Venture Lead

We are recruiting for a Venture Lead 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 venture lead with hands‑on entrepreneurial experience to add to our team.

As a Venture Lead you will partner with founders to build scalable, high-impact businesses, from concept design and validation to early stage venture growth. You will have the start‑up know-how and scrappiness combined with the coaching and leadership skills to work with founders to transform and scale ideas into thriving businesses.

• Entrepreneurial experience: You have worked for a minimum of 3+ years directly at or with early‑stage startups (e.g. founder, early‑stage hire, product manager, or venture studio designer/builder) and have helped progress startups through the messy 0 to 1 stage. You have a track record of launching and scaling startups or products, and continually implementing lessons learnt along the way.
• Design experience
  :
  You have experience in identifying and validating business opportunities, and designing business concepts around them - e.g. through customer research, surveying, ideation and market research.
• Product development: You are an expert in early‑stage product management, defining roadmaps, prioritising features for early‑stage ventures and user feedback / UX testing.
• Lean venture building experience: Building on the above, 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.
• Founder mentorship: Ideally, you have worked alongside founders before in a mentorship / strategic advisor style role, but not essential.

• Leadership through the 0-1 journey: 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.

You’ll hit the ground running, working with multiple founders at once to lead the design, validation and building of venture concepts as scrappily and speedily as possible, over a ~9 month venture build process:

• Early on, you will partner with founders who join pre concept, working together to identify and design a mission‑led business concept, and pitch to progress it into Build
• During Build, you will share the load with the founder, supporting on product development and testing alongside the founder, whilst advising on best practices and ensuring the business gets to a strong ‘spinout’ position

Throughout, you will:

• Usher founders through our process - the “how” we build ventures - ensuring they focus on testing riskiest assumptions and holding a high quality standard
• Be a thought partner to founders. The founders are in the lead, you are there to help them challenge the status‑quo and design long‑term strategies, with the goal of maximizing impact and commercial potential.
• Embrace the start‑up spirit, iterating fast and learning faster,…