Executive Consultant; inhouse); m​/f​/d

NOW HIRING
· FULL-TIME
· COLOGNE
· 2 SEATS

The better founder job: real problems, real data, real decisions, without chasing funding or first customers. Every day next to our co-CEO.

• Cologne, five days a week in the office
• Full-time
• Start: as soon as you can

Customers, products, production and data already exist here. The missing piece: people who turn open questions into decisions, one after the other.

Our co-founder and co-CEO Philipp Muehlbauer listed everything that lands on his desk: far too much for one person. So he is opening two seats next to him. You work on what matters most to the group right now, from a pricing test to an acquisition.

In 2004 our founders flew to the Canton Fair in China. No plan B, no investors. Today The Customization Group is a global leader in mass customization and print-on-demand e-commerce: up to 2.5 million personalized products a day, made in Germany, Poland, the USA and Latvia, sold B2C, B2B and B2B2C through 20+ own shops and 1,000+ partner stores. 750+ people, 40+ nationalities.

In a nutshell:
Take the CEO's open questions, get the data, test, decide and see it through. Then the next one.

• Location: Cologne, five days a week in the office
• Team: Office of the CEO
  · with Philipp Muehlbauer, co-CEO
• Scope: Strategy
  · data
  · experiments
  · transformation
  · investments & M&A
• Experience: Fresh from university, or from consulting, M&A, PE or a scale-up
• Language: English. German is not required
• Start: As soon as you can

• Close open questions. Take an opportunity or challenge from the CEO's desk, size it and drive it to a decision. Then the next one.
• Go to the data yourself. Shops, marketing, production, finance. Where access is missing, you build it.
• Test before scaling. Experiments in pricing, assortment, marketing or operations. You read the results and decide the next step with the CEO.
• Prepare investments and M&A. Screen targets, build the case, run the numbers.
• Carry change into the business. With the teams who own the result, until it shows in their numbers.
• Build with AI. Analyses, research and prototypes with the CEO's AI setup, which you improve as you go.

Must have

• An analytical degree and first experience in strategy consulting, M&A, private equity or a scale-up, or internships of that kind.
• You build and check your own numbers.
• AI is your daily tool, and you can show us something you built with it.
• You turn analysis into a decision, on one page rather than in a deck.
• Fluent English, our working language.

Nice to have

• E-commerce sense: unit economics, conversion, marketplaces.
• Online or performance marketing experience.
• SQL or Python.

Scope

A founder's agenda, minus the fundraising

Pricing, markets, operations, acquisitions: the whole group is your scope, not one function.

B2C
· B2B
· B2B2C

AI

An AI setup that already runs

The CEO has spent six months sharpening it. You use it from day one and make it better.

Agents
· analysis
· prototypes

Decisions

Decisions, not decks

You sit next to the person who decides. You prepare the calls and see them through.

Test
· transform
· invest
· acquire

Sounds like you?

• You pick up problems unasked and stay until they're solved.
• You'd rather check the data than win the argument.
• You've thought about founding a company, and you want the problems more than the paperwork.
• You get into a new topic fast: pricing on Monday, production on Thursday.

Probably not a fit if…

• you want a predictable rhythm. The pace follows the CEO's agenda, and some weeks are intense.
• you want to lead a team soon. This role is about learning fast.
• your best output is a polished deck. Here a result counts once it's live.
• you want to work remotely.…