About the Studio:
Drive Ventures, Optimize Operations with AltaML’s Venture Studio!
AltaML’s Venture Studio builds and invests in early-stage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) companies. The Studio helps founders and startups fast-track their journey from zero to one by providing technical expertise, managing operational details, and incorporating insights from our corporate labs to build innovative applied AI ventures. By bringing together talent, capital, and expertise in AI/ML, the Studio elevates ideas with a competitive edge and transforms them into high-performing companies.
Whether the concept originates from founders, internal ideation or the services side of the business, the Studio catalyzes venture inception - evaluating and selecting ideas that will drive transformative change and unlock boundless human potential. The team is dedicated to identifying exceptional founders and collaborating with them to nurture these groundbreaking ventures, propelling their advancement toward Series A.
About the Role:
As a Venture Studio Associate, your role involves assisting in streamlining the operations of the venture studio, exploring early-stage ideas and creating engaging content to keep stakeholders informed with the studio.
Responsibilities include ensuring smooth studio operations, timely responses to founders, maintaining templates for consistency, and contributing to the validation of potential ideas. If you have a keen eye for detail, a passion for process improvement, and enjoy exploring venture ideas while meeting new people, this role is perfect for you! Additionally, if you have a strong interest in startups and ventures and want to pursue a career in this field, you'll find this opportunity particularly rewarding.
This will be a 4-month term starting in January 2025 and can be extended to an 8-month term as well.
Note: This opportunity in funded in partnership with Mitacs and therefore, requires you to be an active students for the complete duration of the term. As a student at any of the following institutions, you would be considered eligible for funding for this role: University of Alberta, Macewan University, Mount Royal University, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, and/or Queens University.
What You’ll Do:
- Participate in founder calls, providing support during discussions and ensuring follow-ups are conducted promptly.
- Develop and maintain studio templates to streamline operations.
- Regularly update studio materials, including monthly opportunity pipelines and quarterly newsletters, to keep stakeholders informed and engaged.
- Create engaging content and marketing materials for the studio to attract potential founders and investors.
- Conduct comprehensive market research and competitor analysis to evaluate venture viability and potential impact, informing strategic decision-making.
- Attend venture studio and venture capital webinars to stay updated on industry trends and best practices to suggest improvements to our studio.
- Research and benchmark other venture studios' content and marketing strategies, gathering insights and ideas for continuous improvement.
- Explore backlog ideas, advancing promising concepts and discontinuing non-viable ones.
- Enhance and refine the Investigate phase of venture development, ensuring thorough evaluation and validation of ideas.
- Identify operational inefficiencies and propose solutions to optimize studio operations, improving overall effectiveness and efficiency.
- Assist with managing the studio dashboard and tracking important metrics
What You Bring:
- You have a passion for venture studios, startups and entrepreneurship.
- You may be pursuing a degree in business, marketing, or a more technical degree (CS, Engineering, Data Science).
- Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, with the ability to convey ideas clearly and persuasively.
- Proficient in Google Slides and Google Docs, with the ability to create visually appealing and informative content.
- Passionate about process improvement, constantly seeking ways to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.
- Solid research and analytical skills, able to gather and analyze data to inform decision-making.
- Strong attention to detail, ensuring accuracy and quality in all tasks.
- Your ability to work effectively in diverse teams, understanding and integrating different perspectives, is crucial.
- You have a demonstrated history of entrepreneurial endeavors, having successfully initiated and managed a venture, which could range from a business to a course, charity, or club. You actively engage with communities of like-minded individuals, eager to contribute to and foster the rapid development of startups.
Bonus:
- Knowledge of machine learning / AI
- Knowledge of additional functional areas such as Engineering, Sales, UX/UI, Customer Support, Marketing, or Finance
- Familiarity with venture capital and the startup ecosystem
- Experience with tools such as Figma, Airtable, etc.
About AltaML:
AltaML is a leading North American applied AI company with extensive experience in building and operationalizing AI solutions. We call our business model Invent and Scale, from industry agnostic to industry focused, which encompasses focus and domain expertise combined with an ability to understand workflows and how to get to generalizability with data. AltaML has multiple functional disciplines and joint ventures.
We are a company like no other – we believe in making small bets, failing fast, and being better together. We are looking for creative problem-solvers who obsess about the customer to find wins across different industries.
If you’re passionate about AI/ML, thrive in a dynamic environment, and want to work with a diverse team of wickedly smart people, we want to hear from you!
Responsible AI (RAI)
AltaML employees, contractors, and associates must be trained and well-versed in the importance of Responsible AI and empowered to enact RAI principles by developing and deploying AI solutions. They should also be empowered to raise and escalate RAI concerns as required.
AltaML is responsible for elevating public discourse and awareness of AI through open, transparent communications with the broader public.
Equal Opportunities
AltaML is dedicated to fostering a safe, diverse, and inclusive workplace as an equal-opportunity employer. We welcome applications from qualified individuals of all backgrounds, encompassing ethnicity, religion, disability status, gender identity, sexual orientation, family status, age, nationality, and educational backgrounds. If you are invited for an interview and require accommodations during the interview process, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
AltaML acknowledges that its head office is located on Treaty 6 territory, and respects the histories, languages, and cultures of First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our vibrant community.
Who we are looking for:
We don’t hire for fit; we hire to add. Our core values speak volumes about who we are and how we work:
Humble – Listen to the data
Happy – Tap-dance to work
Gritty – Be persistent, not complacent
Agile – Make small bets, then iterate
What we have to offer you:
You will be able to experience a collaborative company culture. We nurture an environment that combines the nimbleness and can-do attitude of a successful start-up, but with the scale of a large investment management firm.
Your work will be applied to real-world problems and will have a high impact on our clients and Alberta’s economy. You will be working with extremely talented and passionate people who bring multiple years of industrial and academic experience in data science, software engineering, and machine learning fields. To solve the problems we apply various ML techniques from traditional Machine Learning and Data Mining algorithms, through to vision, Deep Learning, Information Extraction, advanced NLP and conversational agents.
We also have fun. We believe in working hard, getting the job done and enjoying the group social Fridays. You’ll also get flexibility in where you work, what hours you work, how much vacation you take, and what you wear. We expect hard work but respect work/life balance.
Confidence can sometimes hold us back from applying for a job. We’ll let you in on a secret - there is no such thing as a perfect candidate. AltaML is working with new technologies, and no one is standing still when it comes to learning. As long as you are continuing to push your growth and development, then consider applying even if you don’t check all the boxes on our posting.
So, however you identify and whatever background and experiences you bring, please apply if this is a role that would make you “tap dance to work” every day. We would love to add your biological uniqueness to our own! :-)
