Investment Officer, Mercy Corps Ventures at Mercy Corps

The Position 

• Whether you have a burning desire to dive into venture investing or you already have some venture investing experience and are looking to hone your VC craft, this role is for you. Join one of the most active global, early-stage impact venture firms, and help them find and back the most disruptive trailblazers in fintech, web3, climate-tech, and ag-tech across Africa and around the world.

This is the role for you if:

• You are excited to dive deep into the impact investing industry and advance your journey into VC with a top-tier investor that is actively deploying and will give you significant transaction exposure
• You are passionate about entrepreneurs and share the belief that high-impact startups are the best engines for driving sustainable, equitable, and resilient impact at scale
• Mercy Corps Ventures is looking for an Investment Officer to join its growing Investment Team. You will play a supporting role in building out MCV's portfolios and be integrated into all aspects of the investment process from origination to closing.
• In this position, you will work with the team's other investment professionals to screen, perform due diligence, negotiate, and close seed and early-stage direct investments.

Essential Responsibilities

PIPELINE ANALYSIS & DUE DILIGENCE (80%)

The Investment Officer will support the investment team in progressing investments through the entire investment cycle, from initial screening to due diligence and closing. This includes:

• Landscaping & Pipeline Analysis: Support the mapping of investment opportunities in specific priority sector(s) for Mercy Corps Ventures. 
• Screening: Support on screening investment opportunities through review of pitch decks, participation in live demo days, meeting entrepreneurs, pouring through data rooms, and management of our inbound deal flow.
• Due Diligence: Support the investment team to conduct detailed data room analysis and interviews with relevant industry experts and partner investors to review and analyze business plans, validate assumptions, stress-test financial forecasts, gain an in-depth knowledge of a company’s unit economics, and address key due diligence inquiries and investment risks.
• Investment Research: Conduct and present research as needed in areas such as analysis of market opportunities, threats, competitive differentiation, and potential headwinds to emergent sectors or markets, as necessary to support investment decisions.
• Investment Documentation: Attend all investment team meetings and investment committees and support investment professionals to lead deals through our investment process, including drafting investment memoranda, identifying and explaining key investment risks, coordinating legal and financial DD, structuring and negotiating transaction agreements, and presenting investment opportunities to senior decision-makers.
• Investment Recommendation: The opportunity to support the investment team in making recommendations on and presenting investment opportunities to the Ventures Team, Investment Committee, and Board for debate and approval.
• Deal Structuring and Execution: Assist in the preparation of investment documentation and other transaction documents, as applicable, and support the coordinated onboarding of closed investments into Mercy Corps Venture’s investment portfolio with applicable handoffs to the Platform Team.

RESEARCH & INSIGHTS (10%)

• Content Generation: Support the investment team and work with Mercy Corps Venture’s Communications team to develop curated content through insight pieces to be shared externally.

PIPELINE & PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT (10%)

• Work with the investment team to grow and foster new relationships with strategic partners such as incubators, accelerators, peer investors, and other ecosystem actors in target geographies and sectors.

Supervisory Responsibility

None
Accountability

Reports Directly To: Director, Investments, Mercy Corps Ventures

Works Directly With: Investment team members, entrepreneurs, co-investors, and ecosystem partners, with exposure to the broader Mercy Corps Ventures team
Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects. 

Minimum Qualifications & Transferable Skills

• 3-5 years of business experience with a background in corporate finance, investment banking, management consulting, startup operations, or venture building.
• Financial Analysis Ability: A Foundational grasp of finance and financial modeling - comfortable navigating and summarizing complex financial models in excel. 
• Fluency in fundamental financial terms, understanding of financial statements, and ability to evaluate a company’s financial performance and dissect a financial model with minimal oversight and guidance.
• Comfort assessing valuation methodologies and running valuation scenarios, stress testing model assumptions and running scenario analysis would be ideal.
• You should possess an insatiable curiosity (and ideally some experience) in problem sets and solutions within fintech, web3, agtech, and/or climate-tech as well as a strong interest in venture capital in Africa. Knowledge of fundamental business concepts and a foundational grasp of the venture capital model is a plus.
• Some connections with investors, angels, accelerators, and startups in Africa are a plus but not required. You should be interested in supporting MCV in building our network of partners over time.
• Fluent in written and spoken English (French is a plus)

Success Factors

• The ideal candidate will have a superb track record as a fast learner, quick starter, and action-oriented problem solver. We are a low-ego, collaborative team and these traits are essential for any candidate. A candidate needs to have strong strategic thinking skills and be able to navigate complex environments and develop a clear, focused, and ambitious vision. The ideal candidate must have excellent communication and interpersonal skills and be able to articulately craft an argument and defend a position. They will have the desire and ability to be part of a highly collaborative, dynamic, mission-driven, and team-oriented culture.