Chief Operating Officer

The Role

Pantera Capital is seeking an experienced COO to play a key role in the leadership, management, and strategic road‑mapping of the firm. The successful candidate will demonstrate the vision required to take a fresh look at our operations, information technology, compliance functions, and team architecture to design a best‑in‑class, scalable operating model.

The Opportunity

Pantera, the first cryptocurrency fund launched in the U.S., was founded in 2013 when bitcoin was at just $65 /BTC. The firm subsequently became the first to launch a blockchain‑focused venture fund and an early stage token fund. Pantera is led by Dan Morehead, former CFO and head of global macro at Tiger Management, and co‑CIO Joey Krug, co‑founder of Augur, the first major project built on Ethereum. Pantera currently manages roughly $6.4bn across four distinct strategies, providing retail and institutional investors with full‑spectrum exposure to the space. At the end of 2021, Pantera’s early‑stage token and liquid funds were up between 258% and 385% year‑to‑date. Its Venture Fund I (raised in 2013) yielded a gross TVPI of 21.6x, its Venture Fund II (raised in 2014) of roughly 7.2x, and Venture Fund III (raised in 2018) of 7.7x.

Key Responsibilities

• Optimize Firmwide Operations: Conduct a thorough review of each department and function to develop, enhance, and implement the policies and procedures that ensure appropriate standards are respected. Utilizing your knowledge of industry best practices, make recommendations for improvements to the operation of our back office, middle office, investment, and technology functions. implement changes as needed.
• Monitor: Focus on continuous improvement, monitoring the effectiveness of processes and procedures on an ongoing basis. Identify gaps or overlaps in our options to optimize efficiency and effectiveness. Ensure all compliance controls, best practices, and policies are in place and continually updated to meet changing legal, regulatory, fiduciary, and contractual obligations.
• Encourage Firmwide Collaboration: Serve as a connection point across the organization, ensuring priorities are communicated clearly and receive full buy‑in from relevant constituents. Encourage communication and transparency between all Pantera groups to ensure teams work together effectively and are focused on achieving firmwide objectives.
• Contribute to Leadership Discussions: Develop close relationships with senior managers at the firm to act as a firmwide touchpoint that can gain and raise awareness of operational issues. Keep senior leadership team of operational performance and key initiatives, providing timely updates that help inform strategic and planning discussions. Help set organizational priorities and develop strategic roadmap.
• Talent Management: Assess performance of groups and individuals to ensure we hire, fire, promote, and reward employees appropriately. Identify potential gaps in the firm’s human resources, develop a hiring roadmap and talent budget, and fill open positions with world‑class talent.
• Optimize Technology Stack: Sit on the technology steering committee, partnering with our CTO to help optimize the firm’s technology platform and develop strategic initiatives, including prioritization and resourcing of key projects and playing a critical role in meeting the firm’s evolving information reporting needs. Assess and determine an optimal in‑house versus outsourcing balance, ensuring the needs of our teams, founders, and investors are being met.
• Manage a Team: Directly manage and coach a meaningful number of direct reports. Provide feedback in a constructive and positive way to both junior and experienced members of the team, including to highly sophisticated and seasoned team members.
• Interface with Investors: Participate in discussions with investors and prospective investors, including helping lead prospective investors through operational due diligence processes and related meetings. Assist in ensuring the firm’s fiduciary obligations are met.

Professional Experience and Qualifications

• Minimum of 10 years of experience running complex operations functions within an asset management or technology firm. Prior COO experience in the asset management space strongly preferred.
• Motivated by working on cross‑functional projects with a broad range of processes, needs and topics. Ability to multi-task and prioritize assignments while producing high quality work.
• Outstanding analytical, organizational and project management skills. Willingness to operate in both a strategic and tactical capacity, ability to dive into technical details when needed strongly preferred.
• Ability to grow and manage highly sophisticated team; experience managing seasoned managers.
• Self‑motivated with strong sense of ownership, assertive follow‑through, and organizational skills; ability to operate independently with minimal supervision.
• Superior verbal and written communication, teamwork, and relationship‑building skills. Ability to get buy‑in from relevant constituents to make progress on operational priorities; capacity to influence an outcome by using fact‑based approach with communicational finesse.
• Substantial experience building and managing within a multi‑billion‑dollar firm that has seen rapid and significant growth.
• Demonstrated experience setting clear objectives, providing guidance, and giving open feedback. Proven ability to mentor and develop high‑performing teams to evolve and be prepared for a variety of growth initiatives.
• Strong process orientation and a demonstrated ability to budget, scope, execute and deliver projects in a timely and efficient manner.
• Experience leading investors and prospective investors through operational due diligence processes.
• Knowledge of – or interest in – cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

Education

• A Bachelor’s Degree (or equivalent) is required.