Head of Venture Build - Koru

Job Description

We’re Koru. Welcome. We have entered a decade of disruption of large corporate business models, driven by a steep change in the power of technology and the audacity and speed of start-ups. To be fit for the future, visionary companies are re-imagining themselves by injecting or challenging established models with new ideas fueled by technology. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (“Ontario Teachers’”) and its 90+ portfolio of companies are partnering with BCG Digital Ventures’ (“BCGDV”) global ecosystem of start-ups and experts to own the next horizon of innovation. With Ontario Teachers’, we are excited to launch Koru, an incubation platform designed to drive breakout growth by building a portfolio of new digital ventures across the private equity, infrastructure, and natural resources spaces. Koru will be the first true venture incubator formed by an institutional investor in North America. It will have a unique advantage in the market, marrying the resources of Ontario Teachers’, the methodology of BCG Digital Ventures, and the data, assets and market knowledge of 90+ world class companies. Ontario Teachers’ is one of the world’s leading private equity and infrastructure investors with $190+ billion in net assets as at December 31, 2018. It pays pensions and invests on behalf of 327,000 working and retired teachers. Since its establishment as an independent organization in 1990, Ontario Teachers’ has built an international reputation for innovation and leadership in investment management and member services. It employs roughly 1,200 employees at its head office in Toronto, Canada and investment offices in London and Hong Kong. Koru will operate as an independent subsidiary of Ontario Teachers’, with a separate governance framework, team, and office in downtown Toronto. Koru will work with many of Ontario Teachers’ 90+ portfolio companies around the world to generate ideas, validate and incubate them in market, and ultimately build new, innovative digital businesses that address customer frictions and take advantage of new opportunities across industries. We expect Koru to create game changing ventures while promoting a truly entrepreneurial mindset, and creating a culture of fearless reinvention. Koru will leverage its ‘ unfair’ competitive advantage to create new sources of value for Ontario Teachers’ and the companies it works with. Introducing our Venture Operations Teams: Our Venture teams consist of world-class entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, and product and technology experts. Joining our remarkable multidisciplinary team will challenge you to push the boundaries of the industry, without the distractions of raising capital. If you have the passion, tenacity, and curiosity to build innovative businesses from the ground up, we invite you to join our mission. Koru is seeking an exceptional, strategic and visionary Venture Build and operations leader who will provide overall guidance and support to individual ventures in the areas of infrastructure, customer operations and business operations stand-up. Your expertise will enable our ventures to set up and scale rapidly into high performing start-ups..

As Head of Venture Build, you will:

• Create Koru's playbook for standing up governance, customer operations and business operations to support the growth and scale efforts of new businesses
• Develop a methodology, including the people, process and tools, that builds scalable, operational capabilities to be transitioned over to a full-time team
• Define, recruit and lead a team responsible for standing up all business and customer operations across multiple, concurrent incubations.
• Manage a team that evaluates and defines business requirements for new startup companies to provide recommendations on appropriate processes, systems and equipment
• Oversee and develop business operations capabilities in new ventures, which includes operational stand-up of HR, finance/accounting, legal/compliance, IT, and facilities
• Oversee and develop customer operations capabilities in new ventures, which includes customer onboarding, training, proactive account management and reactive support
• Research new and disruptive tools and vendors, providing recommendations for a portfolio of solutions for incremental stages to support scale

As Head of Venture Build, you should have:

• 10+ years of senior strategy and business operations experience within high-growth, digital startups. 5+ years of experience in a client-facing, corporate environment is a plus
• Significant leadership and scale responsibilities at venture-backed, or corporate-funded startups
• A proven track record as an effective player-coach. Your leadership and coaching strengths are enhanced by your desire to both lead and roll up your sleeves to get stuff done.
• Exceptional people management skills to attract, motivate and inspire cross-functional teams
• Exceptional client and senior stakeholder management skills.
• Professional, flexible and effective communication skills that can easily pivot from the team room to the board room
• Strong working knowledge of operational areas including customer success, support and onboarding, payroll and compensation, accounting and how to develop scalable processes
• Expert project management skills and familiarity with common tech-forward project-management tools such as Trello, Asana and Jira
• Experience with Salesforce implementation and/or migrations is a plus