Data Scientist - Principal

Data-driven strategies have been underpinning financial decision-making for many decades now. “Quant” Hedge Funds have employed the data-driven approach to investing to drive unprecedented advantage and financial returns. Similar techniques to assimilate all the unstructured data and derive valuable information to drive similar strategies in the Venture Capital industry have just begun. At this earliest stage of investment, with very sparse data available for an investment decision, we must rely on several signals. We have developed an in-house proprietary data platform to scrape and triage public third-party data to help the investment team in sourcing and screening tasks. As we build the next stages of our in-house platform and use technology tools to become more efficient and effective in our processes, we are looking for a motivated, self-starter to lead the initiative.

We are looking for an exceptional Data Scientist with a keen interest the startup ecosystem, venture capital, and entrepreneurship to help us invest in early-stage B2B technology companies across Europe where Data Science is not just a function but a cornerstone of our investment strategy. Your role will work closely with the investment team and be pivotal in identifying promising startups in emerging markets through data-driven analysis.

An important note on diversity: We strongly believe that diverse backgrounds and life experiences are key to creating a successful VC firm. At Nauta, we are committed to creating a diverse environment where talented people from any backgrounds want to come and do their best work, as is the case for the 20+ talented professionals from many nationalities and diverse backgrounds that constitute Nauta today. We particularly encourage applications from people representing groups that are underrepresented in the VC industry due to their upbringing, nationality, ethnicity, and education.

Nauta Capital - Background

Nauta Capital is a pan European venture capital firm with €550m AUM, which we hope is just the beginning. We are building a venture capital firm that will outlive any of the existing team, which means we are looking for some of the most talented individuals to join us and become an integral part of our team. Our offices are located in London and Barcelona.

We have been investing in Enterprise Software since our foundation, almost two decades ago. Over that time we have invested across the different stages phases of the software industry, from the 00’s days of on-prem software and e-commerce - with successful exits in that period such as Privalia ($560m), Agnitio, Scytl, GreatCall ($800m) and Socialpoint ($275m), through the rise of Cloud Computing and SaaS - with success stories in this period including Fizzback, Brandwatch ($450m), PromoteIQ (undisclosed amount, Microsoft), Holded ($135m) and GetApp (undisclosed amount, Gartner), Zephr (sold to Zuora) and beyond.

Today we have an active portfolio of promising companies across SaaS (e.g., Onna, Lodgify and Connectbase), Fintech (e.g., Cledara), Open Source & Developer tools (e.g., Boxy, Treblle), Future of Work (e.g., HappySignals, AppFollow) and a range of other domains.

We are currently investing from our Fifth Fund of €190m, focused at Seed and early Series A. We love being around entrepreneurs in the earliest stages and we feel particularly proud when they choose us to be their first investor in the company.

As part of this fund, we have also invested in pre-seed enterprise and deep tech companies through our Nauta Labs initiative. At the pre-seed stage we have backed companies such as Mistho, Universal Quantum, Lupovis, and Net AI, Netbird and others.

Tasks

What you will do on your day-to-day:

The Data Scientist is a one-(wo)man shop to start, reporting to an Investment Partner, but are largely self-directed, with frequent interactions with the investment teams. There will be opportunity to grow the team in the near future, which you will lead. Data drive processes - Use your data science skills to refine our existing processes or define new ones to work efficiently across the investment teams. Data collection - Seek new sources of unstructured data to source new investment opportunities. Develop models to assimilate various data sources and create actionable tasks for investment team members. Use LLMs and Generative AI techniques More complex data analysis tasks Represent Nauta in the ecosystem

Requirements

Who we are looking for:

• A curious mind and passion for innovation, technology, and software.
• Someone with a strong background in data science who is looking to learn more about investing in companies.
• Opinionated yet humble: in our business, we need to have opinions on things to be able to discuss them and make (or help make) decisions; at the same time, we must be open to alternative ideas so we should be humble enough to change our views.
• SQL, Python, as required, and willingness to learn
• Experience in data formatting and cleansing of large data sets.
• Experience with ML approaches to solve data-driven problems.‍

Candidate profile:

• Strong analytical skills with a focus on detail and delivering actionable insights.
• Excellent communication skills, capable of collaborating effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Key Requirements

• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or Statistics is preferred.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in data science and machine learning.
• Proficiency in Python and experience deploying models in production.
• Bonus: Experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large language models (LLMs).
• Bonus: Experience in event-driven architectures and developing graph algorithms.
• Language: English (business fluent)