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The Company
1848 Ventures is a venture studio focused on consistently building, launching, and scaling a portfolio of B2B SaaS companies that harness the power of AI to fuel the future of small and medium sized business.
Backed by Westfield®, a respected leader in commercial insurance, 1848 Ventures extends beyond insurance by launching digital products that address the uncertainties that businesses face on a daily basis. We focus on industries that are the driving force of our economy including construction, real estate, hospitality, retail, and restaurants. Westfield’s backing affords us the agility to explore innovative ideas, weather uncertainties, and pursue ambitious ventures with confidence.
Our talented team of hands-on venture builders, data scientists, engineers, and designers combined with repeatable playbooks allows us to rapidly validate, build, launch, and scale customer focused AI enabled startups.
At 1848 Ventures culture is not just a concept – it is the essence of what we do, our behaviors, rituals, and practices. It’s the actions that enable our set of evolving relationships and the experiences they create. The culture is grounded in the practice of virtues. This enables our pursuit of excellence, which we express and measure by our actions. We act on these behaviors in the “how” of our work, our interactions with others, and the conduct we hold ourselves and others accountable to, individually and collectively.
Read on to discover how your skillset and experiences may help contribute to our approach.
The Opportunity
Our studio aims to launch a new venture each year by ideating and testing early-stage business models grounded in Jobs to Be Done (JTBD), a depth of market, competition, and customer understanding, and aligned strategically with 1848 Ventures’ vision. While many are ultimately shut down, the ventures with the most initial demand and traction are selected for additional investment and matched with a Venture Leader to drive the business plan development, execution and continuous iteration focused on growth and product market fit.
‘Backed by Westfield’ is more than our brand tagline, it indicates the unique relationship with our parent company, Westfield. As the sole funder of 1848 Ventures, Westfield is committed to providing capital to sustain operations and fund new ventures that have the capacity to deliver targeted strategic and financial value to the enterprise. This relationship creates the time and space for the people of 1848 Ventures to focus exclusively on the work that helps us achieve our long-term vision.
Ventures launched and scaled by 1848 Ventures will remain as wholly-owned subsidiaries of Westfield. Success is defined by a combination of long-term strategic and financial value generated for the enterprise. Therefore, the value creation expectations and metrics, while well-defined, differ significantly from those in the traditional capital markets. Our focus on the long term is reflected in our total rewards package for this role which is tied to the performance of the organization.
We’re seeking someone with proven experience supporting the growth of early-stage ventures and achieving product market fit for a business we’ve identified as having the greatest probability of delivering long term value. Our ventures focus on providing an AI powered software platform that is purpose built for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs.) We are targeting a Technical Venture Leader to join an early-stage venture and propel the growth through owning the tech vision, building and continually iterating a robust, secure and scalable AI enabled technical platform for the business that is informed by in market experience with customers. The ideal candidate will bring a wealth of experience building and successfully delivering SaaS software at a rate that matches the growth of the business.
Our Technical Venture Leaders build on the initial success of an experimental tech solution by developing the technical infrastructure for the software designed to launch the product, gain customer traction and generate a path to sustainable revenue growth and profitability.
In this role time will be divided across, but not limited to, the below responsibilities:
Responsibilities
- Accountable for the success of the venture through leadership and execution of the venture’s technical needs aligned to enabling launch and growth strategy
- Leadership and execution of the activities required for the venture’s success including:
- Technical team leadership
- Product development process management
- Infrastructure
- Software engineering
- Data science experimentation and deployment
- Works with the venture leadership team and 1848 Ventures’ leadership to translate high-level technical strategy and vision into annual and quarterly objectives and key results with a focus on:
- Top-line growth of the venture
- Improvement in accuracy of key data science models
- Financially responsible scaling of required tech infrastructure
- Exemplify exceptional people leadership by cultivating the 1848 Ventures culture, providing ongoing coaching and development opportunities, and fostering a supportive environment where individuals thrive through effective communication and strategic guidance
- Exemplify the behaviors expressed in our Culture Catchphrases: Care Personally, Challenge Directly, Keep Going, Honor Our Differences, Ask Another Question, and Drive Results.
- Regularly evaluates the venture’s progress on key technical metrics like data science model accuracy, app traffic volume, app uptime, and development velocity
- Acts as primary communicator and link between stakeholders, executional team, advisory groups, end users, vendor partners, etc., gaining buy-in on all major strategies and decisions related to the technical development of the venture
- Ensures adherence to legal and regulatory standards for data privacy and customer information protection, while also overseeing and enforcing industry-specific business decisions and practices
Qualifications
- Previous experience leading a technical function in an early-stage SaaS company from early traction to $1M+ ARR and product market fit
- Developed, executed, and iterated a technical growth plan informed by market learnings rooted in either Python or Node technologies
- Proven ability to develop and execute strategic plans that align with the specific growth needs of a new venture or startup business
- Experience in delivering software solutions that include artificial intelligence and machine learning
- Evidenced strength and experience in the following: software engineering (front end or full stack), DevOps, data science, technical infrastructure
- Built early-stage teams optimized for flexibility and growth in digital, data driven companies
- Experience working at the forefront of an emerging business trend driven by new technologies or a shift in customer preferences (E.g., product powered by machine learning/AI)
- Collaborative, results-driven critical thinker capable of leading development and refinement of the new venture based on deep customer insights
- Previous technical venture leadership experience partnering and sharing accountability with other influential leaders – business, product – to develop direction, formulate plans, and drive results to achieve product-market fit and scale an early-stage venture
- Ability to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of various technical model decisions including:
- Amount / type of data required
- Ideal type of model
- How to assess accuracy / impact
- How to productize / deploy within the venture’s ecosystem
- Metrics driven day-to-day operational leadership including building and monitoring OKRs to evaluate success against the strategy
- Demonstrated ability to grow and maintain a team; to create and manage a culture of collaboration and high performance; to influence without authority; to rally a team around a compelling vision
- Evidence of applied thought leadership:
- Attending industry conferences and reading relevant publications to learn about cutting edge developments
- Bringing in outside learnings to the organization to foster further development of the team and practices
- Delivered learnings from within the organization to outside audiences to foster the advancement of the broader industry
- Proven track record in outstanding people leadership, demonstrated through the cultivation of teamwork, establishment of a supportive environment, and dedication to coaching and developing individuals to realize their full potential. Proficient in effective communication and strategic guidance to achieve organizational goals
- Proven ability to successfully communicate across a variety of diverse stakeholders (team, board of directors, advisory groups, customers, vendor partners, etc.) via both detailed written and verbal communications
Travel
This position is remote or hybrid depending on the candidate’s location and proximity to 1848 Ventures’ Headquarters located outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Expectations are that our Venture Leaders are available to engage with 1848 Ventures’ and Westfield’s leaders in the office, as needed. Additionally, whether remote or hybrid, Venture Leaders will travel when and where necessary based on varying business needs and opportunities to meet with their team for customer discovery, customer engagement, team development, relationship-building, and networking initiatives.
Our hybrid culture is intentional and well-rounded – we select the right time, place, and technology combination to help achieve our goals. We are comfortable working across time zones and work locations. Remote Venture Leaders should expect 33% travel. Venture Leaders who reside within a commutable distance to Westfield Center, Ohio should expect to work from the office at least 3 days per week.
We are an equal opportunity employer/minority/female/disability/protected veteran.
