Investment Associate

About MISUMI Americas MISUMI Americas, a division of MISUMI Group, is a leading provider of standard, configurable, and custom manufacturing solutions. By integrating a vast catalog of components with a world-class digital manufacturing platform, MISUMI Americas empowers engineers and procurement teams to accelerate innovation across the entire product lifecycle. With operations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago, the company serves as a vital partner for the most innovative companies in the Americas. Investment Associate Misumi Ventures · San Francisco Bay Area · Full-time The fund Misumi Ventures is a $50 million early-stage fund investing at the intersection of frontier hardware, robotics, automation and industrial AI. We will build a portfolio of 20 to 30 seed and early-stage companies. Our thesis is specific. Hardware companies rarely fail because the idea was wrong — they fail in the gap between a working prototype and repeatable volume production. Our portfolio companies get direct access to MISUMI's manufacturing continuum: more than 30 million standard parts, 22 company-owned factories, 4,000 sourcing partners, and a five-region network across the Americas, China, Asia, Europe and Japan. That is what we put on a cap table alongside the check. The role Misumi Ventures is newly launched. Our founding partners hold operating responsibilities within MISUMI Americas, which means the Investment Associate will be the fund's first dedicated full-time investment professional. The scope is correspondingly broad. You will build our deal funnel, own how the fund presents itself to founders and co-investors, support diligence and portfolio companies, and run the reporting cadence to our LP. You will report to the Managing Partner and participate in investment discussions. This is not a narrow deal seat, and we want to be direct about that before you apply. Responsibilities Sourcing and co-investor relationships Our deal flow depends on being present in the pipelines of the firms that do lead. You will build and maintain relationships with investors across our sectors, work the accelerator and university research channels that produce frontier hardware companies, and keep a current map of who is funding what in robotics, automation, aerospace, and industrial software. You will run first meetings and write the memo that determines whether a partner takes a second. Fund positioning and ecosystem presence Founders and co-investors distinguish between a fund and a corporate development budget, and our credibility depends on being clearly understood as the former. You will own our external presence — website, content, founder-facing communications, and our participation in the deep-tech and hardware communities — and run the founder dinners, technical sessions and events that make us a known quantity in our categories. Diligence and portfolio support Technical and commercial diligence: customer…