We're building the most powerful growth engine for African startups and their founders.
Founders Factory Africa (FFA) is unlike any place else you’ve ever worked. We are venture builders dedicated to solving some of Africa’s biggest challenges and capitalizing on it’s incredible potential by leveraging market and tech opportunities. Over the next five years, we’ll build 40 businesses from scratch and scale 100 existing growth-stage ventures through our venture development programs. Backed by leading corporates, such as Standard Bank the continent’s largest bank we have access to their vast resources, infrastructure, and expertise and will bring those to bear for all our ventures and entrepreneurs. Starting with FinTech and HealthTech, FFA will expand our focus as we grow, adding other sectors that include retail, transportation, energy, and education.
Our CultureOur goals are audacious, and we want to work with people who share our passion for pursuing transformation at scale. We believe that good ideas can come from anywhere - not just the top - and we love to build our way out of uncertainty. At FFA, you will work with and meet outstanding and diverse talent from across the continent and help us build a collaborative, inclusive, and supportive network. You will work faster (and learn faster) than you ever have before.
With offices in Johannesburg and London, we are building an ambitious, talented, and passionate team, ensuring that Founders Factory Africa is the continent’s best partner for founders.
The roleThe Head of Community (HoC) is fundamental in enabling FFA achieve its vision of being the best partner for early-stage entrepreneurs in Africa, and a strong collaborator for other players in this ecosystem. As such, the role is at the centre point for creating a strong FFA voice within the African ecosystem of Founders and entrepreneurs.
The purpose is to engage with Founders, and their key stakeholders, to facilitate learning, communication, and collaboration, and doing so - support them in pushing their venture to the next level of growth and future scale. In achieving the above, the HoC will also inadvertently be supporting different FFA teams to deliver on their goals through stakeholder outreach: they will grow and manage FFA’s extensive and diverse external communities.
The role requires intense curiosity and drive for building interest, engagement and trust across multiple communities. The role will entail developing a clear strategy for growing and managing these communities, and includes a data and results-based approach to measuring the quantitative and qualitative growth of FFA’s relationships with these communities.
By engaging with team leads and other FFA team members, the HoC will use a variety of outreach approaches to reach the external audience, with entrepreneurs at the core. These may include creating through-leadership content, hosting events, supporting with social media outreach, developing Press Releases, to name a few.The most important community that the HoC will focus on are the startup Founders and Africa’s early-stage entrepreneurs.
Others include: investors (VCs), corporates/partners, universities and other research or academic institutions, and the media. For example, in mid 2020, FFA has launched HATCH Hatch by Founders Factory Africa is a network of African entrepreneurs and visionaries who are committed to transforming the startup ecosystem across the continent. Other existing efforts include the Partnerships Advisory Forum - a network of African leaders (high level and C-suite individuals) who engage with FFA startups and FFA teams to share their network, provide technical advice and engage in finding solutions to complex challenges.
HoC will work closely with the Head of Growth (Marketing); the design team; Programmatic Managers (FFA Venture Scale and Venture Build), Head of Partnerships, , Head of Investment and Head of MakersLab.Ultimately, this role is for someone who has experience in and understands what it takes to develop and grow communities successfully; and is fascinated about creating brand awareness and engagement with company’s external stakeholders.
Requirements- Experience in media communications, journalism or branded content, preferably in technology and startups
- Ability to develop clear strategy for community building and management
- Strong Project management skills: ability to lead and collaborate with cross-functional partners, prioritise high impact activities, and keep complex projects moving forward
- Passion for driving Africa’s startup ecosystem forward, and experience in this field
- Ability to work ind