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This is a 12 month contract role- based in our Sydney or Melbourne offices with the option to work flexibly.

Mission

You will use stories to add vibrancy and colour to the world of Blackbird. Those stories will make Blackbird a magnetic force for the wildest hearts and inspire many more people to invent, create and shape the world they want to live in.

The role

Stories run rich through Blackbird. They start with our founders, and they turn up everywhere after that: in Giants and Foundry, at Sunrise and Collisions, in the Foundation's work, in the updates we send our investors.

Told well, those stories have the power to inspire a new generation of wild hearts. They pull more people towards building the companies of the future. They show our investors how rare our community is. And they make the case, to people who've never given it a thought, that invention and entrepreneurship are among the most worthwhile things a person can spend a life on.

This is a full-stack storytelling role. You can take a story from the first glimmer of an idea through to something finished and out in the world. You're a generalist across formats: not the best at any one of them, but solid across writing, design, film and more, so you rarely need to hand the work to someone else to make it real. You'll work closely with our Creative Director to bring the work out with clarity, meaning and heart.

What matters most

You build community, and are passionate about Founders, startups and the journey from zero to one and beyond.

You'll spend real time with founders and the people around them, and earn the kind of trust where the valuable stuff reaches you first. You do this for the joy of being close to people making remarkable things, not because you like networking.

You know a great story when you see one. You have a strong sense for what will resonate and you know a great story when you see one.

You can produce it yourself. You write, design, shoot, edit, build. You can take a story most of the way on your own.

You're genuinely creative, and your taste is good. A designer's eye, not just a writer's. You'll be one of the people who protects the Blackbird brand, in language and in design, and who notices when it slips. "You hold conviction in that taste, you'll take feedback seriously, but you won't let it talk you out of what you know is right."

What you'll do

Contribute to Blackbird’s storytelling strategy across digital, written, visual, and experiential formats. You’ll work with Blackbird’s Creative Director and the Blackbird Foundations Community and Storytelling Lead to craft and evolve our narrative spine that holds all of our programs and activities together.

Find the stories. Get in among the founders, our programmes, the Foundation and our team. You love being out in the field, at events, with our portfolio. This is how you’ll find the stories worth telling.

Produce them. Write, design, edit, shoot, post. Whatever it takes to get a story into the world with the craft it deserves.

Look after our channels. Social, email, our website content and anything else we own.



You decide what gets up and when.

Experiment. The best stories don't always live on a screen or a page. They can happen on a stage, in a room, through an event or an object, or through something nobody's tried yet. Zines, films, exhibitions, live builds, odd little partnerships. We’re interested in multimodal storytelling and experimental mediums. As an example, last year the Blackbird Foundation disguised an impact report as a zine.

Get the word out for our programmes and events. Podcasts, festivals, the programmes we build for our community. As custodian of our owned channels, you'll work with the teams making these to help them get the word out. And you know how to sequence these things so that we aren’t always selling.

Work like a builder. Ship steadily, run experiments, learn as you go. The outcomes here are slow and hard to measure, so you build a body of work you are proud of.

How you'll work with the rest of us

You'll sit in the Community, Brand and Foundation team.

Alongside the Blackbird Foundation's Community and Storytelling Lead. They hold this same craft for the Foundation, and between you, you're the closest thing Blackbird has to a shared storytelling engine. You'll pair up where it helps. Two people can be in two places at once, and a lot of good work gets stuck simply because one person can't shoot, write and be in the room all at once.

The Foundations

Community and Storytelling Lead also carries much of Blackbird's taste and way of making things, which can only be absorbed, not taught.

With the investment team. The investors hold the founder relationships. You'll work with them, using those relationships as your way into the best founder stories.

With Media Relations. When a story is best told somewhere we don't own, you surface it and pass it across to pitch. Our Senior Communications & Media Relations Manager will pitch the stories you send out for media pickup.

With the programmes and events teams. Sunrise, Collisions, Giants, Foundry, the founder camps. Some of the richest seams of story we have, and some of the biggest stages to tell them from.

With Blackbird’s Creative Director. He will be your direct manager, and you will work with him to ensure Blackbird’s stories serve our greater narrative and maintain brand integrity.

Who you are

You love people, and you get your energy from being around creative, interesting ones. You'd rather be at the event than read the recap. Your craft is strong in at least a couple of formats, and your taste holds up across all of them. You can make things yourself, and you're design-fluent enough that the finish always lands. Fast-moving, happy to experiment, and able to walk out of a founder conversation with the real story sitting underneath it.





We believe that building a diverse and inclusive team is critical to Blackbird’s success. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status.

We know that candidates, especially women and people from underrepresented backgrounds, often hesitate to apply unless they meet 100% of the qualifications. If this role excites you and you meet most of the requirements, we encourage you to apply. We value potential and are committed to supporting growth in this role.

We offer

Flexible working: Whether it’s working from home, leaving early to pick up the kids or fitting in your favorite exercise class. We encourage you to explore when you're most productive and work in that style.

Wellbeing: We think in decades not days. To support our Blackbirds over the long haul we offer a range of holistic wellbeing benefits including a monthly healthy living allowance, 24/7 access to wellbeing support, a home office allowance, personal kit-kat days, and more!

Unplugged weekends: We work hard without letting work get in the way of life. We’ve implemented no Slack or emails on weekends, so you can switch off and enjoy yourself.

Connection: While being big fans of a fully distributed workforce, we value our vibe and time to connect online and IRL through team and company offsites, monthly social activities, weekly lunches and our many social clubs (#fun-manis, #fun-officefits, #fun-sportschat just to name a few!).

Blackbird is a Pledge 1% member — we pledge 1% of our time, equity and profits to help not-for-profit causes in our community. Through Pledge 1%, we established the Blackbird Foundation to supercharge the creative capabilities of young people.

We are also very proud to have won the 2023 AFR Best Place to Work award in three categories including Overall winner. In 2022, we became certified as one of Australia’s Great Places to Work. Additionally, you can find us on the 2024 Hatch hotlist!

About Blackbird

Blackbird is Australia's biggest venture capital fund whose mission is to supercharge Australia and New Zealand’s most ambitious founders. We do this by raising venture capital funds, investing into the best startup companies and helping them succeed. Our portfolio is worth over $10B, and includes more than 190 companies across Australia and New Zealand, including Canva, Halter, Baseten, Airwallex, and Gilmour Space to name a few!

We are inspired by investment firms such as Berkshire Hathaway and Bridgewater Associates. Like the companies we back, we want to build a business that lasts for decades and produces excellent returns for our investors. Most of all, we want to support our region’s most talented founders build category-defining technology companies.

We’ve written a lot about what we love at Blackbird, so check out our blog if you want some more information about us. In particular, you should read about our mission and values, our Blackbird’s Operating Principles (BOPs) and what we look for in founders.

📌 Brand, Storytelling and Community Lead (12 month contract) (Sydney)
🏢 Blackbird Ventures
📍 Sydney