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Founders Associate at Calibration

Calibration is an operator VC. We invest in ambitious founders and help them build world class teams.

As Founders Associate, you work directly with our two founding partners and with the great founders we work with.

This is not a typical Founders Associate position. This is not about working with one founder, but many. By working with us at Calibration, you will learn how to build successful teams.

This is the one skill that defines great founders, operators and investors alike, but very few people ever learn this properly. It usually takes years of hiring mistakes inside a single company, or a decade of watching from the outside as an investor. We think there is a faster path.

Hiring decisions are investment decisions. This role is for two kinds of people. VC talent who want to get much closer to founders than an investing seat allows, and then decide with real conviction whether to invest or to build. Operators who want to go deep on hiring, the one skill that matters in every function, whether you lead engineering, product, sales or the whole company.

This is a 4 to 6 months apprenticeship in our Berlin HQ that can lead into long term.

As Founders Associate, you will:

1) Work side by side with founders on their most critical early hires: finding, convincing and closing exceptional engineers and co-founders.

2) Develop your judgment on what world class talent and world class organizations look like, and test it against real outcomes

3) Meet founders at the very start of their journey and help us decide who to back

4) Formalize best practices for Calibration’s portfolio

You see how the best founders think about people, how they sell their vision to a candidate who has five other offers, and how they decide who gets a seat at the table. It allows you to build your playbook based on data from many successful companies.

To give you an idea of the quality bar at Calibration: we are partners to breakout companies such as Peec AI, Telli, BEO Energy, Nomos, Lio.