Founders Factory builds and funds startups together with exceptional entrepreneurs and the world's leading companies. Headquartered in London and operating globally, Founders Factory backs visionary founders with capital, dedicated support from a team of expert operators, and unrivalled access to a coalition of industry leading corporate partners. Since 2015, FF has backed 450+ portfolio companies helping them to secure over 500 enterprise pilots with blue chip corporate partners such as Aviva, Vonovia, Rio TInto, and HSBC.

Our Venture Studio partners with entrepreneurs at day one, developing new ideas, technologies and business models into high growth companies. We specialise in building founding teams, developing disruptive concepts, finding first customers, and raising first rounds.

The Opportunity:

You will have the unique opportunity to work across various ventures as the co-founder to our incoming Founders. You will need to be able to inspire top founders as well as support them in the capacity of a co-founder while dealing with immense uncertainty and diverse challenges. Please note this role is for a 12 month fixed term contract with the potential to extend beyond that period. German language skills (fluency) are a must!

As the Venture Lead, your role will be:

You will play a critical role in shaping and de-risking new ventures before and alongside founder appointment. You will operate at the intersection of venture design, founder hiring, customer validation, and commercialisation, ensuring each concept is set up for scale.

• Founder leadership: Act as the acting founder on new ventures, you will work on identifying and pressure testing the riskiest hypotheses, defining the early venture blueprint, and shaping the work streams required to support successful founder hiring.
• Venture execution & effectiveness: Ensure the team is operating at high performance with clear priorities, well documented actions, strong operating cadence, and alignment across all contributors
• Hypothesis validation & user insight: Drive venture outcomes through rigorous user validation by derisking assumptions across value, feasibility, viability, and usability through structured discovery and testing
• Go-to-Market & Commercial Strategy: Define and execute early go-to-market strategies, including target customer identification, value proposition refinement, pricing design, and market positioning
• Customer Discovery & Early Revenue: Lead customer outreach and early sales activity aligned to product roadmaps from pipeline building and qualification through to pilots, POCs, and commercial contracts.
• Decision Ownership & Investor Reporting: Take ownership of critical build-phase decisions and communicate venture progress, insights, and risks to corporate investors and Founders Factory leadership
• Timeline and budget management: Responsible for making sure the venture spins out on time and within budget. Making decisions on budget that best supports the momentum of the venture

Previous experience:

• You have co-founded a venture or held a product / venture leadership role within an early-stage startup (Seed → Series B), building and scaling complex technical products from concept through to customer adoption.
• You bring first-hand experience supporting a business through at least two rounds of institutional funding, with exposure to the operational and commercial scaling required at each stage.
• Strong product background with a hands on approach. You’ve led teams, shaped products from concept to launch, and successfully shipped into market
• Strong commercial experience shaping defined go-to-market strategies, built early revenue pipelines, led customer discovery, and closed pilots / POCs / enterprise contracts
• Demonstrated ability to translate product value into commercial outcomes, shaping pricing and positioning to drive adoption and revenue
• Expertise in scaling product-led businesses, combining strong commercial instinct, financial acumen, and a deep understanding of business fundamentals
• Experience hiring, building, and retaining world-class, cross-functional teams in high growth environments
• Deep networks across founders, venture capital firms, and early-stage startup talent ecosystems