Director, Venture Factory

Nelnet Business Services (NBS), a division of Nelnet, Inc., provides payment technology, education services, and learning management solutions to education and faith-based organizations, serving more than 1,300 higher education institutions, 11,500 K-12 schools, 3,500 churches, and millions of individual students, families, and supporters across the globe. Our culture of service enables us to form long-lasting and trusted partnerships, while our focus on creativity and innovative solutions empowers our customer communities to thrive.

As a Nelnet company, the perks at NBS go beyond our benefits package. You’re part of a community, invested in you as an individual and united by our mission to create opportunities for people where they live, learn and work.

The Director, Venture Factory leads the design, operation, and continuous improvement of a venture creation engine that systematically identifies, assesses, prototypes, and pilots new business opportunities. This role is pivotal in delivering validated business potential annually, driving a start-up, fail fast, learn quickly approach to reduce spend and accelerate go-to-market timelines. The Director is hands‑on, owning the full upstream venture lifecycle and ensuring only the strongest ideas are promoted for scale, supporting the organization’s commitment to sustainable new market growth.

• Lead the development and execution of a repeatable opportunity-sourcing system to surface high-quality venture candidates across markets and domains.

• Engage with market, startup ecosystems, customers, and internal resources to identify and synthesize venture hypotheses.

• Define and maintain formal opportunity qualification criteria, including strategic fit, differentiation, and risk-to-ROI profile.

• Construct and manage a ranked venture backlog with explicit hypotheses, kill criteria, and investment caps.

• Launch prototypes and pilots required to produce validated business potential, enforcing tight time‑boxing and capital discipline.

• Personally participate in venture builds, customer onboarding, and validation discussions to ensure hands‑on execution.

• Apply risk‑adjusted investment logic and run weekly venture reviews with clear recommendations for continuation, pivot, or termination.

• Own promotion readiness and handoff to business units, ensuring clarity on use cases, customer targets, and scale requirements.

• Track and report on success metrics, including validated business potential, pilot deployment, and time-to-signal.

• Prevent zombie initiatives and premature scale pressure through disciplined decision‑making.

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering, or related field.

Preferred:

• Advanced degree (MBA or equivalent) or relevant entrepreneurial experience.

Required:

• Proven experience as a founder or early-stage operator, with a track record of building, selling, and killing ideas.

• Demonstrated success in hands‑on venture creation, product development, and go-to-market execution.

• Experience in managing cross-functional teams and driving rapid iteration in ambiguous environments.

Preferred:

• Experience in AI-enabled product building and experimentation.

• Exposure to market and startup ecosystems, including venture studios and emerging products.

• Strategic thinking and pattern recognition across markets and technologies.

• Agility in execution and rapid learning from failure.

• Strong commercial and product instincts.

• Influence and collaboration across internal and external stakeholders.

• Discipline in capital allocation, risk management, and decision-making.

Our benefits package includes medical, dental, vision, HSA and FSA, generous earned time off, 401K/student loan repayment, life insurance & AD&D insurance, employee assistance program, employee stock purchase program, tuition reimbursement, performance-based incentive pay, short- and long-term disability, and a robust…