Behaviours over Badges

We're hiring at AirTree

What makes a successful VC?

Is it curiosity? Analytical skills? Sales acumen? Operating experience?

There’s one trait that trumps all others.

Agency.

The ability to develop a plan and take action, without anyone’s permission.

When you start as an investor at a VC fund, no one’s going to tell you exactly what to do. You have to figure out how you are going to find the very best founders and convince them to work with you.

Everyone does it differently.

Some people create meme accounts on Twitter to build a personal brand and generate inbound dealflow from followers.

Others become experts in a particular sector, meeting all the founders in that sector and winning deals based on their deep understanding of the problem the founder is solving.

There are even some who treat it as an outbound sales process, identifying founders through LinkedIn title searches and cold outreach.

There is no right way to find the next Canva or Go1 at seed stage. You need to find a way that’s authentic to you. One that feels easier for you than it does for other people. But every way that works involves agency. No one is going to give you a playbook to follow.

AirTree’s looking for agency, not credentials.

We’re hiring for the Investment team at AirTree and we don’t care where you worked before or what degree you did.

We want to see how you’ve shown agency in your life so far.

Do you have a side project? A blog or podcast? A niche e-commerce store? An NFT project? A stock portfolio?

Are you endlessly fascinated by how businesses solve wicked problems in new markets and scale to millions of customers, building enduring competitive advantage in the process?

Think you may need a few more years of experience before you join VC? Stop putting off your life for some imagined experience you may not need. Apply. What’s the worst that could happen?

Don’t know financial modelling? Nor did I when I joined AirTree. It’s not that hard to learn if you put in the hours and have support from your teammates.

Not sure if you want to be a VC or a founder? You don’t need to decide. If you don’t have an idea yet, VC is a great place to build a strong network of future cofounders and employees and learn how investors predict which companies can scale to billions of dollars of revenue.