Spero Ventures is hiring: Head of Network & Brand

As many of you read, Spero Ventures co-founder Ha Nguyen is headed back to the operating world, where she’ll be the Chief Experience Officer of a startup she fell in love with. I get it — sometimes, operators have to operate. Ha will always be part of the Spero family and a dear friend.

Ha’s leaving means we have big shoes to fill. So, I’m excited to announce that we are recruiting for a Head of Network and Brand. This has always been a key role at Spero, and it continues to be of primary importance. We believe that this person could have a bigger impact on our portfolio than anyone else at the firm.

Please read the job description below, and if this is you, apply through this link. If this is a perfect description of someone you know, we would greatly appreciate it if you shared this post with them.

Thank you!!

Head of Network and Brand

At Spero Ventures we invest in people building the things that make life worth living. We believe that no matter what the future looks like, the fundamentals of life will always stay the same, and these are our core areas of investment: Well-Being, Work and Purpose, and Human Connection. We have partnered with 22 companies within these themes that are working hard to realize a future that prioritizes our shared values.

The Spero network is essential to our success at Spero in the coming years, and we hope will be a defining characteristic of our brand. Our network consists of our investment team, the companies we have partnered with, our co-investors in these investments, and the superset of people the Spero investment professionals have worked with during decades of operations and investing in Internet technology. You would be the captain of this ship.

We are hiring for a Head of Network and Brand at Spero. This person will organize our network to create best in class portfolio support. Network and brand can build each other when done effectively, so this person will own both responsibilities. This person will activate our network in ways that create more decentralized energy, so that people in the network can connect and help each other directly without routing through a member of Spero first. Today we are proud of the way we support our portfolio top-down through hands-on engagement and connecting people with the right resources. In the future, we hope Spero companies can help each other bottoms-up, facilitated by our network. The network we build and reputation we establish is key to creating a unique, high quality brand in the venture ecosystem.

Who You Are
We are open-minded about the types of background that might thrive in this role. We envision that most of the following is true for you:

• You love startups. The idea of building companies from scratch gets you excited everyday, and you share our admiration for founders’ endless ambitions.
• You’re a connector. You are energized by people and love enabling others success. You value the “assist” above personal glory. You believe in the value of Community.
• You’re a self-starter. A Head of Network role can be somewhat amorphous, and you are excited about driving it in your own direction.
• An audacious challenge inspires you. Head of Network is the hardest job in VC. Every VC firm has some mediocre form of a network program (usually an under-utilized CEO Slack group), and this table-stakes participation is insufficient. You’re ready to embrace this tall challenge with creative new ideas and the perseverance to execute them yourself.
• You’re gritty and love hard work. Success in this role won’t come in one fell swoop. You’re going to try a number of different initiatives, many of which will fall short. You know how to rise above early, rough effort and keep trying new ideas. We believe success comes through iteration and relentless improvement.
• You’re a builder. The work in this role will be very project-oriented. You know that any initiative requires diligent execution to really hone the final 10% of the project and make it shine. You self-identify as a maker and love seeing things through from start to finish with a high-level of attention to detail.
• You are a community leader. You’ve demonstrated a desire to form and lead communities in the past. This might be personal or professional, but either way, you believe in the power of bottoms-up communities and your actions demonstrate this belief.

What Is Your Role Within Spero

• You will be the leader and glue that makes our network, brand, marketing, and events thrive. You are the CEO of this part of Spero and will drive both the vision and execution.
• You will be a member of the investment team, but you are not an Investor. You’ll be in all the investment meetings you desire in order to maximize information sharing to succeed in your role. If you want to become an investor in the long-run, this is the wrong role for you. Thriving as a Head of Network and Brand makes you the most important member of the Spero investment team in a few years. Success in this role is a long term career.
• This role is a Partner-track role for the right candidate. A thriving network will be the keystone to our future success in the long term, and the person running it will have earned a Partner role.

Example Work
This is not an exhaustive list of ideas (we are hoping you’ll be inspired by your own ideas), but some initiatives this role will include:

• Creating online ways for our portfolio to engage with each other regularly, across all business functions and levels inside the company. This included running C-level/VP peer support groups, as well as finding solutions to help individual contributors in the Spero network portfolio companies help each other.
• Developing offline programming and events to fuel the fire of online engagement.
• Running our annual Founders Summit.
• Figuring out what’s the right content strategy to help our portfolio companies solve programs at various stages.
• This could include initiatives such as a Fundraising Bootcamp for support in raising follow-on capital…
• or a New Manager Training program to help companies as they form their nascent layers of middle management for the first time.
• Owning external messaging to make sure our brand emphases our commitment to community and portfolio support.

Possible Backgrounds
We are open minded that a variety of different backgrounds might thrive in this role. Some possibilities might include:

• Deep operations experience at a high growth startup inside our areas of investment focus. 7+ years in Product, Operations, Community, or another project-oriented role would be high potential background for this role.
• A prior startup Founder that is inspired by the leverage of this Network role.
• Management consultant or investment banking focused on internet technology looking to transition industries, but already have significant internet experience.
• Deep experience in community organizing in a way that is internet-native. Perhaps you built programming and events for EFF or Creative Commons or a comparable org.
• You’re doing a similar Network role elsewhere in VC and are ready to own the vision and execution yourself.
• A surprising background we haven’t previously considered but brings a clearly complementary network and skillset.

Logistics

• This is a full-time role.
• Spero is based in the SF Bay Area, and you are (or will be) a local resident, given the proportion of this job that will require planning event for local portfolio companies.
• We provide generous benefits including fully-paid heath and dental. There is a budget for professional development and other wellness initiatives.
• We are an equal opportunity employer.