Platform Associate- Africa

Description

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is powered by the belief that a better world is possible. To do this, we know our teams do their best work when they are diverse and every team member feels that they belong. We welcome diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be stronger and have long term impact.

About Mercy Corps Ventures

Mercy Corps Ventures (MCV) invests in and catalyzes venture-led solutions to increase the resilience of underserved individuals and communities. Founded in 2015 as the impact investing arm of Mercy Corps, we’ve supported 44 early-stage ventures to scale and raise over $400.4 million in follow-on capital and reach nearly 20 million end users with impactful products and services. Our thesis centers around climate adaptation and resilience-building solutions in adaptive agriculture and food systems, inclusive fintech, and climate-smart technologies, so that those living in frontier markets can withstand disruption and plan for the future. Through capital and post-investment support, piloting new approaches, action-oriented insights, and rigorously managing impact, we catalyze the ecosystem toward smarter, more impactful investments.

Platform Associate

The Platform Associate will join Mercy Corps Ventures’ growing Post Investment Team (Platform). You will work closely across the Mercy Corps Ventures team to design, deliver and coordinate post-investment support for MCV portfolio companies. You will play a critical role in continuing to build our post-investment offerings and develop catalytic partnerships. The role will be highly entrepreneurial, spanning emerging market ventures with a focus on product, customer insights, and growth.

The ideal candidate has worked at a startup and has practical experience in one of the core focus areas of Platform support: business growth, product development, people, and/or operational management. You are a proactive and natural collaborator, able to connect with entrepreneurs, identify key bottlenecks, and implement the right-fit engagement.

See our Medium page for examples of the work we do: Customer Insights, Impact Management.

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Essential Responsibilities**

The Platform Associate will work directly with companies in our portfolio to help them scale by providing post-investment support services. You will collaborate with diverse teams across emerging markets, and your hands-on approach to solving recurring challenges will help companies build permanent capabilities to drive meaningful impact and scale. You will work directly with CEOs and the leadership team of early-stage startups, technical advisors, and partners from top global companies to solve the ventures’ toughest scaling challenges.

In this role, you will work directly with the Head of Platform, the MCV Platform team, external consultants, domain experts, the MCV investment team, and portfolio company founders & teams. This is a great role for anyone looking to work closely with early-stage startups, understand multiple emerging markets and sectors, and have exposure to the full investment lifecycle.

Specifically, you will:

Design, structure, and complete post-investment engagements around our core offerings. The Platform Associate will directly run engagements on:

• Product: running product sprints with portfolio companies to test & improve their product offerings
• Customer Insights: supporting companies in better understanding target users with a focus on vulnerable people and communities in emerging markets
• Strategy and Growth: supporting companies in designing and implementing their strategy and growth plans

Work with other Platform team members to manage, coordinate, and monitor Platform services including onboarding, engagements, and overall requests

• Onboard new portfolio companies
• Prepare relevant materials for engagements
• Manage external consultants (e.g. finance experts) to deliver Platform engagements
• Work closely with the Investment and Platform teams to design a post-investment support plan

Contribute to the development of offerings for MCV Platform

• Develop and test new post-investment support offerings, with a particular focus on product, growth, marketing, and customer insights
• Undertake iterative processes to gather feedback and build valuable MVPs of these offerings
• Bring together stakeholders (including consultants, MC field offices, advisors and MCV team members) to generate value to our portfolio
• Find the best service providers for the portfolio
• Onboard new consultants to the roster where needed to provide expertise

Test and integrate improvements to the MCV Venture Platform operating model:

• Propose strategies to increase efficiency in Venture Platform’s operating model (e.g what tasks can be automated, how to store and access key information, how do we scale while maintaining quality offerings)
• Build and manage tools that will improve Platform’s operations
• Continually iterate on internal processes to provide better quality support to companies in our portfolio, working closely with other MCV functions
• Track interactions and post-investment engagements, drawing out learnings on a regular basis.

Generate insights and curate knowledge from Platform’s work with companies

• Carry out regular reviews of insights from Platform, consolidating and organizing resources that could be useful for portfolio companies.
• Research and build relationships with peers at other venture capital firms to identify best practices to deliver value to portfolio
• Develop key writing pieces to share our learnings and key findings with public audiences of peers, funders, and donors
• Contribute with key information and results to donor reporting

Supervisory Responsibility

This role may include the direct and indirect management of external consultants.

Accountability

Reports Directly To: Head of Platform

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

**Minimum Qualifications & Skills

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• 3-5+ years experience in the Sub-Saharan Africa tech and startup ecosystems. Working at a startup or closely with a startup team (i.e. accelerators, incubators, service providers).
• Hands-on operational experience with a proven track record of independent work helping a company advance, ideally with particular expertise in product development, business growth, people, and/or operational management.
• We’re open to all types of educational backgrounds. We believe the strength of our team comes from having a diverse and inclusive workplace.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• English fluency required, French and/or Spanish is a plus

Success Factors
 
The ideal candidate will have a proven ability as an operator in a startup to problem solve, manage complexity, and execute projects on product, customer insights and user acquisition, and/or business growth. If the below resonates, we want to connect:

You are product-oriented. You can solve problems with a product lens, support founders in that journey and bring that mindset to our Platform model.

You are user-focused. You have a focus on user experience and an understanding of customer-centric approaches.

You think like a startup founder. Perhaps you’ve been a founder, or have worked closely with one. You run in a circle of startup founders and startups’ first employees. You are able to navigate complexity and lack of definition to develop clear, focused, ambitious plans of action, and transform them into results.

You have a strong network in the early-stage founder community. You’re somebody founders like and relate to.

You're bold. And by that we mean not just “We can do it” bold but also “We will figure it out” bold.

You’ve got a lot of quality hustle. Founders are our customers and our community - building it requires moving fast while still exercising great judgment & care.

You like being on a team. You care more about learning than about being right. And you say “we” far more frequently than “me”. You are a “low-ego” individual who works collaboratively in a small and agile team.

You feel comfortable working remotely. We are a fully global team with team members in Africa, North America, South America, and Europe. You are comfortable working on your own across a variety of time zones.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions
This is an Africa-based remote position, with a preference for a team member located in Kenya or Uganda. You must have work authorization in the country where you plan to be based for this role. This role may require up to 30% travel globally.
 
Ongoing Learning
In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development
 
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.
 
We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.
 
Equal Employment Opportunity
Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.
 
We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.
 
Safeguarding & Ethics
Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme**.** We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.

Keywords

Platform AssociateAfricaMercy CorpsMercy Corps Venturespost-investment supportproduct developmentbusiness growthpeople managementoperational management