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Dutch Founders Fund
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Chief of Staff

Minimum

Minimum

People & HR, Operations
London, UK
Posted on Friday, December 22, 2023
About Minimum
We're a London-based Seed-stage startup building the world’s most robust carbon emissions data platform, providing decision-grade greenhouse gas emissions data for enterprise-level corporates to achieve their disclosure and decarbonisation goals. We're backed by Y Combinator, NEA, Lakestar, Octopus Ventures, and others. We have a flagship commercial partnership with Nasdaq, and other unannounced partnerships.
About the Role
We’re looking for a Chief of Staff to work closely with our Co-founder and CEO. This role will be widely varied, challenging, and involve getting stuck into a large volume of interesting problems & hard work. For a candidate with a solid grounding in management consulting, this is a crash-course in early-stage startups in a truly high impact role in which you’ll have high levels of responsibility and ownership from day one. You’ll also have very high levels of exposure to the Founders and leadership team as we go through one of the most pivotal and difficult stages of our journey.
There are two primary components to this role: (1) take on special projects that are the most pressing needs for the business, (2) work very closely with the CEO across the business. The first of the special projects you’ll work in is a deep dive into the Commercial division of the organisation with a project to boost the running of that part of the business. It’s a multi-faceted and engaging challenge, with goals spanning increased revenue, increased customer satisfaction, stronger links between link sales and customer success, improved feedback loops between customer and product. You will have significant levels of responsibility and ownership within Commercial as we grow the maturity of the function, while retaining complete access and close contact with the CEO.
No specific startup or commercial experience is required; we’re just looking for someone with great potential and an enormous appetite to dive deep into the thorniest challenges faced by an early-stage startup alongside experienced colleagues.
Who you’ll be working with
You’ll be working most closely with the Co-founder & CEO, Chris Winchurch (www.linkedin.com/in/chris-winchurch). Chris is one of Minimum’s three founders and has worked in a variety of roles across Commercial, Product & Engineering, and Investor Relations including fundraising. Chris started his career at The Boston Consulting Group in London (2016-19) before pursuing an MBA at Harvard Business School. Chris dropped out of Harvard after the first year once Minimum was accepted into Y Combinator in the Summer of 2020. Chris has a Masters’ Degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Imperial College London.
You’ll also be collaborating with Leadership across all parts of the company, and with the entire Minimum team.
Example responsibilities
1. Special Projects
1.1 As mentioned above, a huge part of this role is a “Special Projects” responsibility. You’ll be internally ‘seconded’ into a particular role to bring significant, direct, and targeted impact to a specific area of the business. The first of these projects is related to our Commercial function (see above for more details).
2. Chief of Staff
2.1 Right-hand person and ‘extension’ of the CEO. You are to become one of the most empowered people in the organisation to effect general change and have impact on all aspects of the business, across Product, Operations, and Commercial.
2.2 Company building and operations. You’ll learn the ropes of building and growing an early-stage startup, from assisting in strategy-setting, through to running the OKR cycle and other ’company rhythm’ events such as weekly / monthly / quarterly team meetings, and even influencing how company culture is communicated and managed.
2.3 Everything else. You’ll also be involved in the firehose the wildly varying set of activities that pop up in our context, to give some examples: involvement in strategic finance (e.g. modelling out headcount growth); organising Management Training, generally being a ‘barrel’ and relentlessly pushing the business to work (see How to Operate (Keith Rabois)); or compiling financial updates for investors.
Development & Progression Opportunities
- This role will provide a huge opportunity for professional and personal growth.
- You’ll be fully immersed in the operations of the startup, and provided with a strong support structure to help you find your feet as a startup operator.
- You will have exposure across many aspects of the business, with particularly deep exposure to the Commercial part of the company.
- You’ll be primed to move into a specialised senior leadership role as the company grows, to remain in the Chief of Staff / generalist role indefinitely, or to use this role as a launchpad into the startup ecosystem or launch your own venture.
About you
You are someone who:
- Gives a damn about things they choose to do.
- Is able to navigate uncertainty with composure & determination.
- Can simplify complexity without losing sight of nuance (in other words, can engage both the ‘left brain’ and ‘right brain’ as needed).
- Can become highly aware of context, even when understanding decisions that were made or events happened before you joined.
- Has very strong written and verbal communication.
For this role we’re seeking candidates who have:
- 3-6+ years experience in a top-tier management consultancy.
Any of the following would also be beneficial, but by absolutely no means necessary:
- Experience in early-stage startups, ventures, or other entrepreneurial endeavours.
- A background in technology (e.g. experience in Software Engineering, a Computer Science or related degree) and / or experience with data (e.g. SQL, Alteryx, R, Python / Pandas, etc).
- Experience in Sustainability (e.g. understanding / knowledge of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and other GHG / Sustainability / Reporting standards).
- Experience with client-facing data transformation projects.
Location & Travel
This role is primarily in-person at Minimum’s HQ on Bermondsey Street. While we do offer a level of flexibility around hybrid-working in general, and remote working for specific periods, we believe that there’s no substitute for regular, extended in-person collaboration — particularly in an early-stage startup. The leadership team works in-person almost every day and so this role should generally reflect this preference (however, we can take individual circumstances into account if necessary).
Benefits & Compensation
Competitive salary, equity, and benefits package.