Private Equity Sourcing Associate

$100,000 USD/year ^{Pay is set based on global value, not the local market. Most roles = hourly rate x 40 hrs x 50 weeks}  ($50 USD/hour)

In this role, your main focus is finding potential acquisition targets. You start with companies our analysts have researched and qualified. You take calls with them and ask them thoughtful questions to learn about their business and assess their potential fit for Think3. Then you sort them into categories, for immediate action, to nurture a relationship for future action, or to politely disengage. You do this again and again, at scale, for lots of companies at once. To help you in the role, we use tools including sales automation software, a user-friendly CRM, even a centralized knowledge base to make delivering the right message to the right company easier. We have a rules-based process to achieve high-volume and high-quality. You will follow the process and also help us continuously tweak and improve it, so we can stay on the cutting-edge of the industry.

A typical day might include:

• In the morning, using google, our proprietary database, and our data provider subscriptions to research 20 companies with whom you have upcoming calls.
• Before lunch, taking an hour and using the data sheet an acquisition target sent you to fill out our valuation template to decide how much to offer the company (probably calling the target with a follow-up question or two).
• After lunch, having 4 back-to-back calls with new acquisition targets, simultaneously taking notes in our CRM to save time and keep our database updated.
• Late afternoon, having a video call with your Principal (manager) to review your pipeline, decide to disengage from 2 unlikely deals and strategize how you two will present an acquisition offer to a target tomorrow.
• Before signing off, drafting a brief company overview on a potential target - concisely describing the company's value prop, products, history, and financial metrics - for presentation to our investment committee.

• Native (or equivalent fluency) spoken English - neutral/no accent, experience conversing professionally with company executives.
• 2+ years of work experience as a sales rep or customer service rep interacting with high-level company executive clients.
• Strong sales skills, by which we mean listening and comprehension skills, the ability to handle objections persuasively, the ability to interview customers to extract sensitive information, and the ability to be assertive when needed to push a sales/acquisition process forward.
• Detail-orientation - you must collect specific information and updating our CRM accurately because we make investment decisions on this important information.
• Basic business literacy - understand the key items on an income statement and balance sheet to ask CEOs about their business health and fill out our template models; be able to use our Playbooks and evaluation criteria to find the "best fit" categorization for any business.
• Disciplined work-ethic - you must keep your focus and motivation high, even working repetitively at high-volume, and improve (not get sloppy) over time.

•  Willingness to work within a formal, rules-based decision-making system to qualify acquisition targets
• We do not evaluate each opportunity unique, "in-context," because we could not compare them or operate at high-volume
• We do not make exceptions to our process and criteria. Instead, we work together to iterate on and improve the process over time
• Comfort with ambiguity: successful associates apply our decision-making systems to each acquisition lead to find the "best fit" classification; they do not say "it depends" and fail to make definitive decisions. Better to be clear than certain.
• Willingness to embrace specialization: successful associates would rather be a "master of one trade" than a "jack of many trades"; they become experts at a single part of our process and do it as much and as well as possible.