Product Manager, Venture Build

ABOUT Venture Build

Building a startup … sounds scary, difficult and often risky.

Our research from asking over 600 early stage startup teams across Africa that have gone though our program, shows that the top 3 pain points of early stage founders are - accessing enough capital (of course), the ability to hire/build a team (expected) and … “how to build... what to do next...”

We want to solve these problems.

Venture Build aims to enable anyone start and build a successful startup. It is a platform that journeys with founders as they go from an idea, to MVP (minimum viable product), to market. It helps them to enable key outcomes that startups must undergo (from figuring out how best to solve their customer’s problem through user / market research, to accessing capital and talent, to finally achieving product-market fit by generating revenues and becoming profitable).

This platform will help us scale the impact of the African Impact Challenge (AIC), which is hard to scale as is due to its cohort based program structure. By providing founders access to this “operating system” for venture building, we can support more people and create more impact.

This is still early stage and we need people who relate to this core problem and want to help solve this. If you think this is you, then read on!

This position is a Full-time contract renewable yearly.

Responsibilities

  • Define requirements and propose solutions to issues faced by first time founders

  • Talk to customers, and figure out what needs to be built, iteratively

  • Ideate, brainstorm, and wireframe solutions with engineering and design teams

  • Define and communicate product success metrics, service level objectives and other types of measurement to engineering, design, other AII partners and stakeholders

  • Be authentic in all your efforts and engage with people with humility, empathy and respect.

Qualifications

  • Leadership: 4+ years of product management experience, managing technical products from kick-off to shipping at scale

  • Customer obsession: Strong focus on user first, with proven experience in simplifying sophisticated JTBDs into simple workflows

  • Strong sense of ownership: you can be relied on to bring Venture Build to life, managing all stakeholders involved, and proactively providing timely feedback

  • Strong product management skills: related to user research, roadmap development, cross-organizational and cross-functional alignment, and go-to-market activities

  • Outstanding interpersonal skills: ability to work collaboratively with other product and functional teams.

How to apply

Please complete this form if you’re interested, and we’ll be in touch with feedback after the application closes.