Venture Builder

Africa’s food systems need to be radically transformed to feed a growing population while tackling climate challenges. At the same time, Africa also has massive potential to be a world leader in climate smart food systems. At Pyramidia Ventures, we are on a mission to build the companies that make the transition to climate-smart food systems happen. As a venture studio, Pyramidia ideates, launches and scales start ups, from zero to one. Our success at every stage is driven by our deep experience on the ground. Pyramidia is looking for a Venture Builder to join the team and help realise its mission.

The role

As a Venture Builder, your primary responsibility is to move ventures through our funnel from ideation to scale up. You will work in a highly agile and entrepreneurial manner, at one or more ventures at the same time, in close cooperation with the broader the team and at a later stage with Venture Co-Founders. You will be involved in different stages of our funnel: ideating, researching and assessing new ideas, piloting promising models on the ground for early validation, starting, iterating and ramping up small-scale operations, and once a Co-Founder is on board, supporting them with scale up. This position will be based in Nairobi, Kenya  with occasional travel across the country and region.

You will

·      Cook up new ideas: You question the status quo and think out of the box, dream about potential new business models, stay abreast of sector and product developments and propose new venture ideas to the team

·      Get things done: You are independent and a self-starter, have a strong bias towards action and results, do not hesitate to get your feet on the ground and your hands dirty, and exemplify a culture of high velocity venture building

·      Fail fast, fail often, learn and repeat: You optimize for speed of learning managing “burn vs learn”. You design and rapidly test new ideas in sprints, take risks, iterate and incorporate learnings quickly

·      Balance 30,000 and 10 feet views: You can think big picture impact and strategic business case drivers, but are also a data lover and can prepare detailed business cases to support internal data-driven decision making

·      Lead small scale operations: When ventures move to small scale operations, you will hire first employees, implement basic processes, drive and track progress against targets, and if venture is successful, support recruiting a CEO / Co-Founder

·      Support co-founders of ventures: Depending on your functional area of expertise, you will provide targeted support to co-founders of our company venture portfolio in specific support areas such as fundraising, product management, finance & accounting, M&E

·      Continuously improve the Venture Building Process: You consolidate learnings to build out core venture studio repeatable processes, continuously improving on our “serial entrepreneurship on steroids”

You are

·      Deeply passionate about Pyramidia’s mission and aligned with Pyramidia’s values

·      Highly entrepreneurial: curious, autonomous, high energy, sleeves rolled up, have 3+ years of experience in a fast-growing startup

·      Obsessed with impact: social, environmental and economical, all at the same time

·      Both an analytical and hands-on problem solver: you can think creatively about challenges and don’t take no for an answer

·      Comfortable self-managing multiple pilots and priorities and operating in a lean, resource-constrained start-up environment

·      Experienced in the agrifood / climate-tech sector (highly preferred)

·      A holder of a Bachelor’s degree

To apply, please submit:

·      Your CV

·      Brief cover letter with your interest in applying for this role and in joining us

Applications are received on a rolling basis.

Our values

·      Love: The company was born out of love for our planet, love for our future generations. There is no such thing as being too kind. Care for each other and the environment we live and operate in. Embrace your purpose.

·      Rise: Be bold and break barriers – refuse to accept the status quo. Push the envelope - we can always do better. Fail fast, learn quickly, scale up massively. Rise up to your potential.

·      Unite: Cooperate and build bridges. Listen, ask, learn. Deeply engage with local communities. Co-shape global solutions. Inspire followership to initiate a snowball effect for positive change.