Head Of Investor Relations

‍Blackbird is looking to hire a Head of Investor Relations to build upon our treasured relationships with institutional and individual LPs.  Help us elevate our firm as we progress through our second decade of backing Australia and New Zealand’s most ambitious founders.

Blackbird manages in excess of $5.5B of net asset value for over 250 individual and institutional investors, including some of the largest Australian superannuation and sovereign wealth funds, and offshore institutions. The business of Blackbird is one of relationships not transactions and you will bring a hospitality mindset to every investor’s experience with us. You will deepen relationships with our current investors and build relationships with prospective investors for future funds.

You will have support. In your team will be an Investor Relations associate and you will work closely with Blackbird’s partners, investment and operations teams.

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Build investor confidence

• Manage the creation and delivery of Investor information to deliver meaningful insights on the progress of our funds and the underlying companies.
• Work closely with our funds finance, investment, and other teams to maintain key fund metrics, benchmark, and market data.
• Be the first point of call for the day-to-day communications with investors and work across Blackbird to ensure that each request is handled with speed and clarity.

Strengthen Investor Relationships

• Plan and execute our programme of Investor engagement including quarterly webinars, annual general meeting, and ad-hoc experiences.
• Support Blackbird’s partners for all LP interactions and ensure scalable delivery of their insights across our diverse investor base.
• Build excellent relationships with the people behind our investors, bringing a hospitality mindset to make every interaction memorable.

Manage coinvestment

• Manage Blackbird’s coinvestment programme including working with the investment team to identify a pipeline of opportunities, communicating opportunities with our coinvesting LPs, supporting LPs in their due diligence, working with the operations and investment teams on transaction execution, and managing post-investment reporting.

Raise future funds

• Work with existing investors to address their pain points and maintain their commitment over multiple fund cycles
• Identify prospective long term partners for Blackbird’s funds, with a view to multiple commitments over many decades and fund cycles
• From announcement to close, you’ll manage the formation of new funds, including:
• Authoring marketing and fundraising materials;
• Identifying and implementing the most appropriate systems and processes to ensure an efficient fundraise;
• Tracking a pipeline of fund commitments and communicating this internally;
• Maintaining the fund data room;
• Assisting potential investors with their decision process and managing any investor due diligence requests
• Work closely with the partners in pitch and due diligence sessions.
• Work closely with the Operations team to ensure each investor’s compliance obligations are met, all their legal feedback has been adequately addressed and maintain a hospitality mindset to onboarding investors in the new funds.

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• Planning and project management - an ability to maintain a scalable system for Investor Relations and identify opportunities to level up our processes, materials, and LP engagement.
• Relationships - At the heart of this role is building great relationships. Great relationships are built in drips and lost in buckets. You will be devoted to an investor’s success but also recognise that trust is built by communicating the bad as well as good news.
• Clarity of thought - We prize those with an innate ability to communicate complex topics in a clear, simple, and concise way - either through sharp prose or powerful visuals.
• Personality - We wear t-shirts. Your content, method of delivery, and the presentations themselves should be creative and express the cultural values of Blackbird.
• Entrepreneurial - You’ll be pioneering Investor Relations at Blackbird and will have full autonomy. You need to be biased to action and build things yourself.
• Humility, low-ego - We are a small team and no-one is too good to do anything. We all take out the garbage.
• Hospitality Mindset In our dealings with founders and investors, we take a hospitality mindset. We serve our founders, not the other way around. We are about people, not companies. Similarly, we treat our colleagues with generosity and respect. One team, one dream.

We’re looking for someone who is as passionate as us about building an iconic investment business. You must have a high ownership mentality and the ability to take responsibility for goals and outcomes.

This is a full time role and can be based in our Melbourne or Sydney offices.

We believe that building a diverse and inclusive team is critical to Blackbird’s success. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. We use Applied to ensure every applicant gets an equal chance of success.

• Flexible working: Whether it’s working from home or leaving early to pick up the kids from daycare or school.
• Generous parental leave: We know family comes first, and we are proud to offer 20 weeks of parental leave for all parents (an additional 4 weeks for the birth parent), with no minimum tenure. In addition, we offer IVF, adoption and surrogacy leave. We also continue to pay superannuation and vest carried interest for up to 12 months of parental leave, and offer a supportive return-to-work policy to help with the ramp back.
• Learning & Development Budget: Our team is hungry to continuously learn and you’ll receive a budget to spend on books, conferences, training, coaching and courses relating to your profession.
• Wellbeing: We think in decades not days. To support our Blackbirds over the long haul we offer a range of holistic wellbeing benefits including a monthly healthy living allowance, 24/7 access to wellbeing support, a home office allowance, personal kit-kat days, and more!
• Unplugged weekends: We work hard without letting work get in the way of life. We’ve implemented no Slack or emails on weekends, so you can switch off and enjoy yourself.
• Connection: While being big fans of a fully distributed workforce, we value our vibe and time to connect online and IRL through team and company offsites, monthly social activities, weekly lunches and our many social clubs (#fun-manis, #fun-fantasybookclub, #bb-craft just to name a few!).

Blackbird is a Pledge 1% member —  we pledge 1% of our time, equity and profits to help not-for-profit causes in our community. Through Pledge 1%, we established the Blackbird Foundation to supercharge the creative capabilities of young people.

We are also very proud to have won the 2023 AFR Best Place to Work award in three categories including Overall winner. In 2022, we became certified as one of Australia’s Great Places to Work.

Blackbird is Australia's biggest venture capital fund whose mission is to supercharge Australia and New Zealand’s most ambitious founders. We do this by raising venture capital funds, investing into the best startup companies and helping them succeed. Our portfolio is worth over $7B, and includes more than 130 companies across Australia and New Zealand, from Canva and CultureAmp to rising stars like Halter, Partly, Carepatron, Gilmour Space, Eucalyptus, Fleet and Tracksuit.

We are inspired by investment firms such as Berkshire Hathaway and Bridgewater Associates. Like the companies we back, we want to build a business that lasts for decades and produces excellent returns for our investors. Most of all, we want to support our region’s most talented founders build category-defining technology companies.

We’ve written a lot about what we love at Blackbird, so check out our blog if you want some more information about us. In particular, you should read about our mission and values, our Blackbird’s Operating Principles (BOPs) and what we look for in founders.

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