We are recruiting for a Senior Venture Builder to join Nesta’s Mission Studio

🚀 Mission Studio is creating the future of mission-driven tech startups. We're tackling the UK's toughest social challenges - from net zero to obesity - by building commercially successful businesses. We have a great team of ex-founders, venture designers, builders and experienced studio operators and are looking for an exceptional senior venture builder with hands-on entrepreneurial experience to add to our team. 

As a Senior Venture Builder you will partner with founders to build scalable, high-impact businesses, from concept to validation and early stage growth as well as provide guidance to other venture builders day-to-day. You will have the start-up know how, scrappiness and technical skills to transform and scale ideas into thriving businesses. These are essential to the role and to complementing our team’s existing abilities.

Please note this is a 12 month maternity cover role.

🌟 Who You Are:

Essential skills

• Entrepreneurial experience: You have worked 5+ years directly at or with early-stage startups (e.g. founder, product manager, or venture studio designer/builder) and delivered strategies to progress from 0 to 1, demonstrated by a track record of launching and scaling startups or products and continually implementing lessons learnt along the way. Experience working alongside founders in a mentor style role is a plus.

• Lean venture building experience: Building on the above bullet point, you have proven experience and deep understanding of Lean Startup and lean venture building methodologies, with a strong belief in hypothesis-driven experimentation, rapid MVP testing, and data-informed decision-making.

• Leadership experience: Hands on experience guiding teams or individuals who are implementing building 0-1 ventures, helping to set direction, developing repeatable processes, providing counsel and challenging assumptions day-to-day.

• Product development: You have experience in product management, defining roadmaps, prioritising features for early-stage ventures and user feedback / UX testing. 

• Growth: Experienced in driving business growth and customer acquisition, ideally through experience in a combination of the following:

  • Performance marketing: Running ads on Google, Meta, etc., optimising campaigns and modeling attribution

  • B2B marketing: testing B2B demand via lead generation 

  • Experimentation and growth hacking: e.g. A/B testing, rapid experimentation frameworks, virality tactics, lifecycle marketing, etc.

  • Data & analytics: Tracking and analysis of data on user behaviour and experiments to understand user journeys and retention

Core competencies

• Leadership & mentorship: You have hands-on experience leading early-stage teams and guiding others through the 0→1 journey. You set direction without ego, challenge assumptions constructively, and act as a trusted “critical friend” to help founders make better decisions.

• Comfortable with ambiguity: You thrive in grey areas, look at ambiguity as an opportunity, and possess plenty of entrepreneurial grit which manifests via initiative in identifying problems and implementing solutions. 

• Agile & adaptable: Familiarity with rapid experimentation, A/B testing, and data-driven decision-making. You are able to iterate and pivot quickly, based on real-world learnings and customer actions. 

• Clear communicator: You have exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, and are able to work closely with founders, designers, and engineers to bring concepts to life and reconcile conflicting views.

• Mission-driven: You're not just looking for a job; you're on a mission to make a difference, to challenge the status quo and to innovate for social good.

🛠 What You'll Do:

• You will be able to hit the ground running, working across multiple concepts and with multiple founders at once to lead the testing, validation and building of venture concepts as scrappily and speedily as possible

• Partner with the founders who join for the 6 month Build process working together to get the business to a strong ‘spinout’ position and ready for scale. 

• Be a sparring partner for founders and senior leadership team, to help them challenge the status-quo and design long-term strategies, with the goal of maximizing impact and commercial potential.

• Lead product development, implementing the founder’s strategy whilst advising on best practices. 

• Embrace the start-up spirit, iterating fast and learning faster, all while keeping our mission at the heart of everything you design.

• This is your canvas. Paint big. Be the builder behind our next-gen startups, producing solutions that are not just viable, but vital.

👩‍💻 What we offer:

• Location: At least 2 days a week at our Thames-side, Blackfriars office in London with the freedom to work remotely on other days.

• Compensation: Competitive salary, between £70,000- £75,000, depending on experience

• Start date and role duration: We are looking for a candidate to commence the role in late April. This is a 12 month maternity cover role.

• Who You'll Report To: Christiana Rosales

Apply now and let's build something extraordinary together.

Making an application 

To apply for this role, please submit your application before 8:00am on the 2nd of February.

We plan for first round interviews to take place w/c 9th Feb onwards.

About Nesta

We are Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good. We design, test and scale solutions to society’s biggest problems. Our three missions are to give every child a fair start, help people live healthy lives, and create a sustainable future where the economy works for both people and the planet. 

For over 20 years, we have worked to support, encourage and inspire innovation. We work in three roles: as an innovation partner working with frontline organisations to design and test new solutions, as a venture builder supporting new and early stage businesses, and as a system shaper creating the conditions for innovation. 

Harnessing the rigour of science and the creativity of design, we work relentlessly to change millions of lives for the better. Find out more at nesta.org.uk.

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.