Why we exist, where we came from and what we look for are on our About page. The companies we have backed are on our Companies page. What neither page tells you is what this job is.

The core team is three people. This hire is the fourth, and the second Investment Manager. We invest early — often as the first institutional money a founder takes — and we stay: on the board, in the hard conversations, for years. That second half is where most of the work sits, and it is why this seat exists.

This is an ownership seat. You do not “support a deal team”. You run the work, write the case, and stand behind it.

• Source companies worth backing.

• Run the work: product, market, competition, numbers, and people.

• Write the screening notes and investment memos that recommend for or against the money.

• Defend your work to the investment committee, and carry the decision into terms, diligence, and closing.

• Sit with companies afterwards: board work, reporting, and the quarters that test the plan.

• Build the firm's technical lens: test technical claims, sharpen how we evaluate software, and use AI to improve how we work.

Most weeks are a mix of first meetings, judgement, and follow-through:

• A first call with a company we might invest in — taken partly to understand how that industry's economics actually work.

• A screening verdict delivered to a founder in person: "This is still a consulting business rather than a product business — and here is what would need to change to make us look again."

• Usage and retention pulled apart, because the numbers show what customers do, not why.

• Customer interviews to find out whether demand is real — or just people trying the product.

• Ownership and funding history read line by line until a valuation claim falls apart.

• A memo drafted with placeholders rather than stalled for perfect information, because every note ends in a decision: keep going at this price, change the price, or walk away.

  And then the apprenticeship layer: your work is marked. Your reasoning and writing are read closely, challenged directly, and improved draft by draft.

  Who does the marking matters. You would defend your work to our investment committee — the group that gives the final yes or no on every investment. Among them is the co-founder of Discovery, the founder of Ethos Private Equity's technology and innovation fund, and our chairman, who led Allan Gray for close to a decade. If you are early in your career, having your judgement tested by people like that is not normal.

Nearly every software company we see now has an AI claim near its centre. Most will not fail because the model was weak. They will fail because nobody buys: the workflow is wrong, the buyer does not care enough, value never becomes revenue.

Your job is to judge that with evidence: what is owned vs rented, what is durable vs a wrapper, what survives real enterprise use — and, where it helps, what the code reveals. Not as our internal developer, but as an investor whose technical lens keeps the judgement honest.

Our two most recent investments are the kind of product you would judge: Anvaya, workflow-native legal AI built on South African law, and Yazi, which runs research inside WhatsApp with AI that adapts its questions as it goes. Both are on Companies.

Most people we want for this job do. It is why we ask what you have started, and what you have risked with your own money.

You would see companies up close, from first meeting to the quarters that test the plan — what worked, what did not, and why. You would write the case for putting money behind one, and defend it to people who have built and backed real businesses. Then you would sit with that company afterwards and watch the plan meet reality.

This is not an engineering job, and it is not an analyst seat. There is no layer between your work and the decision. We care about what you have done:

• You have started something — a product, a project, a business — and can point to the artefact.

• You have built or shipped something technical, and can show it.

• You have put your own money behind your own judgement — size does not matter.

• You are roughly 2–4 years into working life, learn fast, and write clearly.

• You are energised by people. This job is speaking with founders, continuously.

  Our office is in Rosebank, and we work hybrid. You need to be in Johannesburg, or ready to move — this is an apprenticeship, and you can't learn it remotely.

1. Apply: CV, academic transcripts, and the application form. The form asks for what a CV cannot show; we are a small team, so this is what we use to decide whom to meet.

2. A conversation with the team: 45 minutes. We ask about what you wrote; you ask about the work and the firm. Chemistry, alignment and fit, both ways.

3. A personality assessment, sent with the case invitation. It shapes how we would work with you; it decides nothing.

4. The case: two hours with the team, built from a real company, issued seven days before, so your week includes a weekend. You present a screening note and take our questions, the way our Investment Managers do at committee. Then an unseen problem from one of our portfolio companies — investing is the first half of this job; managing what we own is the second.

5. A conversation with our chairman: the one person in this process who is not in the team day-to-day, so he reads you without a stake in the answer.

6. References: You give us every manager; we choose whom to call. Nothing happens behind your back. It is a demanding process, set out in full so you can weigh it before you start. It is also the most accurate preview of the job we can give you.