Investment Associate Principals
(IAPs) lead or support
every stage of the SME investment process. This particular opportunity sits
within one of our SME development funds, which invests across a range of ticket
sizes and instruments. Investment focus areas include:
· Debt and
mezz/hybrid structures in
financial-services supply chains; and
· VC-stage
and growth-stage equity investments in innovation-led and impact-aligned businesses
Significant activities include originating and
screening transactions, evaluating investment opportunities, managing due
diligence, structuring and negotiating equity, debt and mezzanine transactions,
and supporting post-investment management to work with portfolio companies to
drive value creation and value-accretive exits – with some senior support.
Deal origination
- Build and maintain a network of deal sources within investor/LP's supply chains and the SME ecosystem that regularly introduce high-quality, mandate-aligned opportunities into the fund’s pipeline.
Deal evaluation
- Manage a pipeline of potential investments at different stages of the screening process and support team members in managing their pipelines.
- Direct team members in crafting high level investment theses and, together with financial evaluation and investment structuring, motivate transactions to the rest of the deal team. Build strong relationships with Founders of early-stage companies
Project management
- Executing all of the above within a strongly project managed work process is essential.
- Embrace the ethos of continual improvement in identifying and driving initiatives to enhance or re-engineer existing processes to increase efficiency in the deal-making process.
Deal execution
- Due diligence:
- Plan and execute commercial and financial due diligences with multiple workstreams
- Undertake focused research and analysis as part of the due diligence process to understand the growth potential of a small business
- Analyse historical financials and conduct financial modelling and valuation to structure equity, debt or combined instruments
- Review team outputs and prepare high quality investment reports
- Build strong rapport with the Investment Committee and successfully present investment opportunities to them
Closing: Managing the process of:
- Drafting, negotiation and execution of legal agreements ensuring they accurately reflect the approved term sheet
- Effective transaction hand-over process and on-going collaboration with PIM and GS (Growth Support) teams
- Governance and record keeping leveraging team member support
- Develop Investment Associates and Analysts through coaching, mentoring and training on technical topics
Requirements
- At least a graduate degree, preferably with a technical and / or quantitative emphasis (finance, engineering, accounting, law, etc)
- An MBA, CA(SA), CAIA or CFA degree would be advantageous
- 5+ years across the full deal lifecycle, spanning equity and debt investing in SMEs (origination through to exit, recovery or write-off), or in Tier 1 corporate finance / business consulting with balanced strategy and operations exposure.
- Other experience, especially within impact VC / PE, development finance or development finance will add significant weight to the application.
Skills Required
- Graduate degree (finance, engineering, accounting, law, or quantitative discipline)
- 5+ years across the full deal lifecycle including origination, execution and exits
- Experience investing in SMEs across equity and debt instruments or Tier 1 corporate finance/consulting with strategy and operations exposure
- Deal origination and relationship building with founders and deal sources
- Commercial and financial due diligence planning and execution across multiple workstreams
- Financial modelling, valuation and structuring of equity, debt and hybrid/mezzanine instruments
- Structuring, negotiating and drafting transaction/legal agreements and managing closings
- Presenting investment opportunities and building rapport with Investment Committee and investors/LPs
- Project management and process-improvement mindset to manage fast-moving, complex deals
- Post-investment portfolio management to drive value creation and exits
- Team leadership, mentoring and development of associates and analysts
- MBA, CA(SA), CAIA or CFA
- Experience in impact VC/PE, development finance or development-focused funds
What We Do
Edge Growth is a leading South African firm specializing in Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) and SME fund management. They provide tailored solutions, including strategy, capital, and business development support, to help small and medium-sized enterprises overcome growth constraints and achieve impact.
