Fifth Wall is Hiring a VC Associate

Fifth Wall is a different type of venture capital firm. Our investment mandate is different (we focus on real estate technology), our LPs are different (we’ve raised capital from 70+ large strategic real estate partners), and the way we work with entrepreneurs is different (how we source deals, how we analyze investment opportunities, and how we create partnerships with our strategic LP base).

So, by extension, the way that we hire needs to be a little different too. Which is why I’m so excited to light this beacon for new applicants to Fifth Wall’s two-year, pre-MBA Venture Associate program.

Traditional job descriptions feel a bit passé — they’re formulaic, cookie cutter, and often not wholly representative of what the day-to-day of the role they’re meant to describe will actually entail. And while we’ve written a traditional job posting for this role (it’s linked at the bottom of this post), I also wanted to give some real-world insight into what the job will actually look like, and why we think it’s such an invaluable opportunity for anyone interested in venture capital.

What we’re looking for…

• We acknowledge that there are people with varying professional backgrounds who are interested in breaking into venture capital and undoubtedly have the intellectual horsepower and work ethic to succeed. But for this particular role, we are specifically interested in applicants who have worked in investment banking (mergers & acquisitions), management consulting at one of the big three, or at another venture capital or growth equity fund for 1–3 years.
• Candidates will jump off the page if they are excel pros with deep financial modeling experience and have comfort building things like: P&Ls with forecasts/projections, unit economic and cohort analysis (LTV/CAC calculations), sales & marketing efficiency calculations (i.e. SaaS magic numbers), and valuation models (public company comps, private transaction comps, etc.).
• Foundational skills are really important to us — but we also value a candidate’s willingness to tirelessly network and cultivate relationships with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and other partners in the real estate industry to best position themselves to identify potential investment opportunities for the firm.
• We’re remote now, but don’t expect that to last forever. For this role, we’re really interested in finding a candidate who is currently living in (or willing to relocate to) New York City, Los Angeles, or San Francisco.

What you’ll do…

1. Source New Investment Opportunities

• A critical but often overlooked component of the doing of deals is finding deals to do. We trust and empower our associates to search far and wide for investment opportunities that might be relevant to our mandate and ripe for partnership. Wouldn’t it be cool to find the next AirBnB?
• You’ll send emails, make calls, attend conferences, travel for in-person meetings, and employ whatever creative tactics you can dream up in order to position Fifth Wall as the ideal investment partner for the next billion dollar start-up in the real estate technology space.

2. Run Investment Due Diligence

• Sourcing opportunities for evaluation is one thing — actually digging into the details and determining whether a given opportunity falls within our sweet spot for investment is an entirely separate competency. Some venture firms prefer qualitative due diligence — and we certainly take qualitative factors into account — but we also lean heavily into quantitative due diligence (think more private equity style than seed stage). And we want to teach you how to analyze companies the Fifth Wall way.
• You’ll conduct market research, speak with experts across sectors and industries, perform TAM analyses, analyze financial statements, speak with customers, and map out competitive landscapes in order to determine if a company meets Fifth Wall’s bar for investment.
• You’ll also be in charge of owning and creating the financial model and presentation for Fifth Wall’s Investment Committee, a beautiful synthesis of the due diligence takeaways and findings from your qualitative and quantitative analyses.

3. Conduct Market Research

• We know that research for the sake of research can be painful — but Fifth Wall identifies many of its investment opportunities by ideating and thoroughly researching emerging themes and trends that we believe have a chance to disrupt the broader real estate industry.
• You will be asked to contribute to that ideation effort, and to spearhead thematic sourcing initiatives that will uncover new and exciting investment opportunities through robust market research.
• As part of this process you’ll learn to size a market’s near-term, medium-term, and long-term addressable size, develop relationships with thought leaders, build competitive landscapes, and understand how to translate the acute needs of our corporate LPs (within specific products and services categories) into actionable transaction opportunities.

4. Support Fifth Wall’s Portfolio

• Once we make an investment into a portfolio company, the real work starts! Fifth Wall has an ever-increasing number of portfolio companies — and you will be asked to support our portfolio companies as they continue to execute and scale. You will be called on as a trusted advisor to assist CEOs and founders as they prepare for board meetings. You will be asked to create value for portfolio companies’ business development initiatives by facilitating introductions and commercial partnerships between Fifth Wall’s investments and corporate LPs. You will also support the portfolio companies that are raising additional capital by introducing them to new investors and underwriting Fifth Wall’s participation in follow-on rounds.
• Internally, you will also help drive Fifth Wall’s tracking of portfolio performance by collecting and analyzing quarterly financial information and preparing summary materials for our firm’s senior leadership.

This role is perfect for you if…

• You have an authentic passion for helping entrepreneurs solve massive problems for the real estate industry and traditional asset owners.
• You genuinely enjoy building brand-new relationships with entrepreneurs, investors, and companies and contributing to the proptech ecosystem.
• You bring a unique background, point of view, and set of experiences outside of your professional life — we want to build a team with a diverse culture comprised of people from different walks of life.
• You have an incredibly strong work ethic and ability to be a self-starter — you don’t require or need significant amounts of outside guidance in order to complete your work or problem solve when you hit roadblocks.
• You are solution oriented — when you raise an issue, you also provide a proposed answer or idea on how to problem solve.
• You want to work in an incredibly fast-paced, high growth environment where every week is likely to be different than your last, and you’re excited about the prospect of your role evolving several times over the course of a single year.

If all of the above really excites you…

• To apply, please complete the application linked here
• And also please submit responses to the below short-form questions here

Question 1. Why are you interested in the Associate role at Fifth Wall? [max 1000 characters]

Question 2. What is one real estate technology start-up (with <$50M already invested) that Fifth Wall should evaluate for investment and why? [max 2000 characters]

Question 3. What pre-IPO or public real estate technology company do you find most interesting and why? [max 2000 characters]