Hiring a New Analyst

We are kicking off another search for an analyst at Union Square Ventures (USV). As in the past, we will recruit for this position using an open process. While this results in a lot of work sorting through applications, we are often inspired and always learn something when we engage with potential candidates. We also believe the quality of your work as it is reflected in your dialogue with others on the Web is a more important indicator of your potential than any traditional credential. We look forward to hearing from you!

The analyst position at USV is a two-year role based in New York City. As an analyst, you’ll learn what the venture capital business is about and gain insight into many fascinating technology startups. Our past analysts have launched a seed fund, joined one of our portfolio companies, joined another venture firm, joined another venture backed startup and worked on their own start-ups.

We are open to candidates ranging from recent college graduates to candidates with a graduate degree (though formal degrees are not required) and/or several years of relevant work experience.

Analysts help us manage the day-to-day activities of the firm in a number of areas, including:

  • Performing market research and due diligence for potential investments, which could entail financial or web-analytics modeling, or testing products and services
  • Meeting with entrepreneurs who have started businesses in which USV may be interested in investing
  • Reporting for our investors, which includes helping value our investments, writing quarterly updates, and packaging the material for our investors
  • Working with USV portfolio companies, including research projects, competitor analysis, valuation work, and attending board meetings
  • Designing and executing projects of your own direction that help USV and/or our portfolio companies

We’re looking for someone who demonstrates:

  • Deep understanding of the ecosystem of web and mobile services
  • Strong drive and the ability to self-direct – your work and time is open-ended by nature and you must be able to identify and execute on opportunities to contribute to the team with little, if any, management or direction
  • Strong written and oral communication skills – well-argued opinions are a necessity
  • Strong interpersonal skills – you’ll often be talking to entrepreneurs and other investors on behalf of USV
  • Strong organizational skills – you’ll be keeping track of documents for a large portfolio of investments
  • Comfortable working with data in Excel and Google Sheets
  • Ideally, some prior design and/or programming experience

Our application has two parts:  

First, we’re looking to see links that will help us get to know you. This could be your personal blog, Medium, Tumblr, Github profile, Twitter or Snapchat account – whatever represents you best. We expect your online presence to represent who you are, not who you think an employer wishes you were, so please don’t waste time sanitizing your web presence before sending us there.

Second, we’d also like to hear from you directly, so we’re asking each applicant to record two short videos answering these questions: “Why are you interested in the analyst role at Union Square Ventures?” (up to a 60-second response) and “Which web or mobile services most inspire you?” (up to a 90-second response). We’re using Ziggeo to collect the video responses securely and privately.

To apply, visit usv.com/apply. You will need a Twitter account to log in. None of the information you submit will be shared outside of USV. We’ll be accepting applicants until 11:59pm Eastern time on Tuesday, May 31st.

If you have questions, please leave them in the comments below. Otherwise, we’re looking forward to hearing about what you find compelling, what you’ve made, how you think, and why you’re into what we do.

Update #1 – 6/6/16:

Last Tuesday, we closed applications for the USV analyst position, and have begun reviewing applications.  We love the open format of the analyst hiring process, because it introduces us to a lot of people we otherwise might not have connected with through our existing networks.

We received roughly 330 applications, and are reviewing them as a team now. Each application has two videos, and every application is reviewed by at least one partner and one staff member at USV (most by more than that).  So, it takes a while for us to review them all, though we block out a significant chunk of time to do that.

We plan to review all of the applications by the end of next week, and then have initial responses regarding next steps.

Thank you again to everyone who applied, and to everyone who helped by recommending the position to people they know.  We’re honored to have such an interesting and diverse pool of individuals interested in working with us, and we’ll look forward to getting back in touch with next steps very shortly.