Title: Investment Associate
Location: Denver, CO (Role must be based in the Colorado Front Range)
Type: Full-time, W-2 employee
About Wildwood Ventures
Wildwood Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that builds and invests in human-focused technology businesses that bring Life to the Full. Focused on the market for Healthy & Active Lifestyles, Wildwood spun out of VF Corporation (The North Face, Vans, et. al. NYSE: VFC) as its anchor limited partner. Wildwood’s B2C and B2B investments help people improve their health, explore and move, train to win, connect with others, and focus their mind and spirit. Wildwood believes that meeting human needs and delivering strong investor returns are deeply reinforcing ideas.
The Role
We’re hiring an Investment Associate to help us find, evaluate, and support the next generation of startups improving human health and wellbeing. You’ll work directly with Wildwood’s partners and principals on investment sourcing, diligence, and portfolio support. This is an earlier career role (i.e., 2-6 years post undergrad). The role is critical to Wildwood’s success and will provide broad exposure to both early-stage venture capital and how Wildwood actively helps build ‘0-1’ businesses.
What You’ll Do
Primary responsibilities:
- Sourcing: Proactively generate deal flow that leads to strong pitches to Wildwood’s Investment Committee. Key activities include founder research; initial founder outreach; managing all of Wildwood’s top of funnel processes and communications; partnering with Wildwood’s scout network; networking at key founder events; owning Wildwood’s sourcing tools; and ensuring a data-based approach to all sourcing activities.
- Due diligence: Lead diligence activities for high-priority startups working alongside Wildwood principals and partners. Key activities include conducting research on startup market, business model and GTM opportunities; completing founder reference checks; projecting cap table dynamics, performing legal and regulatory diligence; drafting term sheets and investment memos; and working with outside legal counsel to close deals.
Secondary responsibilities:
- Portfolio company support: Complete targeted work streams alongside Wildwood principals that drive tangible progress across areas like Product & Customer, Unit Economics, Growth & Scale, Team, and Finance.
- Thesis & Research: Develop and refine Wildwood investment themes, including describing industry dynamics, developing market maps, projecting new business models, and analyzing exit pathways.
- Platform Support: Contribute to activities that build Wildwood community and market leadership, such as executing Wildwood’s Founder Forum or planning Wildwood-sponsored founder events to source new investments.
Qualifications that Will Make You Successful
- Experience assessing other companies: 2-6 years of experience building muscle assessing other companies and new market spaces (e.g., venture or PE investing, investment banking, consulting).
- Maturity beyond your years: You will work with a very experienced Wildwood team that averages 20+ years of career experience.
- Empathy & curiosity: You love meeting founders, asking genuine questions, and giving founders a great first impression of Wildwood.
- Structured, analytical thinking: You can turn the messy world of ‘0-1’ venture into crisp ideas that help the Wildwood team gauge risk and return potential.
- Pattern recognition: You can process a high volume of ideas, models, and companies and quickly spot patterns that increase the odds for success.
- Great communication: You prioritize listening first, and you love to speak and write what you’ve learned in crisp, compelling ways.
- Highly organized: You ensure key details and key communication needs (e.g., with founders) don’t slip through the cracks; you help give a great experience.
- Core tool proficiency: You are comfortable getting the most of a range of productivity and sales tools, from Excel to PPT to LLMs to CRMs.
- Team player: You are a low-ego collaborator who defaults to ‘we’ not ‘I’, and no work is beneath you if it helps Wildwood to achieve its mission.
- Desire to grow: You’re building your career and truly desire to learn the world of early-stage venture investing.
Don’t meet every single requirement? We still encourage you to apply, as great candidates can come from many pathways.
Compensation & Benefits
- $80,000 – $100,000 base salary with 10% target annual bonus.
- Generous health benefits through Wildwood’s PEO.
- Carry participation.
- Flexible vacation and multiple company holidays.
- Small support stipend for moving, if relevant.
How We Hire
- Apply HERE by submitting a resume, cover note, and answer a few more questions.
- You interview with team members
- We do reference checks
- We make an offer
- You accept, and we’re off to the races
We seek to fill this role immediately, so if you are interested, please don’t delay.
