Venture Investments and M&A Director

About Wintermute

Wintermute is a hyper-growth fintech startup and one of the largest players in the global digital asset markets. We provide liquidity algorithmically across most cryptocurrency exchanges and trading platforms, as well as support high profile blockchain projects and traditional financial institutions moving into crypto.

Culturally, we combine the best traits of both trading companies and technology startups. As a trading company, we manage hundreds of millions in assets, trade more than $5B+/day across dozens of trading platforms and are highly profitable in doing so. As a technology startup, we build, innovate and move incredibly fast, we create best-in-class liquidity products that create more efficient markets. We believe that traditional finance has to change and we are on a mission to define and build the decentralized future of finance.

Wintermute is a hyper-growth highly profitable proprietary trading business. We are backed by top tier global venture capital investors such as Lightspeed, Pantera Capital, Sino Global Capital, Blockchain.com Ventures, Avon Ventures by Fidelity Investments, DeFi Alliance and others. Learn more about our team and culture on our website and Evgeny’s post here.

Venture Investments at Wintermute

Wintermute has been active in venture investments in early crypto startups since 2020 and has already completed 30+ long-term investments in both equity and tokens.

Due to its position in the global crypto industry and very broad exposure to projects and other venture firms, Wintermute has access to very good deal flow. Unlike many venture funds, Wintermute is able to provide companies with tangible value add, for example by being an early liquidity provider on the platform, we can influence the success of that platform to a significant degree. We also have technology, trading and financial expertise to give offer specific advise and in some cases collaboration. Learn more about how trading firms are ramping up their venture investment and, why token projects might prefer them on the cap table compared to traditional investors in this post.

We are now looking to expand our venture capital arm and have a dedicated owner of this strategic activity. Wintermute ventures will be a separate entity within the Group without external capital. It will focus on early stage investments in crypto companies and protocols, primarily in trading platforms and trading infrastructure space.

Responsibilities

• Deal sourcing: become deeply embedded into the crypto eco-system to be able to source and win highest quality deals; build a strong industry network
• Market research: do own independent research to understand trends in CeFi and DeFi, dive deep into ins and outs of the products, protocols, teams, Discord channels, various data sources
• Work with portfolio companies: work with portfolio companies to understand what they need to become successful; work directly with them and liaise with internal Wintermute teams to tangibly support them; participate in governance for relevant protocols
• M&A: work with management team to design M&A strategy and do related target research and deal sourcing
• Deal closing: own the deals from start to finish, including due diligence, documents and terms negotiations
• Deal tracking: design and support the process of deal tracking, from recording theses and decision making process, to records to finance, tax and accounting

Hard Skills Requirements

• Ideal profile type A: At least a year working for a top tier crypto-native company, either a blockchain project or fund (venture, hedge fund or trading) with exposure to global eco-system of CeFi, DeFi; the broader exposure to multiple teams and segments you have, the better OR
• Ideal profile type B: More traditional investing background (VC, PE, investment banking, etc) but at least 6 months of aping deep into crypto personally and having general understanding of crypto-native investment opportunities
• Crypto/blockchain knowledge: Regardless of background, we expect you to know the industry, key players and emerging trends and be a user of multiple products in CeFi and DeFi space
• Technical understanding: Some level of technical understanding is crucial; you don’t have to be a developer, but you should understand the basics of blockchain, limitations of various chains, L2s, technical value propositions of various protocols and platforms
• Experience working in a high growth, high performance environment, such as VC-backed startup, crypto project, a technology-focused trading firm, etc
• Ability to quickly and independently learn new areas, such as legal, due diligence, financials, etc
• Organized and structured approach to problem solving and work generally
• Technology or quantitative degree is an advantage; experience in financial services or trading is an advantage

Other Requirements

• Have an owner mentality: you focus on the ultimate result for the company (short and long-term growth)
• Able to understand the bigger picture and be very hands-on and practical; to whatever it takes to source and win the right deals
• Customer-focused attitude: you treat target teams as customers and are giving them best service and experience, even when you don’t invest; you genuinely trying to offer value-add tangible help after the investment above and beyond other firms
• Determined, ambitious yet humble, willing to work hard, take feedback and learn on the way
• Like meritocracy and being judged by what you deliver
• Have an entrepreneurial mindset versus working 9-to-5 mentality; prepared to work non-standard days/working hours if required (since we are a high-growth startup operating in 24/7 crypto world)
• Like working in the team collaborative environment (not fully remote), at least half-time working from our office

Wintermute Offer

• A unique opportunity to work on very interesting deals in the most dynamic and innovative tech industry; you get partner level of responsibility and ownership that would take 5-10 years longer to get in any other venture capital environment
• A unique opportunity to join one of the strongest and highest potential crypto startups globally, one with is commercially successful, yet small enough to have impact and upside
• Great culture: highly professional and ambitious, yet informal, friendly, non-hierarchical, collaborative and entrepreneurial
• A cool office in central London with a sci-fi touch; we support work permits and relocation to London and are open to short periods on remote work (e.g., first 3-4 months); we would consider Singapore location for this role too
• Weekly team events, such as team lunches, team dinners, team board games and gaming sessions; these are not obligatory in any sense, but this is what many of us like to do
• Aligned incentive structure: on top of competitive fixed compensation and performance-based bonus you will get significant upside from the deals you source and own

Tips for Successful Application

• Only apply to us if you are genuinely interested or curious about this role and this space; this is not for someone who pursues purely mercenary objectives
• Do your research: look at our investments, website and social media channels
• Write us a short, honest, and direct message if you’d like to apply. Tell us about why you are interested in Wintermute generally and your specific role in particular
• Do not send us generic copy paste applications, we are looking for authentic people who share our interests, values and ambitions.
• If you don’t have some obviously matching experience or skills, make sure you state very clearly what you can bring or how your experience is relevant/transferable
• Prepare to be asked specific questions about your past projects (including the ones in CV) and our hard skills requirements
• Prepare to demonstrate “Other requirements”
• Do your basic homework on crypto markets and what hft/market making/algo trading is
• We expect to get a lot of applications for this role, so unfortunately, we won’t be able to proceed if you simply press “submit button”; we do promise to reply to everyone who puts time and effort into making the application relevant!