Director - Venture Studio

Director - Venture Studio

Competitive salary plus excellent benefits

Permanent. This is a full-time role but we offer a range of flexible working arrangements and encourage our people to take advantage of them.

Blackfriars, London – Hybrid Working 

Mission Studio is building the next generation of mission-led tech startups, tackling some of the UK’s most pressing social challenges, from net zero to obesity. After two years of operating with a partner we are bringing the studio in-house. We are now looking for an ambitious and driven entrepreneur to build ‘Mission Studio 2.0’ from the ground up.

The Director will shape the studio and lead it through the next stage of its evolution. In the right hands there is no ceiling on the studio’s ambition; like an early-stage startup there is both much still to define and limitless potential. Ultimately our goal is to improve the lives of millions of people, and to make a return while doing it.

We believe we are building something special, and we’re looking for someone to roll up their sleeves with us and make it happen.

Who we are we looking for

You are a former founder who is excited to leverage your experience to help others build game-changing companies from scratch. You have seen the full cycle first-hand, from the earliest stages of company formation through to exit or wind-down, completing at least one funding round along the way. You are ready to dive into something that you can shape and grow over many years. You are commercially-minded and believe in the power of venture capital to generate impact at scale.

We will also consider strong candidates who have a closely-related profile. If you have not started your own company you will have several years of leadership experience in an early-stage, high-growth startup, together with other relevant experience (e.g. in VC, running a venture studio, or in a top-tier consulting firm).

What you will do

You will own and shape the direction the studio takes, driving hard at key outcomes (impact, return, growth). At all times you will do whatever you can to make the studio and our portfolio of companies a success. Including:

• Build out the next iteration of Mission Studio, in close collaboration with the Chief Strategy Officer
• Bring the studio’s design, processes and support offer to life ready for launch in mid-2024, iterating on existing working hypotheses
• Role model an entrepreneurial culture, rigour and high ambition at all times
• Build a small but mighty, high-performing and motivated team
• Refine and optimise the model over time
• Pitch the studio to potential investors and partners and convert interest for future growth
• Work daily with the studio’s entrepreneurs
• Act as a hands-on proxy co-founder, moving them quickly from ‘0 to 1’ through rapid, market-responsive iteration
• Help them ruthlessly focus on what matters most
• Support them to successfully navigate their first external fundraise
• Deploy the Studio’s in-house support effectively and unlock Nesta’s wider added value (networks, knowledge, capabilities)
• Oversee the design of new studio concepts that have potential for both impact at scale and venture-level returns, and make informed judgement calls on those concepts at pivotal moments (securing stakeholder buy-in where needed), including deciding:
• Which concepts to build out
• Which founder to hire into a concept
• Whether or not to spin a venture out (with additional investment)
• Represent the studio internally and externally, including in press and events

Your experience and skills

Experience

• Founded or co-founded a tech startup from inception (or very close to it) through to exit or shutdown
• Raised venture capital for pre-seed / seed-stage startups, and familiar with current UK VC landscape
• Proven commercial acumen
• Overseen work of experts in product, engineering, marketing, growth
• Built and led multiple high-performing teams
• Above has been applied in both ‘0 to 1’ and ‘1 to 10’ early-stage venture contexts, with some specialism in at least one of these areas and strong networks in the others
• Sufficient experience across multiple early-stage business models and sectors to pattern match and apply learnings to the studio’s startups

Skills

• Strong product intuition and ability to empathise with users
• High EQ, able to coach founders through challenges while promoting their autonomy and ownership
• Decisive, with a strong bias to action, rapid turnaround and fierce prioritisation
• Strong judgement and ability to champion great ideas in the face of resistance, knowing when to stick to your guns and when to pivot
• Proven eye for entrepreneurial talent
• Able to reconcile conflicting stakeholder views without slowing down or watering down results
• Equally strong analytically and operationally. Thrive in ambiguity
• Deeply motivated by the potential to have positive social impact at scale

Advantageous but not required: Experience running a venture studio or early-stage accelerator. Ex-VC, ex-consulting, MBA. Expertise in net zero, health or early years. Knowledge in behavioural science, data science or AI.

We are experts in early-years, health and net zero. We can teach you that if you don’t have it. However your impact motivation must be authentic and deeply-held; we are looking for someone who will embrace the challenges of working to a double bottom line and stay the course to achieve long-term impact.

What is a venture studio?

Venture studios can be thought of as institutional co-founders. They systematise new venture creation and improve success rates by leveraging repeatable processes and the experience of repeat entrepreneurs. Unlike cohort-based models, the venture studio develops the new concept itself, testing and validating in-house before recruiting an entrepreneur as CEO to drive it forward. Venture studios have received over $10B of investment globally and have spun out many successful companies, including Moderna, Medium, Yelp, Picasa, Giphy, Hims, Dollar Shave Club and many more. There are more than 800 venture studios worldwide, however the model is still emergent, particularly in its application towards impact goals. Nesta is looking to build the UK’s flagship impact venture studio.

We are currently two years into the studio’s journey and have spun out six new ventures to date: Furbnow, Carno, Econest, Renbee, Martee’s and Freebird Club. Mission Studio is part of Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good. Building new for-profit ventures is one of three roles Nesta plays in pursuing its three innovation missions, a fairer start, a healthy life and a sustainable future.

Nesta has put in place funding to build out the next iteration of the studio, and if this succeeds there is potential to crowd in external funding and grow the studio as big and as soon as our execution and the market allow. We hope you’ll be as excited by this prospect as we are.

What we offer

Salary: We offer a competitive salary plus shares in the Mission Studio portfolio. We also offer an array of benefits, including private medical insurance, dental insurance, the ability to buy and sell annual leave, eyecare vouchers and more

Location: We work at least 2 days per week from our Blackfriars office in London. For the remaining days, people can choose where to work

Term: Full time

Start date: ASAP

Hours: This is a full-time role but we offer a range of flexible working arrangements and encourage our people to take advantage of them. Many do.

Reports to: Chief Strategy Officer.

Making an application

To apply for this role, please submit your application before 8:00am on 30th of October 2023.

First round interviews will take place w/c 6th November 2023.

At Nesta, we believe that a diverse workforce leads to an organisation that is more innovative, more creative, and gets better results.

We want our workforce to represent the diversity of the people and communities we serve. We also want our workplace to be one where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, and where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop.

This means that when we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates. It also means that we are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful.

We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life, so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, compressed or part-time hours, job shares, and other arrangements.

Please just let us know in your application, or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond), if these are options you’d like to explore.