At Dorm Room Fund, our work has never been more necessary – or more fun. We are backing the best student-founded startups every day, writing their first checks, and finding the support students need to grow their businesses to pre-seed, seed, and beyond. Our alums stretch across the U.S, and our values – excitement, energy, and an insatiable curiosity – remain unchanged.
Those values define our culture, and our culture begins with our team. And that’s where you come in – DRF is hiring a new Director of Operations and Community. Read on for more details!
About us
In 2012, First Round Capital had a spicy idea.
After some back of the napkin math ($3T+ in companies started on campus in the last 30 years?!) and some lived student-founder experience (Josh, Hayley, and Bill all started their first successful companies at school), First Round realized that traditional VC was sleeping on student founders.
But how could we unlock top student talent? What if we brought together a group of all-star aspiring VCs and startup operators — who happened to be students — and empowered them to back student founders building the next wave of great companies?
Thus, Dorm Room Fund was born. And today, after three funds and millions of dollars invested, it’s clear we were on to something. Since 2012, DRF has backed some of the best startups led by visionary student founders at their earliest stages. Those founding teams have raised $2B+ in follow-on capital from some of the best funds in the world, and have created household names and more than $9B in value. Our companies have redefined industries, ICO’d, and are changing the world.
Along the way, we’ve built a vibrant community of hundreds of founders, alumni, mentors, and investors sharing ideas, connections, and experience. Our four student teams invest nationwide, with deep roots at places like Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Cal, Columbia, Cornell, and our original home, Penn. Our investor alumni are VC partners, startup founders, and operators at some of the greatest tech companies in the world—and are committed to helping the DRF community and our founders grow. And best of all? Despite our growing size, we’re still tight-knit—because once you’re in DRF, you’re #DRF4Life.
What we’re looking for
At DRF, the sky’s the limit: we’ve got a powerful community of friends and partners and our famous can-do spirit. We’re looking for a motivated, entrepreneurial operations powerhouse who can help us organize, productize, and execute to make it easier for founders to build and investors to back the next best student founder. We want someone who can dream up the next killer initiative, product, or idea and rally support behind them to make it happen, all while making sure the trains run on time.
DRF is a fund, and is also our startup — we’re looking for someone who wants to roll up their sleeves and build: from people and investment operations to summer programs, from partnerships to fund management. Your fingerprints will be on the future of this VC fund. We’re looking for someone who’s down to learn, explore, and grow with us for the long haul.
Core responsibilities
In a nutshell, you will own all of our operations and community, from surfacing needs of our investors and founders to building new programming to working on the operations end of our fund. You’ll work hand-in-hand with our CEO to drive the vision of DRF. More specifically:
- Build and grow sustainable internal infrastructure and operations in collaboration with the GP and our 60+ student investors
- Oversee day-to-day operations of the DRF Management Company
- Regularly connect and talk with founding teams to understand their progress, key challenges, needs, and resources that could help them achieve their goals
- Build connections within the Dorm Room Fund network online and offline (community members, in-residence folks, advisors, domain experts and industry leaders, contractors, service providers, etc.)
- Lead and design regular experiences that foster connections within the Dorm Room Fund community and directly address entrepreneurs’ needs (both surface and latent)
- Drive community events strategy, logistics, and budget, including the annual meeting, advisory board dinners, etc.
- Manage investment-related operations, including collecting cap tables, maintaining investment data room, and implementing and maintaining a portfolio management system; liaise with external counsel for fund formation and deal matters
- Liaise with the outsourced finance team to manage firm accounting and record-keeping, including planning and tracking the annual budgets for the Management Company and Fund
- Assist with management of investor relationships, including outreach, presentations, and data management
- Work closely with marketing partners to maintain and improve our presence on campus
- Work with our outsourced HR team to ensure processes are consistently administered in compliance with company policies
- Spearhead ad hoc special projects
Qualifications
- 5-7+ years of prior experience in an operations role in either a VC/PE firm or operating company/startup
- Strong communication skills with a high EQ; this is a people-facing role
- A sense of ownership of deliverables and commitment to delivering quality results with great attention to detail
- Legendary organization skills & a desire to build
- Investing experience is nice-to-have, but not required. This is not an investing role, though you will have a front seat to the investing side of VC.
- Integrity, a sense of humor, and a belief in the power of community
Location
Dorm Room Fund is located in New York and supports student-run companies from universities across the U.S. This position is entirely remote.
Benefits
- Competitive salary and benefits package
- Unlimited PTO
- A network of some of the best investors, builders, and partners in early stage venture
- Ground-floor access to building the future of a venture fund
- Vertical learning curve
- Opportunity to work alongside, support, and learn from the best and brightest at universities across the country
- A powerful community of friends and a dedicated, all-in partner-in-crime
To apply, please submit your application here.