Mechanism Looking for Controller at Remote Full Time

Company Description

Mechanism is an early-stage venture firm that partners with entrepreneurs to launch and scale ambitious companies.

In our model, we identify and validate opportunities before creating every business. We then provide the growth expertise to gain early traction as well as the business support to establish positive unit economics, profitability, and scale.

In addition to investment and strategic guidance, we offer extensive operational support for our startups in critical areas, including Growth, Product, Operations, People, Finance, and Legal. Our in-house experts are at the top of their fields and are here to provide world-class support and expertise in helping our startups get off the ground and scale.

As a team, we have deep expertise in growth marketing, and it’s an important part of our company-wide culture. When it comes to launching and scaling companies, we don’t guess. We engineer.

Our success rate of getting companies profitable is 100%, and our team has a track record of investing in and cofounding multiple companies with $100M+ revenue.

Position Description

We are hiring a Controller to lead the accounting for our portfolio of companies. We’re looking for an individual very comfortable with uncertainty, undefined processes, and working with a variety of businesses. This person will build and maintain best practices for companies ranging from pre-revenue to profitable million-dollar revenues. You’ll supervise a team of accountants to ensure leaders and CEOs have timely and accurate information. You’ll be responsible for maintaining, managing, and analyzing financial statements, payroll, and compliance. Reporting to and partnering with the VP of Finance, you’ll monitor business health from a financial and operational standpoint, design and maintain forecasts, and work closely with leadership.

What You’ll Do

• Manage and monitor all accounts, ledgers, and reporting systems ensuring compliance with GAAP and regulatory requirements.
• Build out new processes for new companies we launch to ensure that they have a solid foundation for a world-class finance function.
• Create the systems for the accounting team to operate under so that we can achieve efficient and effective accounting in a distributed environment.
• Enhance current processes for all companies to mature with the complexity of the business.
• Ensure compliance with payroll, tax, and any other regulatory requirements.
• Partner with the VP of Finance in establishing financial and operating benchmarks, forecasts, budgets, program monitoring, and reporting standards on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis.
• Manage and support the accounting team with dynamic leadership that creates an environment of trust and productivity.

Who You Are

• You love building new processes and quickly iterating to support growing businesses.
• You thrive in ambiguous environments – knowing how to assess the situation, build solutions, and iterate as needed without any pre-established frameworks or procedures. You can build them or figure out how.
• You aren’t afraid to ask for help.
• You’re an over-communicator and expect the same from everyone else.
• You can simplify complex tasks into easy-to-follow systems and are comfortable creating the structure for others to operate under.
• You love to engage outside of accounting and finance.

What You’ll Bring

• You have 5+ years of startup experience or other fast-paced environments with rapid revenue growth as a senior-level accounting or finance manager.
• You understand SaaS metrics and growth marketing.
• You’re comfortable jumping between many different businesses, industries, and business models throughout the day as you work on different companies.
• You’re a CPA (or similar).
• You have experience in professional services.
• You’re very comfortable using Google Sheets.
• You’re excited about new tools and systems that could help you automate or be more effective.
• Familiarity with US state payroll, SALT, and regulatory requirements.

What to Expect

• The rate of learning at early-stage companies is so high that priorities constantly evolve. Thus, being highly adaptable and flexible is key. However, we’d like to share a general idea of the direct impact you could make within the first three months on the team:
• 30 Days
• You participate directly in weekly and monthly reporting to review financials and operational metrics to start understanding our businesses.
• You provide support and stability to the accounting team so they can be most effective.
• 60 Days
• You support launching a new company and setting up the accounting processes.
• You update policies and processes at a portfolio company to improve the accounting and reporting.
• 90 Days
• You prepare budgets and forecasts.
• You standardize our reporting and systems that the accounting team can execute.
• You have a good overview of the financial health of our companies and be able to recommend optimizations on cash flow and cost savings.
• You build management reporting.

Time Commitment

This role is full-time and may occasionally need to communicate at non-standard working hours depending on your timezone.

Location

We are fully remote – you can work wherever you’re most productive. There will likely be occasional travel post-pandemic for in-person strategy sessions.

Compensation

Our compensation packages are designed to make this your dream job for the short and long term. Each compensation package is tailored to suit your priorities and can include base, equity (in all of our active portfolio companies and any that are launched during your tenure at Mechanism), and performance bonus based on the success of our portfolio companies.