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Overview

Blackbird was founded in 2012, with a small first fund of $30M from the community of Australian technology founders. That fund invested in the very first rounds of Canva, Zoox, Culture Amp and SafetyCulture, and has a TVPI of more than 33x. We’ve invested in >130 companies and our portfolio is worth over $7B. In 2022, we raised Australasia’s largest venture fund: $1 billion for the ambitious.

But in Aotearoa, we are just getting started.

New Zealand has raised world-changing companies from Xero to Lanzatech, Rocket Lab to Vend, PushPay and Timely.

These giants have fostered talented alumni who have gone on to found their own ambitious companies, like Mint Innovation, Halter, Partly and FirstAML.

A thriving investment ecosystem has grown up to support these founders. More of our talented New Zealanders are doing their life’s work in start-ups than ever before, kickstarting a flywheel that will see even more world-changing startups founded on these shores.

We believe the coming decade of Aotearoa-founded startups presents a once-in-a-generation investment opportunity.

Everything we do at Blackbird is built around helping our founders succeed. The Blackbird Community team sits at the centre of how we deliver on this mission, from the 1:1 relationships we nurture to creating new products that level up our founders, operators and beyond. 

We’re looking for a Community Manager based in Aotearoa to become the beating heart of our portfolio in NZ and play a pivotal role in scaling our offerings for a growing portfolio.

The Role

We are looking for someone to bring the full force of their creativity to help further our portfolio community offerings and deepen our relationships with our founders.

The role is majority portfolio facing, meaning you spend 70 percent of your time focused directly supporting the founders (and the operators) we invest in. The remaining 30 percent of your time is focused on delivering localised events and initiatives to build our ecosystem networks (help us meet new founders and operators who might become part of our portfolio). 

We’re looking to hire a mirror to our Community Manager role in AU. You will be part of the Community Team at Blackbird, reporting into the Head of Community with a dotted line to our NZ Partner.  This means you’ll activate and localise Community team initiates in NZ, while also playing a key role in the New Zealand team and strategy. 

Your core role as Community Manager - Aotearoa, will include:

• Deliver on the Community strategy in NZ: Localise our strategy in Aotearoa, including; running our founder onboarding (ensuring a 10/10 experience for all newly invested Blackbird Founders in NZ), and owning our Portfolio Concierge and Intros@ product in NZ, to increase how quickly and effectively we deliver against inbound asks.

• Deepen our relationships with NZ portfolio founders and operators (customer strategy): Build, refine and execute on a customer engagement plan for our NZ founders to deepen, and sustain, our portfolio relationships and help support a scaling community. Some examples include our founder retreats (we recently held one in Queenstown), or our Academy, a one-day program designed to welcome our newest Blackbird founders into our community. 

• Build our NZ networks: We rely on being well-connected to the ecosystem to support our founders and operators. You’ll lead our NZ efforts to build deep community networks, knowing who the right people are to introduce to our portfolio community when they need it. 

• Deliver on localised events to build our ecosystem networks: Working with our Event Producer, you’ll ensure we deliver exceptional, differentiated events for our portfolio and ecosystem. We run a number of initiatives to drive more pipeline like our AI meetup series. You will do the same in NZ, owning the topic curation, guest list and programming.  You’ll also run our monthly portfolio events (leading the guest lists, speaker curation, and experience), and assist with programming on our annual startup festival, Sunrise. 

• NZ hiring support: Funnel talented people into our Lilypad platform, help to surface local talent, and make ecosystem intros to our portfolio. 

This role reports into our Head of Community in Sydney, and works closely with the New Zealand based investments team.

Position Requirements

Your background is less important than the key skills and attributes, which include:

Hospitality mindset: We believe in the philosophy of "enlightened hospitality", and it lies at the heart of everything that we do at Blackbird. We serve our founders, not the other way around. We are about people, not companies.

Execution machine: You have a knack for details, never drop the ball, and you can't wait to take on the next task with the same level of energy. 

Creative and original thinker: You're not satisfied with doing what's been done before and are energised by taking a knotty problem and building an original solution from scratch.

Events experience: You’ve experience organising an event from start to finish, including guest lists, speaker curation, and experience planning.

Community builder: Previous experience scaling a community would be awesome, but not a must. You will, however, be a natural people connector, and someone creates community around you. 

High integrity, humility and ownership: No task is too small for us, and no ambition is too big. We all take out the garbage. You will be scrappy, move quickly and never hesitate to roll up your sleeves.

Passionate about technology: we serve New Zealand’s most ambitious, wild-hearted founders who are solving big problems through technology innovation. You love learning about what people are building as much as you love getting to know the people. 

We believe that building a diverse and inclusive team is critical to Blackbird’s success. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. We use Applied to ensure every applicant gets an equal chance of success.

We offer:

• Flexible working: Whether it’s working from home or leaving early to pick up the kids from daycare or school.

• Generous parental leave: We know family comes first, and we are proud to offer 20 weeks of parental leave for all parents (an additional 4 weeks for the birth parent), with no minimum tenure. In addition, we offer IVF, adoption and surrogacy leave. We also continue to pay superannuation and vest carried interest for up to 12 months of parental leave, and offer a supportive return-to-work policy to help with the ramp back.

• Learning & Development Budget: Our team is hungry to continuously learn and you’ll receive a budget to spend on books, conferences, training, coaching and courses relating to your profession.

• Wellbeing: We think in decades not days. To support our Blackbirds over the long haul we offer a range of holistic wellbeing benefits including a monthly healthy living allowance, 24/7 access to wellbeing support, a home office allowance, personal kit-kat days, and more!

• Unplugged weekends: We work hard without letting work get in the way of life. We’ve implemented no Slack or emails on weekends, so you can switch off and enjoy yourself.

• Connection: While being big fans of a fully distributed workforce, we value our vibe and time to connect online and IRL through team and company offsites, monthly social activities, weekly lunches and our many social clubs (#fun-manis, #fun-fantasybookclub, #bb-craft just to name a few!).

• A share of Blackbird’s success: We think it is important to share successes with the whole team. All Blackbird employees receive carry in funds raised and ownership in management companies formed while they are at the firm.

Blackbird is a Pledge 1% member —  we pledge 1% of our time, equity and profits to help not-for-profit causes in our community. Through Pledge 1%, we established the Blackbird Foundation to supercharge the creative capabilities of young people.

We are also very proud to have won the 2023 AFR Best Place to Work award in three categories including Overall winner. In 2022, we became certified as one of Australia’s Great Places to Work.

About Blackbird

Blackbird is an Australasian venture capital firm whose mission is to invest in wild hearts, with the wildest ideas, right at the beginning. We back generational ambition with generational ownership by raising funds and investing in the best startup companies all the way through their journey from idea to beyond IPO.

Our portfolio is worth over $7B and includes more than 130 companies across Australia and New Zealand, from Canva and CultureAmp to rising stars like Halter, Partly, Carepatron, Gilmour Space, Eucalyptus, Fleet and Tracksuit.

We’ve written a lot about what we love at Blackbird, so check out our blog if you want some more information about us. In particular, you should watch Blackbird partner Sam Wong pitch Blackbird VC to founders, read about our mission and values,Blackbird’s Operating Principles (BOPs) and what we look for in founders.