About Kiuas

What do companies like Gubbe, Rentle or Woamy have in common? Before they became some of the hottest startups in Finland, they started out with an idea. All of them then took part in Finland's #1 startup accelerator program where we helped them with building a company from the ground up.

Kiuas Accelerator is a 10-week program for a batch of 20 startups that we run twice a year. It provides early-stage entrepreneurs the knowledge from “How do we find our first customers?” all the way to “Who would invest in our startup?” During the programs, we host workshops and coaching by some of Finland's most successful entrepreneurs and investors. Over the years Kiuas has worked with over 300 startups, organized 30+ programs and our alumni companies have raised over 300M€ in funding.

Besides Kiuas Accelerator we are known for our co-founder matching platform Kiuas Co-Founder. You can read more about Kiuas from our website www.kiuas.com

Why do we need you?

Every year, we receive a large number of applications for Kiuas Accelerator. As we can only select a handful of the teams for each batch, we are left with a pool of motivated founders who still need practical assistance and a dose of Kiuas ambition to launch their companies.

To address this, we are creating a new Kiuas initiative, offering round-the-year idea validation support to any teams that have the motivation and ambition to build a startup. One way to directly measure the success of this initiative is in the number of viable startups that take off as a result of it.

In your role as Head of Startups, you take ownership of the following:

• Working hands-on with the founders and teams that apply. Your job is to go over their plans, find weak spots and help them to come up with steps to validate their idea. Based on your insights from working with the teams, you get to shape the design and structure of the initiative.

• As you will become our in-house expert on the struggles of early-stage startups, we hope to have your insights available to the program teams too during the Accelerator program. This means carving out time during programs to help the chosen participant teams.

What you can expect from your new job:

No two days are the same at Kiuas, but your days as a Head of Startups might look something like this:

Day 1:

You start your day by meeting with a new early-stage team. You’ve prepared for the meeting by analyzing their business plan and identifying weaknesses in their roadmap. You ask a lot of questions, go over your findings, and create an action plan for the next steps with the team. After the meeting, you document your learnings and figure out how we could incorporate these lessons into helping others. In the afternoon you support our own team in designing our Accelerator program based on your learnings.

Day 2:

You are planning an event to bring together teams that are in the same stage of validating their ideas. On your to-do list is to figure out which speakers and themes would be most relevant for the audience. You reach out to potential speakers and chat with them about your ideas. You then use the afternoon brainstorming with our Head of Marketing on how to spread the word about the event.

About you

This is a rare opportunity for anyone passionate about learning the ins and outs of early-stage startup building, what sets the successful founders apart, and how to scale that recipe to a large pool of companies. We don’t expect you to fully master these things when you join but rather are looking for someone who is eager to learn and grow into the role.

All backgrounds are welcome to apply for this role. Here are some things that we believe will help in this role:

• You have solid experience in working with startups. You might have been a founder in the past or have work experience in the ecosystem

• You are passionate about entrepreneurship and have the drive to help others

• You are an analytical person with a desire to learn new things

• You take initiative and are comfortable working in a fast-paced, unstructured environment

• Your communication skills in English (both written and verbal) are excellent

• You take ownership and are ambitious to develop new concepts forward

What to expect when joining the team:

• We pay every full-time Kiuas team member the same salary of 3000€ per month.

• Your personal network will grow exponentially. In this position, you are in constant contact with ambitious and mission-driven founders, prominent business angels, and venture capitalists. Be prepared to get inspired 😊

• We are probably biased, but you get to become a part of a great team. We are a small team of 5 with a strong team spirit.

• You will become an expert on how to take a startup idea from 0 to 1. You get to observe and learn how great founders build companies and then turn those learnings into action with dozens and dozens of early-stage founders.

• We work flexibly both remotely and from Startup Sauna in Otaniemi. We are happy with the hybrid model and it is important that all team members have a chance to do team days at the office as well.

About the recruitment process

1. Submit your application

2. A 30-minute call with CEO Nea ◦ The purpose of this call is to get to know each other in a relaxed setting. We’ll share the story of Kiuas and tell you more about the job.

3. Assignment & 45 minutes to go through your output ◦ We’ll give you an assignment to better understand how you make decisions and prioritize and analyze tasks. We’ll schedule a 45-minute meeting with our Head of Community Mari and CEO Nea to go over your input.

4. 60-minute team interview ◦ Last but not least, time for you to meet the team! A 60-minute interview with the core team. This last stage is meant to assess your fit to our team and practices.

Please note that we will start going through applications as they come in. As we are looking to fill this position quickly, we will make a decision as soon as possible when we find the right person.

We look forward to hearing from you!