Venture Builder & Ops

Organization
Africa Jobs Fund
Location
Remote - Africa preferred
Job Type
Full-time
Where to Apply
https://www.africajobsfund.com/opportunities/venture-builder
Tags
Full-time, Remote

About AJF

The Africa Jobs Fund catalyses high-impact companies that can dramatically boost incomes for people in Africa. We focus on two areas with the biggest potential to move the needle: export manufacturing and international labour mobility.

We intend to mobilise $100m towards these spaces over the coming years, with which we aim to double the lifetime incomes of over 250,000 low-income people in Africa.

Initially we plan to deploy $15m to build 20 high-impact companies. We venture build new companies (identifying high-impact opportunities and sourcing talented founders to build them), and we make catalytic investments in existing companies.

Not only do we intend to have a huge direct impact on hundreds of thousands of lives, we also hope to shift the development (and startup) conversations in Africa towards approaches that effectively and durably increase incomes at scale.

We’re a very small team and we’re moving fast. You’ll work directly with the co-founders with enormous autonomy from day one. We are looking for someone who is exceptionally talented, impact-motivated, high-agency and hardworking.

The role

The role is broad by design. You’ll spend your time on:

  • Market and opportunity scoping. Figure out which sectors, corridors, and geographies we should focus on. Speak to operators on the ground to assess where the real opportunities are.
  • Founder sourcing and conviction-building. Find potential founders and convince them of the impact of our focus areas and why they should build a company with us. This isn’t just sourcing, you’ll have to persuade exceptional people to take on this challenge with us, while also assessing them as potential investments.
  • Investment assessment and structuring. Help assess investments, develop investment cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs), and structure deals. You might be helping to decide on a revenue-based financing model vs equity, or modelling the future income gains that a particular company can create.
  • Portfolio support. Support our portfolio companies post-investment, make connections into our network, help them scale and share insights from across the portfolio. We don’t run training programmes or share abstract insights, this will concretely be helping founders build their companies 0 -> 1.
  • Reporting and impact. Assess impact across the portfolio, collect progress updates from companies, and update funders.
  • Operations. Build decks and materials, organise events, maintain the CRM, book travel, approve payments, and run the day-to-day operational load. As much as possible, this work will be carried out by AI tools and your role will be to direct and manage them.

This is a very broad set of responsibilities and the mix will shift over time. We intend to use AI tools to automate as much of our work as possible, meaning that our team will remain small and our time is likely to be increasingly focused on human interaction, executive decisions and other core competencies.

As you grow in the role, we will keep giving you more responsibility and autonomy in your work. The ceiling on this role is very high for the right person.

Who we’re looking for

We will not hire anyone who doesn’t meet all of the following:

  • AI-native. You regularly use the best AI tools to automate your work and rely on it constantly to optimise your workflows.
  • Exceptionally talented and intelligent. You can think about hard problems deeply, absorb information quickly and generate insightful analyses.
  • Problem solver. You’re excited about taking on new challenges every day. You’ll constantly be tackling new and different tasks and you should find that energising rather than uncomfortable.
  • Hardworking. This is not a 9-5. We’re a small team with a huge mission and we work hard.
  • Mission-driven. You’re driven by a real desire to have a positive impact in an evidence-driven way.
  • Results & Evidence-focused. You don’t just care about working in impact, you care about working on the projects that are most likely to yield results. You understand why labour mobility, export manufacturing, and the private sector are some of the most promising routes to increase quality of life for low-income people.
  • (We understand that this may be a new approach for many people – in which case you have done the background reading/research to understand our approach)

Background and experience

We’re open to candidates from a range of backgrounds. You might come from a startup operator role, you might have worked in investment or consulting, or you might be coming from the non-profit space. What matters is that you know how to move fast and execute.

  • Strong experience working in Africa.
  • 2-7 years of experience. We’re flexible on seniority level, we care more about finding exceptional people.

Bonus experience: these experiences are not required but would be great to have.

  • Experience in investment, structuring deals, or VC
  • Academic grounding in development economics and a working understanding of cost-effectiveness analysis
  • Experience working in fast-growing startups
  • Experience in international labour mobility or export manufacturing

Compensation, location, and logistics

  • Competitive compensation appropriate for the role. We’re flexible on the exact scope of work and level of experience because we want to find exceptional people, and compensation will reflect that.
  • Remote, with a preference for candidates based in Africa.
  • Travel across Africa and to destination markets.