Association Series #6: Jethro Cohen, Senior Associate @ Square Peg
Uncovering how interesting minds entered Venture Capital and new aspects of their personality, experiences and processes to light.
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#6: Jethro Cohen, Senior Associate @ Square Peg Capital
1/6 Career overview before joining the Venture Capital fund, Square Peg
I grew up in Hobart, and after school, moved to Sydney to study a combined Bachelor of Arts and Law. A bit over halfway through the degree, I realised I hated studying Law and couldn’t see myself building a career in the industry. I decided to take a semester off to earn some money and think about my next chapter.
I found a role in PwC’s recruiting team, writing graduate employment contracts. A few months in, and hundreds of hours spent copy/pasting the same contract template, I was hit by a wave of regret. Maybe I should’ve stuck it out at uni. I pushed myself to make the most of the opportunity, and found a new role at PwC working on internal IT strategy: the firm’s move to the cloud, the tooling needed for remote first work, etc.
A year passed, and I re-enrolled in uni to finish my degree. At the 11th hour - just as classes were about to start - I was offered a role on the launch team of Uber Eats to help scale customer support for the then-new line of business. I loved the brand, and Uber represented everything my time at PwC hadn’t: it was tech, not IT.
Three and a bit amazing years later, I was leading Pricing and Safety for the Restaurant Org at a time where restaurants felt overcharged by Uber, and consumers were increasingly anxious about food safety. It was an amazing growth experience with a team of passionate and brilliant people. At the time, Uber was one of the few big tech firms in the region hiring large local teams, so the quality of talent was high.
Just before Christmas 2019, two things happened within a few days of each other: I won the A/NZ Employee of the Year prize, and my mum died unexpectedly. This forced a period of introspection over the holidays, and I emerged in January excited to try something new. At the time, I explored roles in VC. I applied to a few firms, and never heard back from a single one. I chatted to some friends and mentors - a mix of founders, operators and investors - and heard fairly universal advice: get true early stage operating experience.
I was introduced to Mina and Ruwin, the founders of :Different, and was offered their ‘Ops Leader’ role - a generic title to do a bit of everything: Chief of Staff, customer strategy, tooling decisions, product rollouts, etc. After about a year, I was promoted to lead the Operations team of about 40 folks across Australia and Sri Lanka. I loved the role, but still felt drawn to a career in VC. So as :Different’s Series B wrapped up, I started looking again and found my role at Square Peg.
2/6 What was the interview process to join Square Peg?
A recruitment firm ran sourcing for the role. They approached two former colleagues of mine. Neither were looking, but both sent the recruiter in my direction. The process ran as follows:
It started with a typical recruiter screen - line by line through my resume. They were trying to understand why I’d made certain career decisions, and why I was keen on VC.
Interview with Dan Krasnostein, the hiring Partner who leads our Australian team. He asked about the thematics I followed, Aussie startups I liked, and my observations from Uber and :Different.
Culture fit interview with James Tynan and Casey Flint, who were the two other investors in the Australian team. I knew Casey from Uber days, although we’d never worked together directly.
Interview with Square Peg co-founder, Paul Bassat over lunch in person. It was a conversation about my experiences, observations on technology businesses, and motivation to apply for the role.
Take home case study — a two page investment memo on a Series A business Square Peg was looking at. I was given a pitch deck and some data. This preceded an interview with Dan and one of our co-founding partners, Tony Holt, where we discussed my approach to the case study, and where I’d focus in a diligence process if we moved forward.
Another in person interview with Paul and Dan. It was a rapid fire on different business models and thematic trends.
The final stage was a lunch with the full Melbourne team. And after all of that, they made the offer!
This was three weeks in total from start to end, with a lot of face time with the team given the number of steps. We’ve cut the process down significantly since Lucy Tan and I joined the business in August 2021.
👋 Hey! Before you continue reading the rest of this article….we have a special announcement just for you.
We’re inviting you to join us on the 1st June, LIVE in Sydney for event #2 of this special fireside series. This time we’re unpacking — Can tech help us build a better world? Fireside Chat with James Tynan, Partner at Square Peg, on Climate, Health and AI.
—> This event is capped and tickets are quickly selling out!
3/6 Looking back on the past 12 months of being an investor, what two skills have you had to accelerate the most?
The first was building a personal brand and sourcing muscle in a way that felt authentic. When I joined Square Peg, I had a preconceived notion of how you build your brand in the ecosystem, and how you go about developing high trust sourcing channels. I thought this looked like lots of networking events, lots of posting on Twitter. Ultimately, trying to be everywhere all the time. This works really really well for lots of people, and in my first six to 12 months, I leaned into this way of working.
But, I found it exhausting. That style of relationship building didn’t feel very me; it drained my energy. And when you feel low energy, you invariably end up underperforming. I’ve realised that I’m much better off investing that same effort in different ways:building a smaller handful of deeper relationships with founders, operators and investors I really like is my favourite part of the job.
The second has been really pushing myself to understand the relative strengths of different business models. At the earliest stages of a business - when it’s just a founder with an idea, and maybe a pitch deck - I find the best insights comes from how founders think about their business models: how they can build defensibility, the longevity of their margins, how and why they build operating leverage, etc. Some business models are just much stronger than others, and being able to identify these has been really helpful.
4/6 Three specific things you do directly after meeting a founder for the first time?
I really push myself to think of at least one thing I can do to be helpful. This could be an intro to talent who's relevant to them, an introduction to another founder or operator who's thought deeply about the space, or potentially an intro to a customer in their sweet spot. I can't always do this in good faith, but I’ll always write down at least one thing I can do to help.
I block 15 minutes after the call to reflect on my notes and do some light desktop research. I write transcript-style notes and don’t record calls. So when a call ends, I re-read the transcript, and reflect on my excitement level about the team and the opportunity. If I have that sense of urgent hunger to learn more, I'll write up a short note that I'll share with a small group of the investment team. And if I'm not excited, I'll document the reasons there and then while they're fresh so that I can go back to the founders with explicit feedback.
I’ll take a walk around the block or distract myself for a few minutes. Focus switching is an incredibly important skill in VC, and honestly, I'm not very good at it. Taking this break from back to back calls allows me to reset for the next conversation.
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5/6 What is your top tip for getting into VC?
I think VC is, first and foremost, a relationships business. When I speak to peers in the industry about their stories of getting roles they - almost always - directly built a relationship with a firm over a period of time, or they indirectly built that relationship through their brand or second degree connections.
We often given founders the advice that the best fundraising process is one that happens organically over time as you get to know a fund well before you need capital. I think the same is true of talent. The best recruitment process is one where you really know the fund and its partners well before a role becomes available. You want to know whether you’re a great fit for one another.
You could take two associates at different firms, both excellent in their current roles, swap them and find they flounder because of the style of investing that each firm follows.
6/6 What separates the best investors from the rest?
When I look at leaders in our fund - like Paul Bassat, or Tush Roy, who leads our Southeast Asia office - I come back to the two behaviours I see them illustrate really often.
They're deeply curious: about industries, about business models, but most importantly - about people and their motivations. Quickly after meeting both Tush and Paul, I felt I’d somehow shared half my life story because of the set of questions they asked me about my childhood, my hobbies, and the like. You could put them in a room with anyone, and they'd come away knowing so much about that person's life story.
They’re really empathetic. I worry sometimes that there's a generation of investors who haven't seen how difficult it is to scale businesses over a long period of time. And I think the best investors are the ones who provide support - both emotional and financial - through difficult periods, push hard through periods of growth, and ultimately keep founder welfare top of mind even if it’sat the expense of their fund’s short term interests.
Thanks for reading this instalment of the Association Series! Get in touch with me anytime here — to share your thoughts, suggest other questions and/or people we should feature.
Fly high,
Vidit