Venture Associate

R-LABS is the Real Estate Industry Venture Builder, and we believe that the best way to predict the future is to help create it. We work alongside entrepreneurs and innovators to identify problems in real estate and co-create purpose-driven companies. We work alongside a deep network of industry partners and limited partners who give our companies privileged access to customers, capital, data, and distribution.

Reporting to the Managing Director, Ventures, as our new Venture Associate you will help turn complex industry challenges into scalable companies. This is a senior operator role at the center of how we go from industry problem to funded company. Working alongside our Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, co-founders, and Partner company operators, you will validate new ideas, shape new business models, and guide ventures from early-stage discovery through company formation.

You will lead customer and market validation, develop commercial insights, and coordinate cross-functional resources to keep ventures moving forward. You will run this work across multiple theses in parallel, spanning housing, real estate finance, asset operations, infrastructure, and adjacent verticals. You will help founders make evidence-based decisions, balancing customer needs, market opportunities, and commercial viability to build conviction to advance, or to pause ideas, on the basis of evidence.

You will be a daily user of Athena, our proprietary AI platform, and you will be expected to push our thinking on how to use AI to compress research, synthesis, and validation cycles.

This is a permanent, full-time onsite role based in downtown Toronto.

• Build companies, not just products:
  You will contribute across multiple ventures at different stages, helping shape new companies from the ground up.
• Work alongside experienced founders and industry leaders:
  You will partner with entrepreneurs, senior executives, investors, and subject matter experts across the real estate industry.
• Breadth, ownership, and continuous learning:
  One day you may be conducting customer interviews; the next, developing financial models, preparing investor presentations, or identifying new revenue opportunities.

• Lead venture validation: Take ownership of one or more ventures as they move through the R-LABS Venture Process, coordinating activities from customer discovery through business model validation. You will talk to customers. A lot of them. You will gather evidence, test assumptions, and conduct customer interviews to evaluate whether opportunities are ready to advance, pivot, or pause.
• Shape commercial strategy: Translate customer and market insights into business models, value propositions, and commercialization strategies. You will develop financial models (including unit economics and development pro-formas), assess market opportunities and competitive landscapes, and make recommendations on pricing, revenue models, and go-to-market approaches.
• Drive collaboration and influence: Work alongside founders and cross-functional teams to coordinate resources and maintain momentum. You will develop presentations, customer narratives, and investor materials for audiences that include our investors, industry partners, prospective founders, and prospective customers, and influence decisions across the venture lifecycle.
• Build your own network: Independently source customers, operators, and industry stakeholders through cold outreach, expert calls, referral chaining, and community building. You will build a network you can pick up the phone with, without waiting on warm intros.
• Work AI-first: Use Athena and our broader AI toolset as core working tools to compress research,…