The posting
Investor, Early Stage Team Location: San Francisco, CA or Los Angeles, CA (hybrid)
Description
Lowercarbon Capital backs the founders rebuilding how we source and manufacture the critical inputs of the modern world, hardening global systems for a changing climate, and generating enough clean reliable power for humans and machines alike.
We're looking for an investor to play a key role on our early stage team. We need someone who can find the best founders working on the hardest problems, understand the technical and operational intricacies of their businesses, and figure out what would need to be true for it to change the world. You'll talk directly with founders, technical experts, and customers, pressure-test the technology and the business, and translate all of it into a clear point of view that shapes an investment decision. Over time, this role becomes a trusted internal voice on where a given space is heading and where we should be placing bets.
Responsibilities
On a practical level, this means:
- Know the people building industry defining companies across energy, critical minerals, manufacturing, and heavy industry, ideally before anyone else does. Map who is working on what in a given space, run down leads, and bring the most compelling companies into our network.
- Support diligence end to end. You will help define the questions for new investments early in the process, prioritize which risks matter most, and identify what information would meaningfully change conviction. You’ll go deep with founders on everything from technical engineering to project financing.
- Build and externalize our point of view. Turn messy, incomplete information into clear investment memos, market maps, and the occasional public blog post. Use that work to bring founders, operators, experts, and other investors into conversation, strengthen our credibility in the sectors we care about, and build the community that brings the best opportunities to us.
- Go deep on new or emerging thematic areas. Develop a real understanding of where a domain is bottlenecked, what has already been de-risked, what remains genuinely hard, and what would need to change for the space to scale. This work informs where we focus our attention, how we ask questions in future diligence, and where we should be skeptical or patient.
Requirements
Title: Odds are the person we hire will be an “Associate.” The reality is that we’re not precious about titles and people can move up fast in this organization. This is an early career role, but what matters is judgment, hustle, and the ability to reason clearly about frontier technology.
Education: To make sure this gets trawled by the Linkedin algorithm, let’s say we’re looking for at least a bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline. But for the humans on the other end of the screen, know that we have scientists who spent 20 years at national labs doing experimental physics and scientists who barely graduated high school and never went to college. How you think is more important than the piece of paper collecting dust in your parent’s attic.
Discipline: Chemists, materials scientists, biologists, geologists, electrical and mechanical engineers are all invited to apply. Heck, you might be an accountant with a deep passion for building physical systems. We’re looking for people who can reason from first principles, not just recite them. The one non-negotiable is that you’ve worked in the scale-up, deployment, or operations of companies operating in the physical world. Past investment experience would be helpful, but it isn’t necessary if you learn fast, hustle for extra credit, and can reason on your own.
You should be comfortable forming judgments with incomplete information, explaining hard things simply, and operating in situations with no single correct answer.
Skills & Background
A few more of the traits we’re looking for:
- A technology wonk. You’re fired up about what it takes to decarbonize the global economy. You can hold your own in a lively debate on "electrify everything," you track the market signals and business models needed to scale new generation and storage (from baseload options like nuclear, fusion and fission, to renewables), and you get excited about distributed energy resources and energy-as-a-service.
- Autonomous and creative. You run projects independently and show up with hypotheses and recommendations, not just questions. You like chewing on big, hard, sometimes outlandish problems, you’re comfortable admitting what you don't know.
- A strong communicator and researcher. You anchor on the right concepts fast and go deep enough to be credible, and you know where to track down what you need, including the experts in your network or when to build your network. You write clearly for internal and external audiences and hold your own with any stakeholder in the room.
- Detail-obsessed and able to juggle. Whether it’s an internal memo or a conference talk, you sweat the details. You like running several projects at once and can switch gears without dropping any of them.
The best candidates balance rigorous technical diligence, honesty about uncertainty, and unbridled optimism in humanity’s ability to build a better future.
Compensation and Benefits
$180,000-$230,000, plus bonus and carried interest, plus benefits. Compensation will be determined by the applicant’s knowledge, education, and abilities, as well as internal equity and alignment with market data.
We believe diversity is a source of strength. Lowercarbon Capital is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by law.
