New Ventures Lead

JD&Co is working with a new business founded by a highly successful serial entrepreneur to appoint a New Ventures Lead.

The founder has built and scaled several businesses from scratch and is now building something new; the business will be in the content and media space, developing original formats around specific audiences and commercial opportunities, with the aim of turning the strongest ideas into real businesses.

THE OPPORTUNITY

We are looking for someone exceptional to join right at the beginning and work directly alongside the founder.

The role will involve taking ideas from a blank sheet of paper, getting quickly into unfamiliar markets, speaking to customers and commercial partners, testing assumptions, building business cases and then taking the strongest opportunities forward.

You might be given a market, audience or broad idea and asked to work out whether there is something there.

That means asking the right questions quickly. Things like...

• Who is the audience?
• What do they care about?
• Who might pay to reach them?
• Who are the right people to build around?
• What would make the economics work?
• And, most importantly, is there actually a business worth building?

From there, you will be expected to make things happen.

That could mean finding talent, speaking to potential sponsors or partners, helping shape the proposition, building an initial audience, testing different routes to market and getting something live.

This is a role for someone who likes going from zero to one.

ABOUT YOU

We're looking for someone...

• Commercially curious: instinctively wants to understand how a market works, where the money is, who buys what and why.
• A zero-to-one thinker: enjoys starting with a blank sheet of paper and turning loose ideas into something real.
• Structured and commercially numerate: able to get into an unfamiliar market quickly and think naturally about pricing, economics, margins, ROI and P&L.
• Comfortable talking to customers: wants to speak to people, test assumptions and learn from the market rather than sitting in a room planning.
• Resourceful and proactive: does not wait to be told exactly what to do next.
• Fast-moving: has a strong bias towards action and likes getting to an answer quickly.
• A builder: gets energy from creating something that did not exist before.
• Strong judgement: able to work out what matters and what does not, even with imperfect information.
• Low ego: happy to think strategically and equally happy to do the detailed, unglamorous work needed to move something forward.
• An owner: treats whatever they are working on as their own mini business and takes responsibility for the outcome.

The most important thing is evidence. Lots of people can say they are entrepreneurial, proactive or commercially minded. We want to hear about the times you actually showed it:

• Something you built from scratch.
• An opportunity you spotted without being asked.
• A completely unfamiliar problem you threw yourself into.
• A time you had to learn about a new market very quickly.
• A situation where you spoke to customers, changed your view and acted on what you learned.
• Something that exists now because you took the initiative to make it happen.

Your background matters much less than what you have actually done. You could come from a start-up, consulting, recruitment, growth, marketing, operations or something completely different.

What matters is whether you have a track record of taking initiative, learning quickly and making things happen.

This is not a narrowly defined corporate role. It is an opportunity to work directly with an experienced founder, see how new businesses are built from the inside and take a huge amount of ownership from day one.

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