Investor- VP/Principal

About the Firm

Crystal Venture Partners is an early-stage venture fund focused on vertical AI in the risk economy. Risk is everywhere in the modern economy, and the businesses built to manage it sit at the center of nearly every industry that matters. We start with insurance because it touches every person, business, asset, and transaction, which gives us a view across the economy of how risk gets measured, priced, and transferred.

AI is changing what can be measured and understood, often in real time. That is opening new markets, changing the economics of existing ones, and creating opportunities for a new generation of companies.

Fund I is $33M, invested in a concentrated portfolio of 12 companies that includes WithCoverage, Sixfold, Gyde, Bright Harbor, Charter Space, and Advance. We invest early, take meaningful ownership, and work closely with the founders we back. Across the portfolio we have invested alongside firms including Bessemer Venture Partners, Box Group, Congruent Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed, Lowercarbon Capital, QED Investors, and Sequoia.

We find companies through the operators, executives, and fellow investors we know in these markets, which gets us to founders early. Building more of those channels and finding the next generation of exceptional founders is the core of this role.

More on the firm, our portfolio and our team: https://www.crystalventurepartners.com/

The Team

Investment team

• Jonathan Crystal, Managing Partner. Leads the firm and its investment decisions, drawing on decades of relationships among investors and senior insurance executives.
• Stephen McGovern, Principal. Runs sourcing, diligence, and portfolio work, and directs this role day to day.

Operations

• Cat Jordan, Chief of Staff. Leads the firm's operations, LP relationships, and the AI infrastructure a growing fund runs on.

The Role

This is a broad investment role, with responsibility across sourcing, thesis development, diligence, investment decisions, and portfolio work.

• Find and nurture relationships with exceptional founders and talent. Meet the people who will build the next generation of these companies, and the operators and engineers who will join them. Introductions come early, and the sourcing networks you develop here are genuinely yours.
• Build new sourcing channels. New channels are relationships: operators, executives, founders, and other investors who see companies before we do and call us first.
• Originate investment theses. Identify markets and structural changes worth understanding before they become consensus. Build areas of expertise where you know more than the rest of us, and use them to influence where we invest.
• Lead diligence. Carry an opportunity from first meeting to decision. Determine the questions that actually decide the answer, run market and company diligence, talk to customers and experts, assess the founders, take references, and build the unit economics from the ground up.
• Exercise independent judgment. Form your own view and put it into the investment discussion. Challenge us when you disagree, and expect us to do the same.
• Memo and recommendation. Write the memo and make the case. Negotiation and closing are led by the investment team, with this role alongside on the term sheet and the mechanics.
• Work with founders. Build relationships with our portfolio company leaders and be useful when something important is happening, from a key hire or a customer introduction to a difficult strategic decision.

What We Look For

We expect meaningful investing experience at a venture firm, a minimum of two years at the early stage, and a record of substantive participation in investment decisions.

We care more about the quality of that experience than the title or the number of years. You should be able to point to companies you found or evaluated, explain the investment case you made, and tell us what you got right and what you got wrong.

We tend to like people who are:

• Deeply curious about businesses, markets, technology, and people.
• Independent thinkers, willing to disagree.
• Commercially minded and analytically rigorous.
• Good judges of people, which early-stage investing demands on incomplete evidence.
• Excellent writers and clear communicators. The memo is our work product.
• Natural relationship builders, over years rather than quarters.
• Self-directed, inclined to pursue an idea rather than wait for an assignment.
• Intellectually honest, more interested in understanding when a view was wrong than in winning the argument.
• Active users of AI, exploring how it changes both the companies we invest in and the way investing itself gets done.

Experience in insurance is useful and not required. What matters is demonstrated investment judgment, curiosity, and the ability to build real expertise in a market.

What Success Looks Like

You make us better investors.

You find companies we would otherwise miss.

You develop ideas that change where we look.

Founders want to work with you. Your diligence gets us to the questions that matter. And when we are deciding whether to invest, your judgment carries weight.

As you demonstrate that judgment, you take on more responsibility.

Key Terms

• Title: Investor- VP/Principal
• Location: New York preferred. Hybrid.
• Experience: Minimum two years of early-stage investing.
• Stage: Early stage.
• Sectors: Vertical AI across the risk economy, including insurance, healthcare, construction, space, legal, cyber, climate, and fintech.
• Compensation: Base salary, discretionary bonus, and participation in carried interest.

How We Work

We are a small team by design, with direct access to investment decisions and real freedom to pursue an interesting idea. We are curious, direct, and comfortable challenging one another. We care about intellectual honesty more than hierarchy. We work hard, and we want to enjoy the people we work with.

AI is embedded throughout the firm. We use it across research, sourcing, diligence, portfolio work, and operations, and we are constantly experimenting with new models, tools, and ways of working.

We are building Crystal Venture Partners for the long term. The team and the portfolio are growing, and everyone here contributes to the ideas, the relationships, the reputation, the culture, and how the firm runs.

How to Apply

Apply here with your resume. We will be in touch if there is a fit.

Crystal Venture Partners is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status.