Chief Operating Officer

Cultivate has been retained by a Singapore-headquartered investment firm to appoint a Chief Operating Officer.

The Opportunity

The firm's ambition has outgrown the operating model that brought it to this point. Investor relations, reporting, portfolio management, fund operations, and the connective tissue between them all require rebuilding, not patching or documenting, but genuine redesign for how a modern investment firm should run.

Our client has been data-driven since inception and has built proprietary tooling throughout its investment engine, rather than relying on the manual, spreadsheet-bound processes that still dominate the industry. That same instinct now needs to extend into every operational corner of the business. The COO is the person who will take that on. There is no doubt that this role is rare. The firm is large enough that the problems are substantive and small enough that one person can genuinely own the answer to them.

The Mandate

The first six months are deliberately operationally weighted, spending time embedded within each part of the business, beginning with investors and onboarding, understanding how each function genuinely operates before changing any of it. Beyond that, the mandate is broad and largely self-directed:

• Rebuilding the operating model across investor relations, reporting, portfolio management, and internal workflow, designed around how the firm should run rather than how it has historically operated
• Owning the operating rhythm, which includes ensuring reporting lands, commitments are met, and follow-through occurs consistently enough that it becomes the firm's default standard rather than a periodic push
• Building systems and tooling that compound, grounded in modern software and AI-native workflows rather than the last decade of fund management practice
• Identifying problems before they are escalated to you, including within functions that are not formally yours
• Partnering with the founding partners as a peer on how the firm scales and where its operational risk sits

The Profile

The profile most likely to succeed here is not a conventional funds management one:

• Experience at the CEO or COO level within a venture-backed company, and a track record of running hard.
• Or experience as a Founder, where an outcome did not eventuate because the market or the idea was wrong, rather than because execution was poor, that is close to precisely the experience we want.
• A process-driven operator, most likely consulting-trained. You quickly structure ambiguity and move from diagnosis to implementation without requiring a team of six.
• Digitally native, which is close to a hard requirement. Should an incoming COO rebuild operations in the manner in which they have been built over the past decade, the appointment will have failed regardless of how well it was executed.
• Funds management experience is beneficial, but not essential. Our client is relaxed on this by design. Domain context can be taught; instinct and pace cannot.
• A genuine capacity for autonomy. Beyond an initial period of context transfer, this role does not check back in. We are seeking someone with the same spirit and agency as the partner layer, where the question of who manages them does not particularly arise.

The role in practice

It is a demanding role, and there will be periods of it that are decidedly unglamorous. Ensuring reporting is complete on a Friday afternoon forms part of the job rather than sitting beneath it. It requires holding colleagues to account frequently enough that standards hold, which is not a position everyone is comfortable occupying.

We are open to a consultant with the intention you will convert to permanent, however, this is not pure fractional or transitional work. We are not seeking someone to design a system, present a set of recommendations, and depart. Given the pace at which AI is reshaping how firms operate, the function and role needs to be permanent and continuously evolving.

For the right person, the role is a compelling offer: substantial agency, unusual autonomy, direct access to the partnership including a path to partnership, and genuine ownership of how a fast-moving firm works.

Apply directly via LinkedIn, or contact Kate at Cultivate for a confidential conversation.