Venture Building Manager at Mercy Corps

The Position

We are recruiting a Venture Building Manager responsible for end-to-end engagement with jobtech start-ups under the Innovation Lab component of the program. Venture builders will be responsible for developing a pipeline of exciting jobtech platforms with potential for significant employment outcomes, working with them to develop concepts for Mercy Corps’ interventions, managing selection and onboarding, and managing support packages to realise results. We are building this team and program from scratch, so there is a big opportunity to contribute to the overarching initiative structure. Expect us to move fast, make mistakes, learn a lot, and re-start a few times. You’ll be traveling up to 20% of the time across different African markets.

Key Responsibilities

PIPELINE DEVELOPMENT & PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

• Conduct market research to guide start-up outreach and investment strategies.
• Map, develop and maintain relationships with relevant external stakeholders to widen pipeline, including accelerators and start-up networks.
• Develop a pipeline of exciting jobtech start-ups across multiple African markets with the potential to achieve greater scale, impact, and/or inclusivity.
• Work with pipeline start-ups to identify potential concepts for partnership, collaboratively deciding on packages of support. Where beneficial, identify linkages between Mercy Corps country portfolios and pipeline start-ups.
• Lead due diligence up to review by the Selection Committee, and oversee the contracting and onboarding of selected start-ups.

VENTURE BUILDING, TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE, ADVISORY

• Manage interventions with partner start-ups, coordinating external technical assistance providers, deployment of finance, and connections to other project partners.
• Monitor performance of portfolio, continuing to adapt interventions to maximise impact. Feed back into overarching program strategy.
• Manage partner milestone reporting, fund disbursement from Mercy Corps, and monitoring requirements.
• Where suitable, Venture Builders could be deployed for brief secondments to partners to support implementation of interventions.

LEARNING AND INFLUENCE

• We operate as a ‘do-tank’, ensuring that learnings from this emerging sector are shared back to the community. Document lessons learned, write up experiences from portfolio start-ups for the Jobtech Alliance blog, host webinars for the Jobtech Alliance on key topics, or conduct exploratory research on emerging topics - you’re the boss.
• In partnership with portfolio start-ups and other Jobtech Alliance members, identify key research topics and build collaborative research on key topics surfacing from our work
• Where relevant, collaborate with country teams to share lessons learned and identify synergies and opportunities for integration and expansion

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills

• A history of excellence in achieving results and self-management.
• Minimum of 8 years’ experience working with start-ups, VCs, accelerators or other start-up ecosystem actors. This could involve working on business strategy, market research, product, operations, or investment. We welcome diversity of experience.
• Through-the-roof EQ, with excellent communication skills (written and verbal), and a collaborative approach to working with others.
• Outstanding analytical capacity, with capacity to bring clarity for others and make quick decisions.
• Competence in French is a strong plus
• Experience working in or with jobtech platforms is a strong plus.
• Other pluses include experiences with portfolio management or MBA/equivalent/