Investment & Strategy Associate in California at UP.Labs

Location: Remote with some travel

About UP.Labs
UP.Labs is a unique venture studio that partners with the world's leading corporations to identify their most pressing challenges and subsequently launch net-new products and startups that solve them. We don't just consult - we build.

Our model sits at the intersection of enterprise scale and startup speed: we co-create ventures from the ground up, bring in world-class founders and operators, and deliver investment-grade businesses that make real-world impact. Our portfolio spans mobility, industrial, and adjacent sectors - and we're expanding.
If you're energized by the idea of building something from nothing alongside some of the most innovative minds in the country, this is the company for you.
The Role
As an Investment & Strategy Associate, you'll operate as a venture builder embedded in UP.Labs' innovation sprint process. You bring structured problem-solving, financial modeling rigor, and the ability to convert ambiguous market data into clear, defensible analysis. You'll work directly with the project team and Investment Committee to ensure every decision is grounded in evidence.
Your day-to-day will include investigating new markets, talking to prospective customers and partners, building the business case, and pitching new venture concepts directly to Investment Committees and Fortune 500 leadership teams. Financial modeling is part of the toolkit, as is selling, synthesizing, and shaping ideas from ambiguity into fundable businesses.
This role participates in the full innovation cycle, from building the initial market sizing and stakeholder maps in Phase 1, through financial stress-testing of solution concepts in Phase 2, to building the 3-year P&Ls and POC financial models that close out the final investment committee stage gate.
This is one of the fastest paths into venture building, with real ownership, real stakes, and direct exposure to how companies are created from scratch.

What You'll Do

• Investigate and evaluate new market opportunities. Rapid landscape analyses, technology assessments, and competitive deep-dives that help determine which problems are worth building companies around
• Talk to the market. Map, source and engage prospective customers, partners, operators, and ecosystem participants; conduct interviews that surface real unmet needs and validate them before capital is committed
• Build and pitch new venture concepts. Develop pitch decks and investment narratives that bring opportunity areas to life for corporate partners and Investment Committee members
• Own the analytical foundation. Build market sizing models (TAM/SAM/SOM), unit economics frameworks, and 3-year P&Ls that make business plans credible and IC-ready. Size the POC financial requirements for each solution: capital cap, cost structure, and funding-to-milestone logic.
• Stress-test business models. Identify the killer assumptions each business model rests on and design the analyses that prove or disprove them
• Support new business development. Contribute to how UP.Labs identifies, pitches, and wins new corporate partnerships
• Be a generalist who goes deep when it counts. No two weeks will be the same - one week you're mapping a competitive landscape, the next you're in front of a Fortune 500 leadership team pitching a new business concept, the next you're pressure-testing unit economics with a potential partner

What We're Looking For

• 2–5 years of experience in management consulting (BCG, McKinsey, Bain, or equivalent tier), investment banking, or private equity
• Entrepreneurial mindset. You're energized by ambiguity, move fast, and know when "good enough to decide" is the right standard
• A structured, persuasive communicator. You can build a compelling narrative from messy inputs and present it confidently to a room of senior executives
• Analytical rigor. You know how to size a market from the bottom up, stress-test a business model, and build a financial model from scratch that will survive IC scrutiny
• Hands-on approach. Comfort being a jack-of-all-trades in a small, high-trust team where everyone rolls up their sleeves
• Experience in energy, industrials, infrastructure, water, or adjacent sectors is a plus

What Success Looks Like

• Opportunity analyses rigorous enough to drive real Investment Committee funding decisions
• Business plans and pitch decks that corporate partners and investors find credible and compelling
• Unit economics models that survive stress-testing by IC members and external investors
• Financial models that pass independent QA and are ready for investor circulation

What Makes This Different

At UP.Labs, you'll work alongside former BCG venture builders, seasoned operators, and world-class entrepreneurs on intellectual challenges that impact the world's most important physical industries. You will actively contribute to how new businesses get built, from the first whiteboard sketch through to the investor pitch, and your fingerprints will be on every decision that matters.