Gateway X Venture Associate Application
Location: St. Louis, in person.
Full-time
Gateway X partners with exceptional founders to build and back the next generation of AI-native companies.
We identify compelling opportunities, develop conviction around markets, founders, and companies, and partner with exceptional entrepreneurs to build enduring businesses. We provide capital, infrastructure, and hands-on partnership so founders can build capital-efficient companies in areas where AI fundamentally changes how businesses operate.
We're a small, high-performing team that values intellectual curiosity, speed, ownership, and rigorous thinking. We move quickly, challenge assumptions, and expect everyone on the team to operate beyond the boundaries of a traditional job description.
We're looking for an exceptional generalist to work closely with our founder and broader team across company building, investing, marketing, and special projects.
This is a high-ownership role where you'll own whatever problems matter most to Gateway X, from evaluating a new market or company to turning an idea into action. It draws on the analytical rigor of venture capital and the range of a Chief of Staff role, but it's not a traditional version of either.
You'll evaluate markets, founders, and companies, develop conviction around what Gateway X should build and back, and drive important initiatives from an initial question through recommendation and execution.
If you're intellectually curious, highly resourceful, and want broad exposure to how companies are identified, evaluated, built, and grown, this is a unique seat.
You're the person Jesse and the Gateway X team trust with important, ambiguous problems and know will independently drive them toward a high-quality outcome. Your research and analysis shape which markets, founders, and companies Gateway X pursues. You develop conviction around new opportunities, turn that conviction into clear recommendations, and move ideas from an initial question to action. Along the way, you're consistently taking meaningful work off the team's plate and building the judgment to decide what Gateway X builds, backs, and pursues next.
Why Join Gateway X as a Venture Associate
• Unique Seat Across Company Building & Investing: You'll sit at the intersection of entrepreneurship, investing, and company creation, with exposure to opportunities from initial idea through research, validation, investment, company formation, and growth.
• Direct Partnership with Jesse: You'll work closely with Gateway X founder and CEO Jesse Pujji, taking important ideas, questions, and priorities off his plate and independently turning them into high-quality work.
• Your Work Shapes What Gets Built: You'll have a hand in deciding what Gateway X builds, who we build it with, and which markets and companies we pursue.
• Unusually Broad Exposure: This isn't a narrowly defined investing role. You'll work across company building, investing, marketing, and whatever priorities matter most to Gateway X.
• High Ownership: You'll be trusted to take ambiguous questions, create structure around them, and drive them from initial thought through analysis, recommendation, and execution.
• Learn By Doing: You'll work directly with experienced founders, operators, and investors while tackling real decisions and projects across Gateway X and its portfolio.
What We Value (And Expect From You)
Takes Extreme Ownership
• You operate with significant autonomy and don't wait for perfectly defined instructions to make progress.
• You're highly resourceful. When you don't know how to do something, your instinct is to figure it out.
• You have low ego about the work and are willing to tackle whatever matters most.
Thrives in Ambiguity & Speed
• You can go from a blank page to a thoughtful point of view quickly.
• You bring order to messy, undefined problems instead of waiting for someone else to scope them.
• You're comfortable switching between analytical work and tactical execution as priorities shift.
Brings Intellectual Rigor & Judgment
• You're intellectually curious about unfamiliar businesses, industries, and how AI is changing them.
• You have strong analytical instincts but don't hide behind analysis when it's time to make a decision.
• You have excellent judgment about what matters and what doesn't.
• You communicate complicated ideas simply and clearly.
What you're judged on: results, not hours logged.
Pipeline & Company Building
• Source and screen the pipeline that fills every fellowship cohort: 5 spots, 20+ qualified founders to choose from.
• Take at least one new company concept per quarter from a blank page to a validated, fundable thesis.
Investment Underwriting
• Turn a first founder conversation into a full investment memo in under 24 hours, using AI research and modeling systems you built.
• Own underwriting end to end: speed and depth of diligence become the reason Gateway X wins competitive deals.
Marketing & Pipeline Generation
• Generate inbound pipeline (founders, LPs, and press) through events, content, and campaigns you plan and run yourself.
• Grow Gateway X's reach until "talk to Gateway X" is the default advice founders give each other.
Special Projects
• Take Jesse's highest-priority ideas from a one-line note to a live pilot in days, not weeks.
• Ship at least one process or system improvement per quarter that the team runs on its own, without you having to re-explain it.
What a typical stretch of work looks like. There's no standard playbook and no predictable week; the common thread is that you'll be handed important questions and trusted to drive them to an answer.
Company Building
• Source and screen founders and company concepts, converting a wide top of funnel into a short list worth Gateway X's capital and time.
• Pressure-test business models, GTM approaches, and early traction with founders before Gateway X commits.
• Take validated concepts from hypothesis through early execution, building whatever gets the concept to its first proof point.
Investments
• Build and run the underwriting process (market maps, competitive analysis, financial models, customer diligence) that turns a company into a clear recommendation.
• Design and maintain the AI systems that compress memo turnaround from weeks to hours.
• Own the investment recommendation from research through the memo to the call on whether Gateway X moves.
Marketing
• Plan and run events, content, and campaigns that put Gateway X's fellowship, fund, and portfolio in front of the founders worth backing.
• Build the top-of-funnel systems (outreach, referral loops, content distribution) that keep the pipeline full without starting from zero each cycle.
• Own Gateway X's voice across social, newsletters, and LP updates so the market hears our thesis straight from us.
Special Projects
• Turn Jesse's raw ideas into scoped plans and shipped outcomes, no matter how undefined the starting point.
• Drive high-stakes prep for LP, partner, and founder conversations that need to land right the first time.
• Redesign how the team operates when you see a better way, and make it stick.
The exact mix will evolve. We're intentionally looking for someone who's excited by that.
You'll Thrive in This Role If You…
Preferred Background:
• 2+ years in investment banking, management consulting, or another high-rigor analytical environment - the kind of place that forces real attention to detail, speed under pressure, and getting smart on an unfamiliar business fast.
• Experience in venture capital, growth equity, private equity, or startup operating roles is a plus.
• Strong financial modeling and analytical skills, with writing that turns complex information into a clear recommendation.
• A track record of operating with real autonomy across multiple priorities at once.
AI Fluency (Non-Negotiable):
• You use AI tools daily for research, modeling, writing, or building.
• You can show us something you've built (an agent, an automation, a workflow, a tool - not a ChatGPT chat log). Come ready to walk us through it.
What Makes You Exceptional:
• Intellectually Curious: You're genuinely interested in unfamiliar businesses, industries, and how AI is changing them.
• Blank-Page Thinker: You can take an undefined question and quickly develop a thoughtful point of view.
• Analytical but Decisive: You have strong analytical instincts but know when it's time to stop analyzing and make a recommendation.
• Exceptional Communicator: You write clearly and can communicate complicated ideas simply.
• Highly Resourceful: You dig in and find a way, even when no one's shown you how.
• Strong Judgment: You can distinguish what matters from what doesn't and focus your effort accordingly.
• Comfortable With Ambiguity: You don't need a perfectly defined scope to make progress.
• Low Ego: You're as willing to build a financial model as you are to solve an unglamorous operational problem.
If you're looking for a narrowly defined role, this probably isn't it. If you want an unusually broad seat with significant ownership, direct exposure to company building, and the chance to learn by tackling whatever matters most, we'd love to meet you.
