Director of Operations

About Palm Venture Studios

Palm Venture Studios (Palm) is a single-family-office-backed venture studio with a national footprint, headquartered in Greenwich CT. As a venture studio we both acquire early stage distressed companies or assets and seed new startup companies that will be both good businesses and create positive impact for society. We are a team of entrepreneurs and operators that partner with mission-driven founders to give their companies rescue capital and expertise, and build new companies from scratch.

About the Director of Operations Role

As our new Director of Operations, you will be and build the operational background that supports our growing portfolio of ventures. You will ensure that the entire venture portfolio has and uses best-in-class tooling and technology for communications, calendaring, new hire onboarding and administration, internal processes (like funding approvals), and support in deal closing with checklists, templates, and more. You will also play a culture-forward role in supporting high performance in portfolio ventures.

You are reliable, resourceful, proactive, positive, organized, detail-oriented, adaptable, curious, and creative. You are able to balance a large number of “open loops” and competing priorities at once in a fast-evolving and dynamic environment. Must be able to handle confidential matters with discretion. Outstanding verbal and written communication skills are critical.

In this role, you will be able to scope, select, and onboard new resources if they are required to deliver best in class results on your workflows (e.g. virtual assistants, etc). You will be based in or close to Greenwich CT, with the ability to spend time in Austin TX and to travel when needed (~15% time).

Accountabilities

Portfolio Operations, Communications, and Special Projects

• Own team-wide calendaring & schedule-making; create agendas for team meetings, host certain meetings on behalf of Studio leadership, make sure the team meetings routine is optimized and effective.
• Embed existing team assets (e.g. Notion, source-of-truth documents) into team workflows for team-wide adoption.
• Liaise with PVS team members, taking memos, and reporting back needs to Studio leadership.
• Liaise with Palm’s parental family office teams (finance, operations) to ensure smooth processes for venture funding, etc.
• Travel booking and logistics. Creating and managing itineraries. 
• Ensuring that all action items requiring follow-up have been taken care of, or assigned to the right team member with a deadline.
• Draft emails and other key internal communications for Studio leadership.
• Develop and own reporting emails or other frequent communications that you will own, to keep stakeholders up to speed on key projects.
• Surface, scope, and project manage special projects for the venture studio, actively managing the project teams so the projects are completed on time and in-budget.
• Help draft or revise role scopes, and coordinate with Studio teams to finalize role scopes.

Talent Operations

• Support pipeline management on key searches, including at times doing interviews, creating onboarding plans, or otherwise supporting the Talent function in making progress on key hires.
• Support operational components of new hire onboarding: running background check process, payroll setup, benefits administration, and other aspects of employment.
• Act as “eyes and ears” of Studio leadership, in support of creating a high performing

Requirements

You are a great fit for this role if you…

• Are highly organized and innately curious, with an entrepreneurial spirit.
• Adept at digital tools  – calendaring, emails, various tools (google docs, Notion, Slack etc) – and easily able to assess, select, and learn new tools when needed.
• Have robust experience running an operations functions in multiple contexts.
• Have some experience or background in talent, recruiting, people operations, HR, or similar.
• Have outstanding written communications skills – an ability to write concisely and precisely.
• Are able to “multi-track” on a daily basis, i.e. creating docs, sending emails, and doing bits of research in between Zoom calls and meetings for large portions of each day 4-5 days a week.
• Are motivated to support and learn from executives building a portfolio of holdings in values-driven ventures.
• Have an eye for detail, a commitment to excellence, and a high bar for your work and the work of your colleagues.
• Bonus points for experience working at venture studios or other highly entrepreneurial environments.

Benefits

Compensation for this role includes competitive base salary and performance bonuses, potential for carry participation in the PVS portfolio, health insurance, and other benefits.