Third Sphere Interim IR and Growth Team - Third Sphere

Third Sphere Interim IR and Growth Team

Contract role for 4 months with pathway to full time.

We’re growing the leading team in early stage climate VC and credit to include investor relations and growth stage investing.

Are you a marketing or sales operator/executive looking to increase your fundraising experience? Are you a seasoned investor relations person looking to transition into the climate tech ecosystem? Would you be excited to invest in our best growth startup founders? If you have answered yes to any of these questions, we would love to hear from you.

The Third Sphere is looking for our interim IR (investor relations) and Growth team members.

Over four months, you’ll work with our partners to fundraise, invest, and help our fastest growing portfolio companies raise their next rounds. This will include:

• preparing deal memos and diligence material
• helping to structure special purpose vehicles
• leveraging our collective networks and platform to vet and secure limited partners (LPs) to fund the investment(s)

What Third Sphere Can Offer
Third Sphere has invested in over 100 climate tech startups since 2013 including category leading companies like Bowery Farming, Future Motion, Cove Tool, Resonant Link, Near Space Labs, Mill, and more. We are often the first call when promising climate tech startup founders want investment partners who have software+hardware building, shipping, and operating experience to support their fundraise and launch.

This is a unique opportunity to leverage your skills and network to help us add value to our portfolio companies and continue to expand our LP community. You will have the full support of our admin, legal, and investment partners teams. Hopefully this experience will contribute to your investing track record and exposure to the climatetech ecosystem. You will receive an $8,000 stipend and will earn a share of management fee and carry associated with the SPVs (performance dependent). This role may lead to a full time position as part of our investor relations and/or growth investing team.

Examples of Portfolio Company Recent Successes
Climate tailwinds are driving rapid growth and impact across our portfolio. Some recent examples:

“We currently have $17.6M in ARR and the last $2M was added in just the past week!”
– raising a $15M series A which we could get a $5M allocation

“We had significant wins in 2022. We grew our ARR from $43k to $1.4m”
– opportunity to preempt next round with a $2M bridge.

“We did $15m in 2022 and we’re on track to do 4x that in 2023.”
– opportunity to lead/participate in series C with $10M allocation

“Our revenue projection at fundraise was $10M+. We are on track to hit $30M”
– opportunity to lead/participate in series C with $15M allocation

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Third Sphere?

Third Sphere is a leading climate tech early stage investor. We invest in and work with founders accelerating the transformation of global systems to better serve humanity and the planet now and into the future. We begin at the very earliest stages of a company’s life and focus on coaching, connections and capital. Coaching is done by our VC team partners and connections are made to members of Third Sphere Network of over 12,000 founders, investors, customers, partners and experts. Capital comes from our three fund platforms – VC, Credit, and Asia PE. Many of our companies have gone on to raise rounds at $1B+ valuations, and many have exited. Our portfolio has helped avoid > 30Mtco2e plus other adaptation / resilience related impact metrics. We’re often ranked in the top 1-10% of early stage climate tech investors on founder driven platforms like NFX Signal and FoundersChoice.

What is the long term opportunity with Third Sphere?

We often have super-pro rata access to allocations in our best portfolio companies. We also often are invited to invest in later stage companies. Our IR team will tackle these two opportunities by growing our investment capacity and experience set. This would ultimately be a distinct investment team and fund benefiting from all of our flagship seed fund’s deal access and tools.

Who can apply?

This opportunity is for anyone who has a background in investor relations or otherwise has a network and background with family offices, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, or other LP investors, and is interested in helping the most promising startups accelerate their impact in climate tech. This might mean you’re interested in a career that has more impact on climate change, or that you are already working with investors but want a path to more responsibilities and shared upside. The role is remote so you can be anywhere but ideally still able to join PST friendly virtual meetings. Optionally, we meet regularly in San Francisco for F2F time and IRL meetings.

How will you select?

All potential team members are vetted through a bias reduced and project based process. This may include asking you to produce a work output that we can then do a blind assessment compared to other candidates. This may also mean a quantitative assessment of your Linkedin profile. No one part of our process is a determining factor, but an aggregate merit based assessment will determine the 1 or 2 people we chose.

Must haves:

• a sense of urgency and value the courtesy of professional responsiveness
• highly proactive with a strong work ethic
• ability to thrive in positions of ambiguity
• excellent interpersonal, communication, and negotiation skills
• strong writing skills: The ability to communicate effectively through the written word is a critical skill
• comfortable with asking questions
• reliable and behave congruently with your values
• No-task-is-too-small, team-player attitude
• curiosity and growth oriented
• ability to submit verification of legal right to work in the United States, without company sponsorship

Nice to haves (but not requirements):

• a proven track record of raising millions of dollars in assets annually through deep and robust investor relationships across a wide spectrum of investors.
• demonstrated ability to build a pipeline of clients and renew clients. You bring with you a vast network of family offices, foundations, wealth advisors, and/or institutional relationships that are active investors in venture capital.
• an entrepreneurial mindset with a keen interest in startups displayed through deep knowledge and previous start-up work experience.
• ability to draw insights from data
• experience in financial modeling

What will I be doing?

You will join our team as we work. We’re not doing case studies, we’re working with real companies. This track has a very specific emphasis – fundraising.

IR Track
You’ll be helping our team in 2 ways – diligence and fundraising. Specific work will include some or all of:

• Deal memo and other investor collateral and diligence material creation
• Dataroom and other fundraise material feedback and support (startup facing)
• LP research, data management, and sourcing
• SPV structuring and execution (we will provide full legal and backend support)
• Coordination of meetings, communications, and distribution of materials
• Coordination of investor networking, including event strategy and execution (with full support of our team)
• Attend fundraising-focused events to nurture existing relationships and form new partnerships with prospective investors

Further, you’re likely going to engage with specific company founders on our participation and support of their fundraise. So you can also expect to learn about a specific startup, climate problem, industry, technologies, as well as fundraising from LPs and other VCs.

What does success look like and is the timeline fixed?

Success would be accomplishing the fundraising goals for the investment we decide to do while supporting developing our investor relationships for other fundraises. Volume and quantity of first calls is enough to get a sense of work output, work style, and culture fit. If needed, we could extend for more months. Whether we continue together in a FT, PT or consultant capacity – you would retain any earned management fees or carry.

How would I get up to speed with relevant portfolio companies quickly?

We have tons of material and full access to the teams in most cases. The structure of the program allows time for this prep work.

Can I interview for a full-time role another way?

Depending on your track record, experience, and references, we welcome the possibility to explore a different approach.

Equal Opportunity Statement
Third Sphere does not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, education, age, height, weight, physical or mental ability, veteran status, military obligations, family obligations or marital status. We encourage all to apply.