Investment Principal

📍 Sydney or Melbourne

We are looking for an experienced early stage investor to join our growing team. You might be a founder or an early employee of a startup and written a few angel cheques. Or you may have experience working inside a fund and looking for your next step in a highly ambitious and supportive environment. Or you may have another set of experiences that position you well to identify and support brilliant founders and help define the next wave of Rampersand’s growth. If this sounds like you – or someone you know – we’d love to hear from you.

About Us 

It’s not normal to change the world with technology, so we partner with founders who show abnormal potential. We believe in the power of the individual to change the world. It‘s often an investor who believes in a founder’s vision early on, writes a cheque, asks the right questions, backs them during a difficult time, or connects them to the right person, at the right time that can make a real difference for a founder. 

We’ve been in start-ups and tech for decades and actively investing in the Australian ecosystem since 2013. We’re a dedicated seed fund with $100m invested with 50+ founders across 30 start-ups like Sendle, Skedulo, Expert360, Cake Equity, Goterra and JigSpace. 

We deeply believe the AUSNZ region has more than its fair share of founders with the vision and tenacity to succeed. It’s our mission to find them and help catalyse that spark. This doesn’t just happen by studying spreadsheets, it happens by seeing the whole human.  

Not everyone sees what we see, and that’s okay. 

Once we back a founder’s vision, we act with bold intention to support the best possible outcome for them and their business. Sometimes we’ll be wrong, but we don’t go down without a fight.  

We embrace uncertainty, move fast, experiment and grow. While the industry has grown immensely since we first started backing founders, our mission remains the same. We back the founders who back themselves to change the world. 

Our team is made up of talented people from a variety of backgrounds and we align around Rampersand’s core values:  

  • Ramp it Up: back yourself, back your team 

  • Embrace Uncertaintity: make novel mistakes in the persuit of growth, embrace discomfort  

  • Abnormal Potential: uncover brillance in the abnormal 

We choose to partner with visionary founders and their teams, and when we do, we roll up our sleeves to help them achieve success, through a game changing Series A round and beyond. You can read more about us and what we do on our blog and get to know our team here

The Opportunity 

With a new fund we have fresh capital to deploy and an ambition to quickly grow the portfolio, and the value of that portfolio, and we are looking for someone who is able to hit the ground running while still eager to learn and develop new and better ways to operate (this is a high growth role).

As an Investment Principal, you will have the freedom and responsibility to uncover exceptional founders, execute on investments and support those founders as they build highly valuable businesses, working alongside the existing Rampersand team. You will contribute to a culture that cares deeply about the success and wellbeing of the founders we partner with and delivering returns to the investors who have trusted us with their personal capital, as well as the development and leadership of your fellow teammates.

What You’ll be Doing

As an experienced investor you already know that no two days are alike, but to give you a sense of the opportunity and expectations with this role, we anticipate you will gain broad exposure to all aspects of venture capital including:

  • Understanding and enhancing the Rampersand investment strategy, including the potential to contribute to portfolio strategy, identifying/leading investment efforts in new/emerging frontiers and general fund strategy

  • Expanding Rampersand’s community of founders, supporters and investors for the purposes of sourcing new investment opportunities, supporting portfolio companies for growth and follow on capital

  • Leading investments by uncovering startups and ambitious tech founders, guiding diligence and advocating in an articulate and thoughtful manner in team meetings and at the investment committee

  • Supporting Rampersand’s portfolio companies and founders to help unlock their next phase of growth 

  • Helping guide and develop other members of the Rampersand team to continuously improve and enhance the experience for Rampersand founders and investors

  • Continuing our efforts to rapidly accelerate the growth of a sustainable and inclusive Australian and New Zealand startup ecosystem, in particular via The Giant Warm Intro

About You

We have a flat organisational structure and we don’t see the world in a junior/senior way, but for this role, we are specifically looking for someone with a depth of experience investing in and mentoring early stage companies.

You might be a founder or early employee of a startup who has become an angel investor, or maybe you have worked within a seed/early stage fund for a few years, you have a strong emerging track record and you’re looking for your next move (maybe a clearer path to partner?). You are certainly both analytical and imaginative, commercially minded, people-centric and genuinely love and understand the startup journey. Some of the other traits we think are crucial for this role include:

  • An understanding of how investment and VC operates, including portfolio structuring and investment management

  • Insight and perspective on ‘what great looks like’, together with a curiosity and open-mindedness to learn and refine an investment thesis

  • Deep understanding and empathy with the founder journey and desire to be supportive and helpful in the good times and the bad. Proven interest and ability to attract the most ambitious founders, in particular those founders who know that money is only one part of the contribution an investor makes

  • A sense of the emerging opportunities in the technology world and areas where early stage Aus/NZ companies may have a critical advantage

  • Have a set of transferable experiences that can add value to founders (whether we invest or not). 

  • A clear communicator, team player and collaborator

  • Self-drive and ambition to for individual and shared success

Working at Rampersand

The role is full time and you’ll be based in Sydney or Melbourne with the flexibility to work from home while spending time with the team and the founders in the portfolio. You’ll also travel to startup events around Australia and join our team get-togethers for strategy sessions and celebrations.

You will share in the success of the Fund – Rampersand’s carry programme includes all team members.

Diversity and inclusion

Rampersand celebrates diversity and we’re committed to being inclusive in how we hire and work together and working towards closing the funding gap for underrepresented founders. We actively encourage the same across the ecosystem founding and running The Giant Warm Intro.

From our experience and within our team, there is no conventional path into VC. We believe in order to attract and invest in the best startups we need a team of diverse people. We need people that can add different experiences, thoughts and skills. Perhaps you come from a strategy role, or maybe you are a product manager within a growing or established tech company, or you have been a founder, or maybe it’s something else. No matter your background, we strongly encourage you to apply even if you are not sure you fit all of the criteria we’ve mentioned. 

How to Apply

Complete our application form below. The questions that you might want to prepare for are:

  • What interests you about joining a Venture Capital fund?

  • What experience do you have that will be valuable in assessing whether to invest in a startup or helping them achieve growth/success?

  • If you were to recommend a startup for Rampersand to invest in, what startup (that has raised up to $5m already) would that be? Why?

  • Describe your ideal work environment for you to be successful and engaged?

  • Can you share an example of a time your manager or a senior stakeholder disagreed with you. What was your response?

We’re still accepting applications! If you make the shortlist, we’ll ask that you attend a video or in person meeting. We can’t wait to meet you!

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