Primary Venture Partners
About the Company
Primary is the largest early-stage venture firm in the world, with $1B in assets under management, investing in pre-seed and seed-stage startups based in New York City. The firm’s Incubation arm, Primary Labs, launched in 2019 to support the ideation, research and launch of new startups. Primary’s first three incubated companies will return its first fund many times over, and Primary is now primed for substantial growth in its Incubation efforts. Check out our blog post, “What Invention and Incubation have in Common” to learn more about Primary’s incubation philosophy.
About the Roles
Primary Labs is looking for two Operators-In-Residence (OIR) to join its Incubation program with a focus on opportunities within the semiconductor industry.
We’re amidst the biggest infrastructure build out in decades. There is $1T+ of cap-ex going into building out AI infrastructure over the next decade, with much of that spend going into compute. With complexity, scale, and demand rising, we believe the semiconductor industry needs new innovation, across software and hardware. As a result, we believe there is a unique opportunity for new entrants to start generational companies in the semiconductor industry. We’ve built a deep network of experts to support us in this journey. We believe incubation is the next step to double down in this category.
We at Primary have a concerted focus to invest in and incubate businesses across the semis and data center value chain, a recent example being Etched, the world’s first transformer ASIC. Etched is disrupting the GPU market with a product purpose built for transformer inference, enabling use cases we never could have imagined like real-time video games. The company recently raised a $120M Series A, with features in TechCrunch and Crunchbase.
We are hiring two Operators in Residence to approach opportunities in the space in two different ways:
Role 1 (Academia): Explore ways to commercialize academic research being done in this sector. We are looking to hire an individual who will be solely focused on connecting with semiconductor, networking, memory and power/cooling academics and exploring opportunities to commercialize their research by partnering to incubate a business.
The right person for this role is technical enough to “talk the talk” with semiconductor experts and academics, with experience at companies building in the semiconductor space (chips, EDA, etc). They should be excited about building a business from the ground up (0 to 1) and have a passion for researching and identifying new opportunities within this evolving space. Above all, they must believe that there is a unique opportunity to build a multi-billion-dollar business in the semiconductor space.
Role 2 (Commercial): Dive deep into the semiconductor industry and identify green field areas where there is an opportunity to incubate a new business. We are looking to hire an individual who will gain a deep understanding of the commercial semiconductor industry (including EDA, software surrounding the data center, etc), perform intensive customer discovery and work with our investment team to identify areas for new businesses to be built.
The right person for this role is someone who has experience performing research and analysis on the semiconductor, networking, memory and power/cooling industry more broadly, in order to gain a full understanding of the landscape. Ideally this person is commercially minded and already has a depth of knowledge on incumbents and newer entrants to the space. They should be excited about building a business from the ground up (0 to 1) and have a passion for researching and identifying new opportunities within this evolving space. They should feel comfortable talking to technical operators in the semiconductor industry, but they themselves do not need to be technical. Above all, they must believe that there is a unique opportunity to build a multi-billion-dollar business in the semiconductor space.
What You'll Do
Support Primary’s idea generation and vetting process
Connect with academics and researchers and top institutions and learn about their work in order to explore opportunities for commercialization
Conduct intensive market analysis, competitive landscaping and customer research
Develop business models, product roadmaps, and go-to-market strategies for the most promising startup ideas
Create pitch decks and other investor materials
Join the company in its launch phase as a founding team member responsible for gaining initial traction, building out the rest of the team, and supporting business operations or go back to the drawing board with the Incubation program all over again
Support Primary’s executive recruiters in identifying and closing your Co-Founders
About You
Self-starter: you have an entrepreneur’s intrinsic motivation, capable of independently running with business ideas with substantial ambiguity
Network-builder: you’re comfortable developing relationships with industry leaders from the ground up
Entrepreneurial: you are eager to engage in the venture and startup ecosystem and have your finger on the pulse when it comes to new deals and emerging business models in the semiconductor landscape
Storyteller: you’re able to learn rapidly, develop a strong point of view, and communicate compelling narratives
Commercially-minded: you are comfortable with financial models and concepts and can quickly assess the feasibility and scalability of a new venture idea
4+ years of experience in the semiconductor space, or doing research/analysis on the category, with technical acumen
Masters or PHD not required but a plus