Senior Portfolio Analytics & Investment Associate

Unusual Ventures•Menlo Park, CA

About The Position

We are seeking an analytically rigorous, commercially sharp Senior Portfolio Analytics & Investment Associate to bridge the gap between structured financial modeling and early-stage startup execution. Positioned within our investment team, this role splits time between delivering strategic insights on portfolio traction, helping with underwriting investments, and serving as a direct fractional financial strategist to our founders. Unlike traditional back-office data roles, responsibility for institutional fund metrics, DPI/IRR tracking, and Limited Partner (LP) reporting lies entirely with our dedicated Finance team. Instead, you will deliver value by honing internal data infrastructure and advanced analytical modeling to drive proactive investment decision making, assist with pre-investment diligence, and help architect financial strategy alongside our pre-seed and seed-stage portfolio companies from day one.

Requirements

3–5+ years of experience in either Venture Capital, Private Equity, Growth Equity, or Investment Banking.
Elite-level ability to synthesize complex operational metrics into transparent, flexible three-statement models from a blank sheet of paper.
Deep operational empathy for pre-seed and seed founders; a natural ability to educate technical operators on financial literacy and unit economics.
Advanced mastery of Excel/Sheets.
Highly value technical familiarity with data management frameworks with MCP integrations (Claude, ChatGPT, Carta), BI visualization software, and standard market information sources (PitchBook, Harmonic, Crunchbase).
Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Computer Science, Engineering, or a highly technical quantitative discipline.

Nice To Haves

MBA/ CFA a plus.

Responsibilities

Oversee the structural ingestion and sanitization of qualitative and operational KPIs submitted by portfolio startups, ensuring data hygiene and consistency.
Engineer internal analytics frameworks and predictive watchlists to monitor portfolio health, alert leadership to real-time runway risks, and evaluate operational velocity. Primary focus is on companies likely to deliver the greatest impact to our funds.
Interface directly with the internal Finance team to provide seamless portfolio data information, feeding into valuations for fund accounting and investor reporting.
Support the commercial evaluation of early-stage investment opportunities, identifying core traction drivers, reviewing financial models and pressure testing assumptions as appropriate.
Collaborate on drafting high-conviction investment memos and present clear data-driven arguments directly to the Investment Committee.
Conduct proactive ecosystem market mapping and macroeconomic sector research to uncover high-conviction, proactive sourcing channels.
Work with other investment team members on complex financial underwriting, cap table dilution analysis, and returns modeling for pipeline opportunities. Support Finance team with valuation modeling as needed.
Embed directly with pre-seed and seed-stage portfolio founders to design, build, and stress-test their initial bottoms-up operational and financial models from scratch.
Translate raw early traction into structured corporate forecasts—optimizing pricing tiers, unit economics, headcount planning, and milestones required to successfully unlock Series A benchmarks.
Partner with portfolio executive teams to build clean, forward-looking runway/burn scenarios ahead of institutional follow-on rounds.
Institutionalize financial templates across the firm, building robust, repeatable forecasting tooling and playbooks tailored for early-stage B2B SaaS focused in the AI infrastructure segment.