Venture Development Associate

Start date

As soon as possible

Location

Kampala (With constant Travel)

Compensation

Commensurate with Experience

About Outbox

At Outbox, our mission is to bring together the infrastructure, people, knowledge and capital that supports entrepreneurs through the growth of inclusive communities that foster talent and create value where we operate. We take a deliberate approach to how we support Small and Growing businesses, by differentiating our programs based on their unique needs, walking the lonely entrepreneurship journey with them, and capturing our learnings for the benefit of the next entrepreneur we might meet.

We have the best learning communities in the startup ecosystem in Uganda and utilize that competency to distribute our expertise beyond our walls. We strongly believe in the potential of technology to provide an unfair advantage to any business when used for good, and as such focus on supporting digital entrepreneurs first.

Over the last eight (8) years, we have brought together the best people, companies, development partners, Government and knowledge (best practice) for our entrepreneurs to succeed – which is why we believe we are best placed to guide our ecosystem forward. Various partners have trusted us to lead our ecosystem and enabled us to continue our work of ensuring that every young person in Uganda has an opportunity to have dignified work.

Role

As a Venture Development associate, you are responsible for the learning experience of our members by designing and imparting not only the hard but also soft skills on how modern approaches to venture design can be used in the development of innovative businesses, products or services.

The primary emphasis of the role is to lead the delivery of high-quality micro, small and medium business programmes that are responsive to the needs of our members including: designing, implementing and evaluating training programs including curriculum, instructor training (pedagogy approaches) and topical training; administration of seed funding to selected businesses on behalf of our funding partners. Our MSME entrepreneurship programming is going nationwide (Uganda) and as such you will be required to travel at-least 70% of the time to support our youth programming.

Core Responsibilities

• Develop and implement a knowledge and learning strategy and action plan with clear goals, targets and indicators for the various programs supporting young innovators and MSME entrepreneurs;
• Develop and deliver trainings to members utilizing the set trainer model to expand capacity;
• Monitor member feedback and maintain a commitment to continual program improvement and high levels of satisfaction;
• Facilitate the effective management of all training programs according to the organization’s standards
• Develop content for learning courses and learning paths on entrepreneurship for our entrepreneurs in close collaboration with other industry stakeholders;
• Develop and actively monitor programme work plans to deliver hours required to meet requirements as well as member business needs;
• Work closely with entrepreneurs as a focal point of contact in our entrepreneurship programming to ensure that we are always meeting their expectations and needs to help their businesses to grow;
• Research, identify and document experiences, lessons learned and good practices to guide improvements, strategic planning, advocacy and communication;
• Support our focal persons in the various regions of Uganda known as Innovation catalysts with training, collaborating to deliver mentorship and MSME entrepreneurship training among others;
• Work with our regional replicating partners to deliver youth entrepreneurship programming. This includes offering them training, ensuring they adhere to set standards of our programming, providing guidance on how to build communities of practice among others;
• Contribute to monitoring and evaluation aspects of our programming by tracking metrics and contributing insights on the progress made by various businesses within our incubation and accelerator programs, development of reports on the work done;
• Provide support with the development and relationship management of our mentor network in the various programmes we have;
• Serve as a local point of contact with stakeholders (Local Government, private businesses, business development service providers etc) in the various Ugandan regions where we operate

Job qualifications

Minimum qualifications

• A Bachelor’s degree in business, development economics/financial inclusions, finance;
• At-least 4 years work experience in financing and non-financial support to MSMEs. Experience in enterprise business development and investing/financing MSMEs.
• Experience with using modern digital tools for documentation and project management, include G-suite, slack, JIRA, etc
• Strong understanding of MSME segmentation (from early stage startups to growth stage SMEs and the systemic challenges affecting their growth with a particular understanding of Uganda’s context;

Preferred qualifications

• Experience developing learning experiences and inclusive delivery approaches in an enterprise development initiative;
• Experience facilitating learning experiences for adults;
• Experience with facilitating modern venture design practices that include human centred design and lean startup principles;
• Strong ability to communicate progress and learnings from projects to colleagues
• Strong listening, documentation and presentation skills
• Excellent project management skills, including handling multi-stakeholder projects
• A self-starter with the ability to work independently and as part of a team
• You are flexible, adaptable and able to execute a range of job duties and changing priorities;
• Experience with initiatives that have financed MSMEs in Uganda that might include MFIs, Banks, investment companies or enterprise development financing initiatives;
• You pay attention to the various sensitivities of various cultures;
• Ability to travel at-least 70% of the time to various regions of the country;
• Ability to speak other local languages an added advantage

Application Deadline

Deadline to submit is 14th August 2020. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for interviews.