Keye
The Smartest Private Equity Investor
Founding Private Equity Strategist
About the role
About Keye
Keye (YC F24) is building the world’s smartest private equity analyst. We’re not just accelerating due diligence—we’re helping investors generate alpha. Unlike typical ChatGPT-enhanced tools, Keye is designed specifically for the hard problems in PE diligence.
When firms analyze deals through Keye, they tap into a deep library of diligence knowledge and best practices, built from over a decade of real investor experience. Our proprietary analysis engine helps teams quickly identify high-potential deals and move faster on the ones that matter.
We’re a team of investors and engineers with backgrounds at Vista Equity Partners, Permira, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Tesla and multiple startups. Our founding team has over 20 years of M&A investing experience, has founded companies before, and has been part of four successful acquisitions as early employees.
Keye is revenue-generating and has grown 600% in the last six months (some press about our growth here). We’re backed by top-tier investors including Y Combinator, General Catalyst, Sorenson Capital, and Plug and Play.
Launched just four months ago, Keye is already working with 40% of the top 25 PE firms, representing over $1.7 trillion in AUM. Simply put we are a rocket ship.
The Role
We’re hiring a Founding Strategist – Private Equity to lead the full lifecycle of client engagement—from initial demo to platform activation and expansion. Your goal is to drive product fit with each of our ICP clients. This is a technical role that requires prior experience as an investor in private equity. The position is in-person in New York (relocation support available).
You’ll work closely with our CEO, COO, sales, and product teams to lead platform adoption, drive activation, and turn user feedback into meaningful product improvements. You will be the face of Keye to our clients—working with them daily on real data, live deals, and high-stakes diligence.
This is a client-first, product-critical, and founder-level role. You’ll own core relationships, build new processes, and help shape the team from the ground up.
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What You’ll Do
- Drive customer activation—ensuring firms not only onboard, but fully adopt the platform
- Own relationships with clients from demo to rollout, often working directly with them on live deal data
- Run tailored POCs that showcase platform value using real, quantitative diligence processes
- Build and maintain deep, trusted relationships with senior PE professionals—across business and informal settings
- Collaborate with product and engineering to prioritize, spec, and ship features that drive usage
- Turn PE workflows and client feedback into actionable roadmap decisions
- Help define the future structure of the platform strategy org—spanning engagement, success, and support
What We’re Looking For
- 2–6 years in Private Equity (investing role).
- Deep experience with analyses carried out during due diligence (beyond just commercial DD)
- Confident presenter with experience engaging senior stakeholders
- Entrepreneurial, process-driven, with strong product sense and ability to work across teams
- Works with urgency, clarity, and a strong sense of ownership
- Socially confident—comfortable leading client sessions, dinners, and events
- Based in NYC or open to relocating
- Comfortable in high-pressure, fast-paced environments with tight deadlines and demanding clients
Why Now
- Lead and define a core function at a breakout AI startup
- Work closely with the founding team to shape strategy and product
- Build and lead a future team of platform strategists, engagement managers, and sales engineers
- Own relationships with top-tier PE firms at the forefront of digital transformation
- Be part of a generational shift in how PE firms use technology
You’ll be joining a passionate, high-energy team that’s relentless about building something industry-defining. If you’re looking to leave investing and actually build—this is your role
About Keye
Keye is an incoming Y-Combinator (YC F24) and venture-backed startup focused on speeding up the due diligence process in private market mergers and acquisitions with AI.
Our platform analyzes data rooms in dealmaking using advanced data and machine learning techniques and gives investors 80% of the deal in under 30 minutes, a process that otherwise takes weeks! The output is an interactive diligence report to help funds say no to a deal much earlier and save millions on third-party diligence costs.
When firms use Keye to analyze deals, they’re tapping into a wealth of diligence knowledge and best practices that are baked into our proprietary analysis engine from over a decade of investor experience. With rapid deal analysis, firms can easily decide which deals are worth spending time on and then rapidly move forward on the best ones.
We are a group of investors and engineers (Ex-Tesla, Goldman Sachs, Vista Equity Partners, McKinsey, multitude of startups). Our founding team has been part of 4 successful acquisitions as early employees, has over 20 total years of experience in M&A investing, and have been previous founders. Our technical expertise stems from specialized industries such as AI robotics, AI drug discovery, and AI-driven ecommerce advertising.
Keye is generating revenue and has grown 600% in the past 6 months. We also have a long waitlist for early access users, and we're planning to release our beta to them in October. You’ll play a key role on the team, helping launch and ship features daily for users to test and provide feedback on.
