Invest in the Future of Clean Energy: Nuclear Innovation

Nucleation is expanding our syndication team!

Nucleation Capital is the first pronuclear venture fund that is working to accelerate the world's transition to 100% clean energy by investing into an expanded menu of advanced nuclear options. Our focus is democratizing access for investors to participate in investing into ventures developing advanced clean technologies including next-generation nuclear, carbon management and grid enhancement. There are many worthy ventures working to reduce emissions, restore the climate and fortify our grids against the extreme weather we are facing, so we are now also seeking to broaden our deal flow. In order to connect with more early-stage ventures beginning to operate in these areas, we are recruiting Venture Scouts and other independent Allies to assist us with finding and identifying great teams and supporting them on their fundraising journey. Learn more below and consider applying to support this effort while also learning more about how venture capital works!

About the role: Venture Associate or Informal Ally

Over the last five years, Nucleation Capital has become widely known as the leading venture fund focused on investing in nuclear energy and carbon management innovation. This seems like a very narrow niche but it spans fission, fusion, LENR, subcritical, supercritical, RTGs and other types of nuclear batteries and that’s before including the broad area of carbon capture, utilization and sequestration, including production of sustainable fuels, carbon-based materials and other applications. New ventures are launching all the time and we want to have an opportunity to engage with them and assess whether or not to invest and/or to give our pronuclear investor network access.

To broaden our access to deals, we are recruiting a team of Venture Scouts and informal allies who can support our efforts just by learning more about how venture investing works, making introductions and building the skills to help us float syndicated offerings that can enable more of those ventures to gain access to capital. It’s a win-win-win.

You may be in school, working in lab, have a full-time job or be job-hunting. Regardless, if you have extra time, a passion for innovation and an interest in learning about venture finance, this could be a wonderful side gig. All you need to do is be able to occasionally introduce us to a great emerging new venture!

Emerging ventures can be found at universities, incubators, accelerators, venture studios, and start-up founders’ events. You identify an exciting venture and make the introduction and we help you help them raise capital. Whether you already hang out at places like Plug n’ Play, Y Combinator, Activate or ARPA-E, if you find a cool, early-stage venture that fits our thesis, we can help you do an assessment and, if it looks very promising, help them raise very quickly.

Don’t worry if this is all new: we've got materials and training that will help you figure out what to do. We will coach you on how to approach founders, evalute their business prospects and figure out if there is a deal to be done. You bring your technical expertise, your people skills and your willingness to learn.

Note: This role is not intended to be full-time but rather something meaningful to do in your spare time, within the community you already have around you. How much time you spend and how many deals you introduce are up to you. The more you do, however, the easier it gets and the more you learn about venture capital.

The compensation

Venture Scouts and Allies are primarily incentivized through the success fee earned by venture capital called "Carried Interest" or just "carry." This is form of compensation that is paid when our investors profit from the returns earned on an investment in an amount greater than what they invested. Typically, the more successful the investment, the higher the carry compensation will be.

Carry is a standard component of venture capital success fees. It is paid whenever the investment achieves liquidity, however that can be many years later. Your share of total deal carry earned will reflect your relative contributions to getting the deal done. There are many steps required to get deals done. The more deals you do, the more of these steps you’ll learn to handle and the greater your share of the carry.

Serving as a Venture Scout provides numerous additional benefits. First among these is eye a bird's eye view of venture-type deal structuring and fundraising activity. For those who have been engaged in engineering, this can be very interesting. Second, you'll not just build valuable experience, you'll also build a different type of network, including of founders or potential founders, building new ventures. You’ll get a front row seat to their journeys. Also, should you wish, you'll have the opportunity to participate as an investor in the deals that you bring and others that Nucleation syndicates. As an active Venture Scout, you can participate at reduced carry rates. This role is great for someone who has an engineering bent, loves innovation, and wants to help emergin gentrepreneurs while building broader investment acumen in the private equity space.

**IMPORTANT: This is a part-time, independent contractor role that does not provide a regular paycheck or benefits. If you earn more than $600 in fees, you will get a 1099 form and be responsible for paying your own taxes.**

Background requirements

We anticipate that this role will appeal to self-starter individuals who have developed a certain amount of technical expertise but who have little or no experience in investing in, starting or running a business. Candidates will likely include those working in or around the nuclear, the energy industry, the national labs, or who have nuclear, chemical or mechanical engineering skills. You may, in fact, know painfully little about the world of business, finance, entrepreneurship, or venture capital investing but you are curious and want to know more. Plus, maybe you have seen a number of collegues, friends or other associates who have decided to go launch a venture of their own. Maybe you've provided technical support but have never thought about helping them raise capital. Now you can develop a way to do that.

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Skill requirements

To join Nucleation's Venture Scouts, you should have a level of technical expertise that helps you be able to credibly assess the viability of a technology and the crediblity of a founder. You should also be able to connect personally with other deeply technical people and explore their vision, their technical development strategy, and their capabilities to execute on their plans. You should be able to build personal rapport and speak with enough authority that you can gain their confidence and trust in working with you to raise capital. You don't need to bring technical expertise or deep market insights into every type of technology or market strategy but you should be able to take the initiative to learn what you need to know to speak intelligently about technical areas of which you aren't fluent. So, if you bring a: