opinions and you’ll defend them. We’d rather argue with you and lose than have you not speak up. Say the uncomfortable thing about a deal we all like.

Helpful, But Not Mandatory

• Competitive background of winning — varsity or professional athletics, the military, a competitive sales floor. 
• Founder or early-employee experience at a software/AI startup.
• Prior investing reps — angel checks, scouting, a fellowship, a fund.
• An existing NYC/SF founder network.
• Technical Affinity — mechanical, electrical, or otherwise will help evaluating novel physical AI technologies.

What You’ll Get Out Of It

Full-stack exposure to the whole job, immediately: sourcing, diligence, decisions, and the operational reality of companies going from product-market fit to real scale. We’re a small team, so there is no layer between you and the partners, and the scope of this role is largely what you make of it.

Logistics

Based in New York, in person most days, with regular travel to events, conferences, campuses etc.

*Not sponsoring H1-B Visas, Candidates must be authorized to work in the US.*

Competitive cash and equity compensation. Final title and compensation will reflect experience.