Creator Fund Associate Role

🚀 About Us

Creator Fund is a Deep Tech VC fund investing in startups across Europe’s leading universities. We believe that Europe’s next generation of unicorns will be founded by Scientific Founders. In the past 5 years, we have been the first investors in 58 companies across 9 countries.

We invest in Founders building on the frontier of what’s possible from reversing age-related infertility, to giving robots the power of human touch, to autonomous flight, and engraving the world’s data on glass. Each one of these companies was founded by Scientific Founders turning breakthroughs into foundational companies tackling the world’s biggest challenges.

Creator Fund helps PhDs make this leap. We have teams at 30 universities across Europe to discover Scientific Founders inside the laboratory, and we write pre-seed cheques of up to £1 million. This is a model that has been a catalyst for successful student startups in the USA, and Creator Fund is the first to scale this across Europe. We invest across Artificial Intelligence, BioTech, Robotics, Materials, and Physics.

We have recently closed our latest €50 million Fund. It will make 45 investments over 4 years. This is our first pan-European fund, and with this capital, we are scaling to every top laboratory across the continent. This means we will meet Europe’s best Scientific Founders first, wherever they are building.

We are a team of 5 in London. This is a chance to join Creator Fund at a time of rapid growth and have a significant impact in helping us build Europe’s defining pre-seed Deep Tech VC.

🧩 The Role

We are looking for an Associate (or Senior Analyst) to join our Investment Team. This role will be involved in transactions across every stage of a deal: sourcing, evaluating, winning over founding teams, negotiating terms, and working with founders post-investment. There will be training at first, but we would expect the Associate to quickly get up to speed and take primary responsibility for their own deals. Over time, the Associate would sit on the Boards of our companies.

A significant portion of this role will be originating and winning deals in continental Europe. Creator Fund has a strong track record in the UK, Germany, Nordics, and Switzerland. We are now looking for an Associate to join us and take responsibility for significantly driving our presence across all European geographies. As such, a network in, and fluency with, other European geographies is an asset for this role.

This is a highly entrepreneurial role. Creator Fund feels like a startup. It looks different from one month to the next. We are a small team of 5 who juggle a large amount, including managing a PhD network of 45 students who are critical for how we originate deals. You will be thrown onto projects before you feel fully equipped and you will have to quickly switch from one task to the next. We want our founders to say we work harder and do more for them than any other VC who backed them, and as you become responsible for your own deals that will fall on you. We also do whatever it takes to close deals, flying at short notice to wherever a founder may be. You will work side-by-side with our founders, Jamie and Alexandra, and get close exposure to the business side of building a VC Fund. Creator Fund will have a number of key decisions to make over the next few years and we draw on the opinions of our entire team to help shape our corporate strategy.

The ultimate KPI for this role will be the quality of deals that you lead. We invest in 12-14 companies per year, and so you will have an extensive opportunity to build your own personal portfolio. This will then transition into a close relationship between you and your founders, as you support them over time through all the ups and downs of startup life. You should expect to be the first call that the founder makes when they have good news to celebrate or when they need advice on something that has gone terribly wrong.

🧠 Culture

We are building Europe’s best pre-seed Deep Tech fund. We want to be the first choice for this continent’s most exceptional technical minds. In the past two years we have tripled the assets we hold under management, and we have returned the first fund we raised. Creator Fund is an environment experiencing rapid change. The culture will feel like the startups we back.

On the one hand, it is a platform that gives you substantial opportunities for ownership, autonomy, and growth. You will be put in charge of projects and deals earlier than you would elsewhere. We promote internally: our COO started as a student member of our team, became Director of Operations, and then Partner, all within 4 years. On the other hand, we work really hard. We oversee a big portfolio and when our founders call us it is to solve an existential problem for them, and we want them to know we will do whatever it takes to help. We also want that hunger to be visible to the founders we are trying to win.

The people who have worked best at Creator Fund feel comfortable with unstructured environments and pressure. They can execute at a high quality on multiple things at the same time and know how to prioritise. They enjoy environments that are in a constant state of flux and being an agent of that change. They have a healthy competitive streak and ambition, but at the same time do not take themselves too seriously and bring plenty of self-deprecating humour to work.

🎯 Key Responsibilities

• Actively source new investment opportunities aligned with our technical-led thesis.
• Meet Europe’s leading technical founders and analyse their technology for investment potential.
• Contribute to due diligence analysis of investment opportunities.
• Help manage our deal flow funnel.
• Oversee companies in the portfolio.
• Help inform decisions about the investments that the Fund executes.
• Collaborate closely with founders and portfolio companies.
• Shape our technical thesis and provide strategic insight across the Fund’s investment areas.
• Represent the Fund at industry events to expand our brand and network.

📚 Previous Experience

Additive Experience: We are not wedded to a fixed concept of a “perfect candidate”, and in the past have had success bringing onboard people from different fields. As such, the below is kept deliberately broad:

• Previous Work Experience: We would expect a candidate to fall within one of the following four buckets (although feel free to put in your cover note, why you are different, and we have got this wrong):
  • 2-4 years working in Investment Banking or Management Consulting at a top firm (partly because we see this as a sign you bring fluency in business and have worked in pressured environments).
  • 2-4 years working at another VC Fund (especially if this includes experience with Deep Tech).
  • 2-4 years working in Big Tech (you have gained an understanding of how world-class product, engineering, and organisational systems operate at scale).
  • Former founder or C-suite level at a large startup (you have been there and done it and will bring this insight and experience to our portfolio).
• Demonstrated passion for early-stage companies and technology, even if you have never worked in this field, we want to see that it is your passion from what you do and read outside of work, and how you build your network.
• Natural relationship and network builder: the type of person that a founder is going to choose on an individual level (before thinking about Creator Fund) because they want you alongside them for the next 10 years.
• Bias for action: In your life, when you have had the choice between acting or waiting for more information, you have chosen to act 9/10 times. We want people who decide, move, and are not scared of uncertainty.
• Academic background: It is a plus if you studied Computer Science, BioTech, Robotics, Physics, or Materials at university, ideally to a post-graduate level. It is not a deal-breaker, but then there is an even greater burden to explain how you love Deep Tech and how you educate yourself on complex fields.
• European network: Ideally you will speak a second European language and have strong networks into the startup ecosystems in core European geographies like the Nordics, Central/Eastern Europe, DACH.

💻 Work Environment & Compensation

• Based in our London office; we value in-person collaboration and expect the Associate to be in the office most days each week.
• International travel is expected.
• Competitive salary and benefits, aligned with experience.
• 25 days paid annual leave.

🖊️ Process and How To Apply

• **Please fill out this short form here.**

If you have any questions please email callum@thecreatorfund.com.