Systemic Venture Development Lead

About

Decide which startups a system needs, then make them exist. You translate systemic analysis into specific intervention startups: some scouted through our network, some designed from scratch on our platform, all coordinated on one systemic-change mission.

20 h/week, fully remote contract, $90K FTE benchmark.

The role

You sit between our think-tank and our venture engine, and you own the question every contract depends on: which specific intervention startups does this system change require? You read the Meta-Institut's outputs natively system maps, causal loop diagrams, socio-technical analyses, system models and convert them into concrete ventures on paper. You formulate scouting briefs to the Network Department for external intervention startups and internally, by ideating and designing startups from scratch on our venture-building platform with the community and ideation lab. You decide and design what gets built, hand internal ventures to our Venture Architects, and coordinate the whole startup portfolio within the systemic-change mission.

What you'll do

• Read the system: work fluently with system maps, causal loop diagrams, MLP and socio-technical analyses from the research unit, and translate them into the specific intervention startups a mission pillar requires
• Formulate scouting briefs for the interventions to be found externally — and work with the Network Department to scout candidate startups, test their systemic fit, and onboard them
• Ideate and design internal ventures from scratch on our venture-building platform, using the community and ideation lab: thesis, business logic, startup-on-paper, riskiest testable assumptions, speak with customers and experts
• Decide and design what gets built: own the go/no-go and the design quality of internal startups up to the handoff point
• Hand off to the Venture Architects: internal ventures transfer with a complete startup-on-paper package
• Coordinate the startup portfolio on the systemic-change mission: direct and indirect ventures tracked against the contract's intervention architecture and its stage-gate milestones

What success looks like

A repeatable translation from system analysis to intervention-startup definitions; intervention startups specified (scouted and designed from scratch); portfolio coordination for funder contracts

What you bring

1. System → venture translation: you can read system maps/causal loops/socio-technical analyses/transition frameworks and identify the specific ventures required to shift the system.
2. Venture design (“startup-on-paper”): you can take an intervention thesis and produce a structured venture spec: problem, users, value prop, business logic, operating model, and intended systemic contribution.
3. Systems-change literacy: fluent in core methods (multi-level perspective, leverage points, theory of change, transition design, causal-loop mapping).
4. Advanced human-development domain depth: strong grounding in the “higher end” of human development (self-actualization, capability development, human-potential tech across education/wellbeing/mental health/self-development/human-centered AI).
5. Problem decomposition & mechanism choice: you can translate mission goals into precise requirements and decide what should be solved via startups vs policy/standards/infrastructure/other mechanisms.
6. Discovery, validation & commercial judgment: you can map riskiest assumptions, run interviews/tests, and judge real-world viability (customer, market, revenue model, adoption path, standalone “reason to exist”).
7. Systemic fit + execution coordination + communication: you can assess whether ventures hit the right leverage point, write effective scouting briefs, coordinate scouting/ideation/handoffs across teams, and clearly communicate linkage to system analysis, contract logic, intervention architecture, and outcome, while staying pragmatic between research and entrepreneurship and aligned to mission.