Venture Associate

Who we are

R-LABS is the Real Estate Industry Venture Builder, and we believe that the best way to predict the future is to help create it. We work alongside entrepreneurs and innovators to identify problems in real estate and co-create purpose-driven companies. We work alongside a deep network of industry partners and limited partners who give our companies privileged access to customers, capital, data, and distribution.

Who we need

Reporting to the Managing Director, Ventures, as our new Venture Associate you will help turn complex industry challenges into scalable companies. This is a senior operator role at the center of how we go from industry problem to funded company. Working alongside our Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, co-founders, and Partner company operators, you will validate new ideas, shape new business models, and guide ventures from early-stage discovery through company formation. You will lead customer and market validation, develop commercial insights, and coordinate cross-functional resources to keep ventures moving forward. You will run this work across multiple theses in parallel, spanning housing, real estate finance, asset operations, infrastructure, and adjacent verticals. You will help founders make evidence-based decisions, balancing customer needs, market opportunities, and commercial viability to build conviction to advance, or to pause ideas, on the basis of evidence. You will be a daily user of Athena, our proprietary AI platform, and you will be expected to push our thinking on how to use AI to compress research, synthesis, and validation cycles. 

This is a permanent, full-time onsite role based in downtown Toronto.

What's in it for you?

As our Venture Associate, you will:

• Lead venture validation: Take ownership of one or more ventures as they move through the R-LABS Venture Process, coordinating activities from customer discovery through business model validation. You will talk to customers. A lot of them. You will gather evidence, test assumptions, and conduct customer interviews to evaluate whether opportunities are ready to advance, pivot, or pause.
• Shape commercial strategy: Translate customer and market insights into business models, value propositions, and commercialization strategies. You will develop financial models (including unit economics and development pro-formas), assess market opportunities and competitive landscapes, and make recommendations on pricing, revenue models, and go-to-market approaches.
• Drive collaboration and influence: Work alongside founders and cross-functional teams to coordinate resources and maintain momentum. You will develop presentations, customer narratives, and investor materials for audiences that include our investors, industry partners, prospective founders, and prospective customers, and influence decisions across the venture lifecycle.
• Build your own network: Independently source customers, operators, and industry stakeholders through cold outreach, expert calls, referral chaining, and community building. You will build a network you can pick up the phone with, without waiting on warm intros.
• Work AI-first: Use Athena and our broader AI toolset as core working tools to compress research, synthesis, and validation cycles, and help build that muscle across the venture team.

You have:

• Venture-building experience: You have shipped real things, either as a founder or early-stage operator with end-to-end ownership of outcomes, or as a strong generalist with consulting roots and real estate exposure who has formed a point of view on what is broken. You have a track record of running things end-to-end with minimal need for scaffolding from above, and you understand the realities of operating in ambiguity.
• AI-native: LLMs and agentic workflows are already part of your day-to-day, and you are excited to make tools like Athena central to how you work.
• A commercial mindset: You evaluate opportunities through both a customer and business lens, with experience in market and competitive research, validating customer problems, and developing business models and commercialization strategies. You can reason about unit economics and development pro-formas.
• A network-building reflex: Cold outreach, expert calls, referral chaining, and community building come naturally to you; you can build a customer and operator network from scratch in an unfamiliar industry.
• An analytical approach: You break down complex problems, identify patterns, and build evidence-based recommendations from customer interviews, financial models, and market analysis.
• Communication skills: You distill complex concepts into clear narratives, and you can facilitate, present, and influence across founders, senior leaders, investors, and cross-functional teams.
• Drive: You are proactive and resourceful, take ownership, embrace experimentation, and thrive in fast-moving environments.
• Domain knowledge (a meaningful plus): Experience in real estate, proptech, construction, fintech, or infrastructure, and a point of view on the built environment.

Join Us

R-LABS is the Real Estate industry’s venture-builder, the only one of our kind. Innovation lives here and we are building an ecosystem focused on making a sustainable high impact. 

We’re a start-up factory launching and supporting fast-moving companies that benefit from our expertise, network, funding, and leadership. Real estate and housing matter to everyone and have complicated issues. We bring granular insights and deep knowledge to solve the many interrelated problems and bring about transformative change.

We’re looking for self starters, critical thinkers and initiative takers. Innovation is in our DNA. If it’s in yours, join us to make a difference in the way big problems in real estate are solved and great companies are grown.

Compensation

The salary range for this role is $120,000 to $140,000, plus a bonus of 15% to target. Placement within the range is based on skills and experience, and compensation is reviewed on a regular basis.

Apply Now

Research shows that many candidates only apply when they meet 100% of the qualifications. If you meet 70% of what we are looking for, we encourage you to apply.

Our interview process:

• A virtual interview with a Talent Advisor to discuss your interest in joining R-Labs and the role. The conversation will be recorded using BrightHire, an AI-powered video interview tool. More details will be shared when you are invited to interview.
• An in-person interview with the Managing Director of Ventures, which may include a technical assessment. 
• An in-person interview with a senior leader to explore your approach to venture building, customer discovery, and commercialization.
• A final interview with our CEO focused on your motivations, alignment with the R-LABS mission, and how you would contribute to our venture-building ecosystem.

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