Job Description
First Round is a seed-stage venture capital firm on a mission to build and serve the world's strongest community of entrepreneurs. Uber, Roblox, Square and Notion are some of the companies we’ve been fortunate to partner with — and we’re just getting started. We're looking for a Program Operations Manager who can help us manage the operations behind our marquee Tracks.
Tracks are programs created for talented builders and investors. The aim of each Track is to help people develop fresh skills and form deep, new relationships. Our two most mature Tracks are Angel Track and Fast Track. It’s our belief if we do an amazing job helping the most talented people achieve their professional goals — we’ll be able to capture a tiny fraction of that value in all sorts of different ways that are valuable to our business.
Your core role as Program Operations Manager will include:
- Supporting our core Angel Track program. You’ll be responsible for running the operations behind our core Angel Track (AT) and AT Alumni program. You’ll manage the nuts and bolts behind the marketing of our program, curating the groups, and building core curriculum and programming. You’ll work with external stakeholders (angel investors) and internal stakeholders (our Partners) to bring this to life. We currently run Angel Track 2x a year.
- Setting up the Operations for our emerging Tracks. While running Angel Track, you’ll also help with the Operations of any other Tracks or Forums that we’ve put together for our AI community, early founder formation groups, rising star employees and so on. You’ll be responsible for project-managing each program to launch, ensuring that the instructors have the right content and context. You’ll coordinate everything from high level content down to individual decisions about food and session topics.
- Building our Community Infrastructure. Because our Tracks and Forums focus on both education and community, you’ll be charged with building infrastructure that will allow individual communities to connect with one another, share deals, and share experiences. You (and the infrastructure you build) will be at the heart of our ecosystems.
Bonus points if you are excited about:
- Inventing the future. We’ve built Angel Track over the last 5+ years, but we’re just getting started. We hope that you will be involved with inventing the future of this program along with all of our others.
- Streamlining processes. With so many different experiments over the years, we don’t have one standard way of doing things. We’re looking for someone excited to create playbooks for the rest of the team to use.
You could be a great Program Operations Manager at First Round if:
- You have startup experience. You’ve worked at a fast-growing startup or have worked in service of startups. You know what these customers care about, and how they operate.
- You move quickly. Early-stage work is fast-paced. You don’t wait to be told what to do, and you have an SLA with yourself around fast response times.
- You are obsessed with details. Maybe you were a former wedding planner or event coordinator. You might be the one organizing group vacations and sending out Venmo requests. You are absolutely on every little detail and your peers and friends comment on your impressive detail-orientation.
- You are comfortable behind the scenes. While we’re looking for someone who is excited to bring our communities together, you are comfortable with playing a behind-the-scenes role to other speakers and presenters.
- You are product-oriented. You don’t need to be a PM, but you can solve problems with a product lens and help us nail the different ‘jobs to be done' for emerging angel investors and other groups.
Our Values:
- Try harder for founders. They’re our customers — LPs are our shareholders. Going above and beyond for our founders is what we do. We strive to be a founder's most valuable investor. That’s why we don't pull term sheets, and we're always in for their second round. We respond to their emails in hours, not days. We build candidate pipelines, unprompted. We arrange meal deliveries when they become a new parent. Simply put, we go above and beyond to earn that right to be their first call every time there’s a bump in the road.
- Give your unvarnished opinions and unwavering support. We strive to be kind, not nice. One of the most (counterintuitively) compassionate things you can do is to offer your unvarnished opinion — along with your unwavering support. That willingness to risk a fleeting moment of discomfort in exchange for someone else’s growth is long-term kindness.
- Treat the little things like big things. Everything can always be made better. We’re all about the carefully crafted, the nitty-gritty, and the bespoke. Whether it’s hand cutting each nameplate, or debating the optimal shape of the dinner table, no detail is too small to sweat.
- Make speed a habit. Whatever you’re building, remember that now is better than two weeks from now. We’re fans of starting small and iterating quickly. No matter what we’re launching, you’ll likely hear this question in a meeting: “How soon can we get something out there?”
- Invent and wander. Never stop experimenting. The best ideas are born out of experimentation. Our flagship programs have always come from our penchant for going out on a limb and approaching problems with a different perspective.
- Build wider doorways and longer tables. We're in the business of backing people and betting on their ideas — no matter where they come from. While talent is evenly distributed, opportunity is not. We need to break down barriers in our investment process, and make sure our work doesn’t stop after writing a check. Everything from the composition of our team to the inclusiveness of our community impacts how we can support founders. First Round is dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workspace. We encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply because we believe that our diverse team helps us build and serve the strongest community of entrepreneurs.
The pay range for this role is $80,000-$120,000 and will be determined by a candidate's experience level. Our talent team is happy to share more details about our total compensation and benefits package.
