Venture Designer (Milan)

Founders Factory was launched in 2015 with a mission to power founders to go further, faster. To date we have built more than 60 startups and invested in a further 200 across offices in London, Johannesburg and New York. FF has a team of over 100 full-time operators and its portfolio has raised more than $600m in capital

💪 Join us as we launch in Milan!

We’re opening our Milan office and we’re looking to expand our team of passionate entrepreneurs and operators building new businesses across Europe.

With this, we are looking for someone to join our Venture Design team, where we build new businesses from scratch.

Venture Design, as we define it, is the process of identifying opportunities and using human centred design principles to shape those into new businesses.

Our venture design process is not about creating an exact business blueprint. Instead our aim is to give the founding team a foundation to build upon, usually consisting of: 

1. An opportunity: Identify market gap and unmet user need or desire.

2. A solution: A credible solution hypothesis on how to address that need.

3. A go to market approach: Clear differentiating factors and unfair advantage.

To put it another way, if Founders Factory made TV shows, the Venture Design team would be responsible for the pilot episode. Companies designed by the team and built in the Venture Studio include:

Nate, a universal shopping app which just raised $38m

Karakuri, a food robotics businesses which has raised over $20m

Tembo Money, a family bank for everyone which recently raised a £2.5m seed

Byway, a slow travel business started in the depths of the pandemic

🪄 The role

As a Venture Designer, you will be teasing out problems, hypothesising solutions, testing, validating and developing the commercial foundations. This involves rapid experimentation, so we’re looking for individuals who walk the line between product design, product strategy and commercial rigour. Strong visual design and prototyping skills are a must - bringing ideas to life visually and sharing them with non-technical people is a critical part of the role.

It’s likely that you have a curious and creative mind, eager to understand what makes people tick with the ability to apply a commercial lens to everything you do. Start-ups and the tech space in general is probably of deep interest to you; you should love building products that users rave about and are happy to work at pace across different projects with competing priorities You thrive in a startup environment and probably subscribe to lean methodologies and principles of product development.

To Learn More, Check Out This (thoroughly incomplete) Venture Design Handbook: Link

💻 As our Venture Designer, you will be responsible for the following:

Identifying market trends and opportunities Designing new products and services and bringing them to life visually Shaping product and business strategy Designing and building landing pages and prototypes Workshopping solutions with the wider Factory team Constantly experimenting with new technologies and tools to drive innovation and creativity Presenting new concepts to partners and other stakeholders

💡As our Venture Designer, you possess the following skills and competencies:

Have a deep understanding of what makes a great business Have a proven track record of taking ideas and bringing them to life across a range of industries Be organised, attentive to detail and an ability to balance detail with the big picture Have exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, both written and verbal Have worked with a variety of products and industries in your career Have solid product / graphic design chops Be able to quickly throw up a landing page and know your way around a bit of code (or be proficient in low-code/no-code tools) Thrive in uncertainty Be a self-starter and comfortable working with little direction or oversight

Why work with us:

We are guided by a set of core values that shape the way that we think and act. We hold ourselves accountable to these, and measure ourselves against them. We are looking for candidates that share these principles and can help Founders Factory to thrive:

- Think big, act small, move fast

- Value momentum over perfection 

- Embrace uncertainty and remain decisive 

- Suggest solutions, not problems.

- Prioritize diversity to strengthen our collective intelligence 

- Be polite, generous and show empathy to others, always 

Benefits:

Remote working Opportunities: Up to 5 weeks working abroad allowance each year

Autonomy: Freedom to execute and build businesses, not just products. We encourage risk taking here.

Health and Wellness: Comprehensive health insurance, quarterly mental health days

Growth: Work with and meet exceptional talent. Learn faster than you ever have before. Access our large network of investors and customers.

Perks: Monthly team events, discounts across our entire portfolio

Founders Factory is a proud Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where people can authentically be themselves and are free to challenge, take risks and think creatively. We recruit, develop, compensate and promote our team members based on merit. We know how important it is not only to include, but to actively seek out diversity of thought and experiences.