The world needs innovations to reach net-zero and circularity, but a wealth of research inventions never gets used at scale. BigCircle Ventures scouts promising deeptech and turns this into successful startups that tackle the world’s climate and circularity challenges. We focus on the large, untapped pool of early-stage innovations that would otherwise stay untouched on a shelf, hidden in a university, research institute or company lab.

Join us to make big impact

We are a new team with deep expertise in venture building and in the energy and materials transition. By using a proven model for discovering, nurturing and funding, we aim to be the leading greentech venture builder and boost the world’s journey towards sustainability. We are looking for a full-time venture partner to join this exciting and pioneering growth phase and to be part of founding and supporting 30 high impact ventures over the next 3-4 years.

As we are very keen to ensure diversity and balance in our team, we strongly encourage female candidates to apply

Your role as venture partner

As a venture partner, you take ownership of creating and growing new ventures, while collaborating with the full BigCircle team and nurturing your junior colleagues. To complement our current mix of backgrounds, this role will be focussed on energy and climate technologies to reach clean-energy abundance and negative climate emissions, including deeptech based digital enablers.

Your activities include:

• Sourcing innovations by building relationships with universities, companies and relevant researchers, representing BigCircle on events, and coaching venture developers during their searches on patents, projects and licence offers
• Selecting innovations based on technical, impact and market potential via our structured process, applying your expertise in collaboration with your colleagues, while leveraging your network of experts, investors and industry players
• Bringing all parties together, which involves negotiating an agreement with the IP-owner (university or company) and the researcher, then recruiting the team that will lead the venture (in collaboration with experienced recruiters in our network)
• Founding the venture (which we standardised with our legal partners), onboarding the team and supporting them long term (in collaboration with e.g. our in-house fundraising experts), and representing BigCircle as shareholder of the venture
• As part of all this, growing your and our network and visibility in the ecosystem, and playing a senior role in the development of our organisation (there are many different opportunities and challenges you can get involved in)

Your profile

• You want to make a positive impact and believe in the power of technology
• You have 10+ years of relevant experience with deep market knowledge and an extensive network (experts, industry partners, financers, academia)
• You have a scientific technology background or equivalent deeptech experience, applied in relevant industry and business environments, such as novel materials, complex engineering, advanced (bio)chemistry, machine learning and AI-applications
• You enjoy the puzzle as well as the human side of venture building, you are a positive, open and outgoing personality
• You are hands-on, a self-starter with a follow-through mentality, entrepreneurial and eager to learn, you combine sensibility with guts, you take ownership and thrive on collaboration, you enjoy nurturing and coaching the talent around you
• You are likely to be an entrepreneur or intrapreneur in early-stage technologies, with demonstrable success in negotiating deals (eg licence, funding) and building teams and partnerships
• You are fluent in English (spoken and written), as we will work all over Europe and beyond
• You live in or within commuting distance from Amsterdam, allowing for regular close collaboration in our office

We strongly believe that the right personality, motivation and team-fit form the key to having impact, so we value those over having a ‘perfect score’ on all the criteria

The opportunity we offer

• Join an energetic and fast growing team with a proven venture building approach
• Make a positive impact by boosting the world’s journey towards sustainability
• Enjoy a startup style package – co-own our business and future upside

You must have the right to work in the Netherlands, because we do not have the capacity to offer visa sponsorship

If you are interested or have any questions, we would love to hear from you (please reach out to joost.kruytzer@bigcircle.ventures) or feel free to visit