Relationship Manager

Role type: Contract until 31 March 2025

Location: London based with flexible hybrid working

Compensation:  £37,500 - £40,000

Benefits: World-class benefits package including an open-minded, supportive approach to flexible working; unlimited holiday; and enhanced family-friendly policies.

Closing date: 19 June 2023

The role: 

Empower 100 is a new project funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and Virgin StartUp. Empower 100 will support 100 diverse founders with growth potential to maximise their chances of scaling and financing their businesses successfully. The core of the ‘accelerator’ programme will be a three-month programme with training modules, networking, mentoring, peer-to-peer learning, and experience from participating in a Demo Day event.

As the Relationship Manager at Virgin StartUp, you will be leading on both the community outreach (to identify and recruit suitable founders onto the programme), whilst also managing the relationship with these founders both during and after the three-months of support.

Key responsibilities: 

The Relationship Manager will be a key role in the delivery of this project, leading on both the relationships with founders taking part in the programme, as well as with partner organisations who are an important part of both community outreach and ongoing founder support. Responsibilities will include:

Founders recruitment and partnership building:

• Responsible for establishing Virgin StartUp, and the Empower100 programme, in the start-up ecosystem and specifically within communities that support diverse and underrepresented founders, in order to secure a pipeline of relevant founders for our programmes.
• Attending events and delivering talks + presentations to raise awareness of the programme.
• Leading on the recruitment of eligible business into the programme.

Founder Relationship Management:

• Be the key contact for all the founders joining the programme and supporting them through to programme completion.
• Identifying additional support needs and referring them to further support available in the London business support eco-system.
• Maintaining regular contact with founders' post-programme to ensure we’re aware of their progress, achievements and to identify potential case studies.
• Facilitating introductions to other founders, experts and investors.
• Facilitating programme sessions (these are delivered by other experts and consultants).
• Facilitating peer-to-peer sessions amongst founders.
• Matching the founders with the right Virgin StartUp mentor.
• Posting relevant content and answering questions on the Slack channel.

Other project’s responsibilities:

• Liaising with the Community Team to share opportunities with founders.
• Liaising with the Marketing team to provide them with case studies and other project and founder highlights.
• Supporting and attending all the Empower 100 in-person events in London.
• Supporting the Project Manager in assessing partner’s delivery quality and suggesting improvements for the programme content and delivery.

For this role we need you to be/have: 

• Experience working 1-2-1 with small business founders.
• Experience working on the businesses support sector for an accelerator programme or similar.
• Having an existing network of London founders and/ or business’ networks
• A strong and clear communicator, with the ability to engage with different type of audiences.
• Knowledgeable and empathetic about the needs of founders who are starting and scaling businesses.
• Experience managing client databases and creating reports.
• Experience of having worked as an ambassador for a similar type of organisation and/ or business support programme
• Demonstrable track record of marketing and raising awareness and bringing clients/ startups to join organizations and programmes
• An understating of the particular challenges and obstacles that diverse founders face.
• Experience facilitating small business groups - desirable 
• Business acumen in a particular sector or businesses area relevant to the role, such as scaling-up, investment and diverse founders - desirable
• Business Coaching - desirable
• Be part of a business network - desirable 

Some of the attributes that define a Virgin person just can’t be quantified in words. We pride ourselves on welcoming people from all walks of life, with all sorts of skill sets. Most recently, Virgin successfully campaigned to add ‘Dyslexic Thinking’ as a skill on LinkedIn. Any uniqueness is a strength and will be considered an asset to our workforce.

If you're excited about making every day more rewarding and think you have what we're looking for, even if you don’t tick every box on the job description, we'd love to hear from you.

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