Location: California

Employment Type: Part time & Contract

Team: AI Fund

Who We Are:

AI is the new electricity: Just as electricity transformed numerous industries starting 100 years ago, AI is now poised to do the same. AI Fund is an early stage venture firm founded by Dr. Andrew Ng in 2017. Our portfolio companies utilize AI technology and applications to improve processes and efficiency. The AI Fund team combines their experiences as AI pioneers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investors, and operators. We are backed by a $176 million-dollar fund from top-tier VC firms.

Together, let’s build great companies that will move humanity forward.

What We Seek:

The Venture Partner will act as an auxiliary to the firm and will have the primary goal of helping launch companies. We are looking for individuals who have demonstrated the ability to start companies or invest in early stage companies. They should have the ability to morph and steward companies from zero to one and the investment prowess to know whether to invest our time in a project or kill it quickly.

What You Will be Doing:

The successful candidate will help create companies. They will work with Associates and the Partners to move a company through several stages:

Hypothesis and Early Validation:

We are looking for companies to be built in large markets and in areas where the market shifts are favorable for new opportunities or new disruptive products. The Venture Partner will work with Associates and the Partners to formulate a hypothesis and do early validation. This would include:

Definition of the problem

Understanding the competitive landscape

Market analysis

Early customer validation

Creating a pitch deck to get buy-off on hiring an FIR (Founder in Residence)

Hiring of FIR:

We will bring in leadership in the area of the hypothesis to further the progress of the startup idea.

The Venture Partner will be active in the recruiting process of the FIR. The Venture Partner will act as a coach/mentor or as a sounding board to the FIR whenever necessary. The Venture Partner will continue to work with the FIR towards getting the company from zero to 1.

Launching a project:

We will invest in a project to build a team and seek external funding. The Venture Partner will be instrumental in hiring a CEO and building a team. Once this happens, they will take a step back and act in an advisory role. The Venture Partner will continue to work with the FIR towards getting the company from zero to 1 and fundraising.

What You Must Bring:

• Experience in building a successful startup from 0 to 1.
• Prior operating, product or engineering executive experience.
• Experience raising venture capital financing
• Strategic thinking.Highly collaborative work-style, pragmatic, and resourceful problem-solver
• Capability and desire to build relationships and network within the venture industry
• Demonstrated problem-solving, quantitative and qualitative analysis skills, including deep familiarity with high-tech startup
• Approaches work with an unparalleled level of personal ownership, responsibility, integrity, and ethics

Nice to Have:

• MBA, Engineering, or other advanced degrees are a big plus.
• Sales or business development experience is a plus.

Characteristics:

• Accountability: an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions while doing so with the highest regard for integrity.
• Leadership: able to influence others to follow you and lead the team to a brighter future.
• Grit. able to stick with projects and work hard through good and bad times. High pain tolerance and can perform well under stress or pressure.
• Scrappy: Takes initiative and proactively gets things done with low resources, but doing creative things, begging, borrowing, and whatever is needed in an ambiguous environment or situation.
• Ownership orientation: Demonstrated orientation of extreme ownership over all aspects of the company and extremely results-driven in nature.

At AI Fund, we are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information (including characteristics and testing), military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law. AI Fund believes that diversity and inclusion among our employees is critical to our success as a company, and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. Selection for employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.