Venture Studio Lead

REQ ID 190

Mach49 is the Growth Incubator for Global Businesses. 

We are 100% focused on execution helping companies Disrupting InsideOut™ and Disrupting OutsideIn™ to drive meaningful, sustainable growth for their companies, their people, their communities and the world. Together with our clients we….

• Launch Ventures leveraging the client’s talent, customers, assets, core competencies to ideate, incubate, accelerate and scale disruptive new ventures
• Build Incubators that develop client team capability (not dependency) and enable our customers to drive growth for years to come (without us)
• Do Corporate Venture Investing and Partnering with the discipline embraced by top-tier Venture Capitalists
• Bring the Silicon Valley Inside building an internal ecosystem equipped to seize the Mothership advantage and beat the startups at their own game.

We are recruiting for this contract role on behalf of Hines, a global real estate client with an online platform and a marketplace for premium, work ready offices.

*Preference for candidates located in New York, Houston or Los Angeles areas

If you have a track record of building new ventures with a startup or large enterprise, have a dynamic nature with outstanding project management skills, and an ability to juggle quickly changing priorities, with a smile on your face, we want to talk to you. Hines is seeking a Venture Studio Lead to manage the growth and development of their Venture Factory, focusing on early-stage ideation, through incubation and, acceleration and scale up of new businesses or entities.

This role reports to the Global Venture Lab Lead and responsibilities include supporting the management of the day to day of the “venture factory” including incubation and acceleration, within the corporation, managing communication across all areas of the corporation, interfacing with a new venture executive leadership governance board, developing and standardizing workflow processes for new ventures, overseeing talent pipeline needs, and ensuring the Incubator initiatives are moving forward in line with the determined timelines.

The Role

• Alongside the Global Venture Lab Head, oversee the talent pipeline (Incubator, new venture teams, new venture boards & new venture advocates)
  • Staffing requirements
  • Profiles for potential hires
  • Interview stages & associated guides
  • Best practices for managing innovation team members
  • HR and line manager selection, onboarding and offboarding
  • Employee / leadership rotations
    
• Interface and support the corporation’s new venture governance board, alongside the Global Venture Lab Head. Activities include:
  • Budget sizing and allocation
  • Partner with the Innovation leadership team to align on strategic themes / focus areas for venture creation
  • Make recommendations of venture investment decisions

• Make key strategic decisions around Venture Building operating models
  • Processing of key ideas and project managing of feedback (Executives, R&D, New Venture Competitions, etc.)
  • Developing and revisiting ongoing a selection criteria, idea scorecards and disposition feedback to the submitter
  • Incubation / acceleration volume recommendation
  • Internal / external incubator and ventures communication

• Operationalize and oversee engagement with the Corporation including:
  • Routine functional area audit of all groups
    • What groups should the incubator duplicate within itself?
    • What groups outside of the incubator make sense to leverage?
    • Establishing venture advocate (functional / technical / industry experts) training and support
  • Interfaces between incubator and core functional teams
    • Functional expert support
    • IT (hardware, SaaS and the rest of the tech stack)
    • Facilities (incubator space)
  • Collaborate with senior leaders of the firm, including Regional CEOs, co-heads of Investment Management, Central functional leaders, and the Global Head of ESG
    
• Drive activities to the incubation and acceleration cadence calendar & marketing/promotion
  • Target state schedule & activities from ideation through graduation
  • Inspiration events
  • Internal & external promotion for incubator & accelerator

• Support venture teams
  • Adapt venture creation methodology based on what’s needed
  • Assist in customer recruiting and customer development
  • Participate in pain-to-product transition, product vision and high-level technical architecture
  • Coach teams on business model and financial planning
  • Aid in team and individual development needs in line with a new venture creation mindset
  • Source development expertise as needed
  • Source internal and external technical and/or industry expert advisors/mentors

• Support venture building activities & teams
  • Budgets & reporting for all engagements
  • Assets, training & materials provided
  • Standard practices & methodologies for incubation teams
  • Positive working environment
  • Personal conflicts on the team
  • Preparedness for formal reviews with new venture board(s)     

Requirements

• 10+ Years in a senior Operations Lead, People Management, Project Management or Product Management role, preferably with in a startup or new venture / new business unit within a large organization
• Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Innovation, or other relevant area
• MBA preferred
• Experience and interest in all aspects of building a high growth company including concept, value proposition, strategy, business models, funding, technology, branding, GTM, building high functioning teams
• Experience in corporate innovation and/or venturing (internal and/or external venture development and realization).
• Experience in lean start up, agile development and design thinking methodologies a plus
• Background in, or hands-on knowledge of Customer Development, or customer led innovation
• Wide range of exposure to various technical topics from a product perspective, and comfort with jumping into new technical areas.
• Expertise in building financial models assimilating the ambiguities of a new venture
• Strong strategic planning skills
• Experience with business development in G1000 environment
• Proven ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, multi-task environment
• VC, PE, or Angel Investing experience, a plus
• Commercial real estate, private equity or financial sector exposure a plus
• Preference for candidates located in New York, Houston, or California, expected collaboration with our other global company locations, including the company’s Houston Global Headquarters

Soft Skills

• Ability to deal with ambiguity in a fast-paced, fluid environment
• Strong background in forming and coaching high-performance cross functional teams
• Exceptional people leadership skills and the demonstrated ability to gain confidence, build rapport and drive consensus with client team members, senior managers, and board
• Proven track record of successfully managing multiple, complex projects
• Demonstrable collaborative mindset
• Successful management of multiple partner/channel organizations
• Excellent presentation skills including strong verbal and writing capabilities
• Outstanding listening skills and ability to manage through influence
• Self-initiative and an ability to work well independently                        

Our client requires background and reference checks, that new hires be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and that all associates, clients, and guests who choose to attend in-person events provide proof of vaccination and follow local requirements and mask mandates. Working together, we can protect our global community.

Our client is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. We’re helping them build a diverse, inclusive, empathetic community where every one of us belongs. A place —not just a workplace—that reflects the people of all races, genders, sexual orientations, national origins, backgrounds, and perspectives who share our world.

Physical requirements include ability to communicate effectively in written and oral forms, to listen and hear and/or read on and through electronic devices for extended periods of time. 

Authorization to work in the US required.

Base salary: $230K-$270K

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