Associate/Sr. Associate - Foundation

YourNest Venture Capital; Gurugram District; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 4,500,000; Full time

Job summary

YourNest Venture Capital is seeking a dynamic Associate to Senior Associate for the Foundation team, owning 0-1 portfolio outcomes and partnering closely with founders. You will manage weekly engagements, drive a structured 100-day playbook, and push for capital, people, and revenue milestones that position portfolio companies for a stronger pre-series A narrative.

This role emphasizes founder empathy, rigorous problem solving, and disciplined execution in a fast-paced startup ecosystem, with a

Qualifications

• 0-1 execution mindset for early-stage founders; turn hypotheses into action.
• Strong problem solving and first-principles thinking to break down growth, product, or org challenges.
• Founder empathy with ownership; build trust while maintaining high outcome bars.
• Commercial focus; understanding revenue drivers, unit economics, and hiring leverage.
• Strong judgment under pressure for real-time decision making when founders are stuck.

Responsibilities

• Own portfolio outcomes for 2-5 companies in the 0-1 journey; primary YourNest contact.
• Engage weekly with each company and drive 100-day playbooks on capital, people and revenue.
• Coordinate with Principal, Growth Equity & Exit teams for fundraising readiness and board inputs.
• Develop data-driven narratives and track measurable milestones across portfolio.

Skills

Execution mindset

First-principles thinking

Founder empathy

Commercial & capital efficiency

Judgment under pressure

Job description

Do you have what it takes to build India’s most valuable startups?

Startups aspire to change the way we live and work. They are here to create economic value. Enabling their founders with empathy and assertiveness is an art. We are seeking such partners as part of YourNest’s journey to nurture success for DeepTech startups.

At YourNest, we've been scouting for diamonds in the rough since 2011: with three flagship funds and a continuum fund adding up to $ 160 mn, being the first to focus on DeepTech startups, having delivered more than 10 exits in last 5-years, and while ensuring we remain among India's best-performing early-stage funds, we've made it a habit to set new benchmarks in the country's venture capital sector. And we've done this thanks to an enterprising team of committed young people who work closely with our founders to help them succeed.

YourNest is all set to launch its flagship Fund IV of INR 1500 crores and is seeking to strengthen its Portfolio Management and Growth team. Now, we’re looking for a dynamic professional to take on the role of Associate & Senior Associate - Foundation, who owns the outcomes across the 0-1 portfolio companies and helps founders move faster on the decisions that matter most. Most VC associates support deals. This role owns outcomes.

How does this role contribute?

Foundation (0-1) is the most founder-critical, most relationship-intensive part of YourNest's portfolio work. Companies at this stage are pre-product-market fit, navigating the hardest stretch of their journey — and they need a YourNest business partner who shows up weekly, knows their business as well as the founders do, and can make decisions with them, not just advise them from a distance. While doing this, the associate will simultaneously be building YourNest’s investable track record with each company.

What will help you succeed?

• 0-1 Execution Mindset: Comfort operating in ambiguity with early-stage founders; the ability to convert loose hypotheses into structured action, iterate quickly, and stay resilient through non-linear progress.
• Strong Problem Solving & First-Principles Thinking: Ability to break down ambiguous growth, product or organizational challenges into clear components, identify root causes, and drive practical, high-leverage solutions rather than theoretical recommendations
• Founder Empathy with High Ownership: Ability to build trust with founders while holding a high bar on outcomes; knowing when to listen, when to challenge, and when to challenge.
• Commercial & Capital Efficiency Orientation: Strong understanding of revenue drivers, unit economics, hiring leverage, and trade-offs that shape early-stage company progress.
• Judgment under pressure: Ability to make calls in real time, especially when a founder is stuck, a company is under strain, or the path forward is unclear.

You own — directly and accountably

• Nurture Capital, you are the tip of the spear that carries the Nurture Capital ethos to the founders
• Two to five founder relationships in your portfolio companies' 0-1 journey, end-to-end. You are the primary YourNest contact. The founder calls you first.
• Weekly rhythm of engagement with each owned company. Not monthly check-ins. Not 'I'll get back to you.' Weekly presence on the substantive questions of the business.
• 100-day playbook execution for each company — Capital (who to raise from next), People (which 2-3 hires unlock the next stage), Revenue (what drives early traction).
• Capital, People & Revenue milestones across all owned companies, with measurable outcomes you are personally accountable for.
• Targeted network activation for your companies — customer intros, hire intros, advisor connections, co-investor warm leads. Tracked by outcome, not volume.
• Pre-Series A fundraise readiness for your companies — narrative coordination with the Principal, and with Growth Equity & Exit team for companies approaching the Pre-Series A close (they lead the close, you've built the runway up to it).
• Board pack preparation for your companies' board meetings — substantive content, not just logistics.
• Founder trust — the qualitative signal that your companies' founders consider you a genuine partner, not a process check-in.
• Strengthening data led Fund Raise Narrative - Build and maintain the narrative record for each owned company, the measurable 'before/after' of your YourNest’s engagement, so the investor story writes itself at fundraise time

You do not own — Four distinct lanes sit elsewhere

• Growth-stage rounds and exits — Growth Equity & Exit team. When one of your companies is ready for its Pre-Series A close or beyond, the Growth Equity & Exit team leads the round execution and engagement with growth-stage / PE investors. You hand over the relationship context; they drive the close. Same applies to acquirer conversations and exit execution.
• LP relationships — Fund Raise & IR team. All LP engagement, fund-level fundraising, LP reporting, and IR work sits with the Fund Raise & IR team. You do not interface with LPs in this role.
• Compliance, board minutes, statutory work — Governance & IM cohort. Routine compliance, board minute preparation, rights tracker, audit cycles, statutory filings all sit with Governance & IM. You collaborate with them tightly but you do not duplicate them. Their Principal owns the portfolio's governance continuity; your role is the business outcome of your 2-4 companies.
• Sourcing new deals — Deal Cultivation. Deal Cultivation handles the pipeline. You are post-investment-focused, not pre-investment.

KPIs and Impact Measurement

• Time-to-PMF improvement across 3-6 owned companies: Baseline established at onboarding for each company (months expected to PMF given starting position). Measured at 6-month intervals — actual vs. baseline. Score: % of companies tracking ahead of, on, or behind baseline. Threshold target: 75%+ on or ahead of baseline across the book.
• Fundraise narrative: the documented before/after of YN's engagement with each company, built continuously, not at fundraise time. This is what makes the Series A story credible before the book goes out.
• 100-day playbook completion rate: Each new investment has a written 100-day playbook with 8-12 milestones (split across C, P, R). Measured at day 100 per company. Threshold target: 80%+ milestones completed across the book; 90%+ have plans in place for misses. Quality of milestones reviewed by the Principal, not just completion %.
• Founder trust signal across all companies: Structured founder feedback at mid-year and year-end — five qualitative anchors: responsiveness, judgment, follow-through, network value, partnership feel. Anonymous to the founder, attributable to you. Threshold: positive on 4 of 5 anchors across the book; no founder rating you 'replaceable' on partnership feel.

Demonstrated independence trajectory: Principal tracks frequency and substance of escalations to them across two dimensions: routine (asking for input on decisions you should be making) and substantive (escalating real judgement calls). Routine escalations should trend down quarter-on-quarter; substantive escalations stay roughly stable. Threshold: by month 18, routine escalations <1 per week across the book.

What qualifications & experience must you have?

• Relevant experience across operating roles, consulting, venture, portfolio operations, founder-support, or business-building environments with 0-1 or early-stage startups, with exposure to founder problem solving, execution, scaling, or fundraise readiness 5–8 years for Senior Associate, 4-6 years for Associates.
• Financial modelling in Excel: Ability to Build a clean 3-statement model (P&L, cash, balance sheet) from scratch. Comfortable with sensitivities, scenario modelling, unit economics breakdowns. Knows when a model is over-engineered and when it's under-built.
• Cap table mechanics: Reads and builds cap tables fluently. Understands pre-money / post-money, dilution math, ESOP pool sizing, anti-dilution mechanics, liquidation preferences. Can model a notional Pre-Series A round and articulate founder impact in plain English.
• Written communication: Writes a 1-page memo on a complex situation in 30 minutes. Sharp framing, no padding, can hold a senior reader's attention. Comfortable writing IC notes, board pack inputs, founder follow-up summaries.
• Founder-facing conversation: Can run a 60-min founder check-in without scripts. Knows when to listen, when to challenge, when to coach, when to coach. Comfortable being the most junior person in a board meeting.
• Spreadsheet / data fluency: Advanced Excel/Google Sheets & dashboard building. Comfortable structuring messy data into a usable view in under 2 hours.
• Calendar and commitment discipline: Manages 3-6 simultaneous founder relationships without anything dropping. Founders never wait more than 24 hours for a substantive reply.

Skills: financial modelling,pmf,revenue & profit growth,gtm,foundation,0-1 execution