Portfolio Impact Manager

• Are you curious, excited by experimentation and always looking for a better way of doing things?  
• Do you want to keep learning and developing whilst getting hands-on, entrepreneurial, business building experience?
• Do you want to have the opportunity to launch, build and grow a successful business?

If so, we would love to hear from you!

We are looking to hire high-energy, entrepreneurial and value-adding talent to join Blenheim Chalcot, a leading global venture builder to either lead the incubation and growth of a new venture or engage with a portfolio business to provide critical strategic and operating capabilities. 

 

A bit about Blenheim Chalcot and our portfolio: 

At Blenheim Chalcot, we use our ideas, infrastructure and people to create an innovation system that transforms disruptive ideas into innovative businesses. We originate the ideas ourselves, grow them from the ground up and take them through to scaling and ultimately exit. 

We typically build enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) products, powered by Generative AI and target industries which are exposed to market, regulatory or technology discontinuities. We have built businesses across the following sectors: 

• Financial Services 

• Education 

• Media and Marketing 

• Public Services and Health 

• Sports 

Our track record has seen us build more than 60 businesses over the last 25+ years. The portfolio has annual revenues of £500m, employs more than 3,000 people, has raised £600m in equity, and secured exists totalling over £1bn. 

Blenheim Chalcot has three global locations. Portfolio companies are headquartered from Scale Space, London, our 200,000ft2 collaboration space which was built as a joint venture with Imperial College London. Our Mumbai offices provide unparalleled scaling capability and technical expertise, and our U.S. operation powers the go-to-market activities of the portfolio across North America. 

 

Impact beyond profit: 

10% of our partnerships and ventures are charities. These are the British Asian Trust, Babyzone and Onside Youth Zones. In the same way that we support our ventures, our Partners provide direct hands-on support to the charities through sitting on the boards and much more. 

 

Our Behaviours:

• Honesty and integrity – trustworthy 
• Resilience - keeps going when the going gets tough, remains optimistic in the face of challenges, open to feedback and willingness to change and experiment 
• Team work – is collaborative and supportive, elevating and developing others to deliver results
• Innovation - restless to improve, challenges how to make things better
• Deliver results - keeps promises, drives to achieve, commitment to high quality work
• People awareness – collaborative and supportive, respectful
• Commercial awareness - looks for best value solutions for the business, understand costs / revenues, spends money wisely 

 

The Role:

Key responsibilities:

The Portfolio Impact Manager (PIM) is a vital role at Blenheim Chalcot  and could either lead the incubation and growth of a new venture or engage with a portfolio business to provide critical strategic and operating capabilities where it is needed most. The successful PIM will play a major role in leading and shaping a venture’s development and either: 

• Drive and execute the plan and strategy for a new venture taking it from problem statement to Investment Business Case; and/or 
• Undertake engagements within a portfolio business across growth strategy, sales and marketing strategy, operations, product marketing etc. 

Specific duties:

Depending on the project, you will need to be comfortable doing the following:

• Be able to transition between ventures with the ability to ramp up quickly on market, company, team and/or function build and own the business case. 
• Be point for all elements of incubating the venture.
• Drive business impact/change ‘from start to finish’: initial scoping, strategy formulation, analysis, action plan, execution.
• Own and deliver the program of work: put a structure around it, break it down into discrete pieces with clearly defined outputs.
• Work in a highly entrepreneurial environment, focusing on execution and ensuring plans come to fruition.
• Consistently build strong relationships with stakeholders centrally and in the portfolio companies.
• Develop and contracting relationships with other businesses; and
• Lead and manage teams. 

Opportunity:

This role is an excellent platform for experienced professionals to take their career to the next level and an opportunity unlikely to be found anywhere else.  You will have the opportunity to work in a variety of sectors and at different stages of the venture lifecycle. 

We pride ourselves on having an intentional and continuous learning culture at Blenheim Chalcot. As such, your ability to impact venture success will be amplified by access to shared learnings from leaders across the portfolio as well as the centrally located BC team.  As a part of this role, you will also have the opportunity to take part in our PIM cross-portfolio leadership development programme,  which aims to develop future senior leaders (with previous great success!) and allow you to grow your entrepreneurial toolkit. 

The experience and exposure that the role offers could mean a permanent C-Suite/GM level leadership role in an existing venture or, to potentially starting and running an entirely new venture within the group. Former PIMs have gone on to have accelerated career paths within Blenheim Chalcot with the role being the launchpad for at least two of our venture CEOs and three senior BC management members. 

 

About you:

The ideal candidate will have a track-record in delivering results in a fast-moving business and hence be comfortable with change and uncertainty. Excellent stakeholder management experience is essential to being successful in this role. 

The Ideal Candidate

• Feel comfortable and able to be flexible in a dynamic environment where there is a high velocity of change that comes with the territory of early-stage ventures 
• Highly motivated and ‘entrepreneurial’ with a strong sense of ownership 
• A strategic approach to solving problems from strategy consulting or strategic operating experience within a business would be valuable but the key requirement is to be execution focused 
• Be passionate about adding value to high-growth start-up businesses
• Have a good overview and understand of the many functional elements of a growing business
• Be quick to assess complex situations and identify potential solutions
• Have experience of building business plans underpinned by financial models
• Have the communication and people skills to be able to work with CEOs, senior management and other stakeholders to formulate strategic plans and mobilise/manage teams to execute on a plan
• Excellent stakeholder management.
• Be able to operate at a range of levels – both in terms of big picture strategic thinking, thought leadership and getting into the data and analysis
• 10 years + experience, bachelor’s degree or equivalent life experience
• Dynamic, insightful and influential with the ability to operate at strategic and operational levels 

 

What we can offer you:

• Be exposed to the right mix of challenges and learning and development opportunities, including secondments and the opportunity to move around BC or/and its ventures 
• A fun and open, if a little cricket obsessed, atmosphere 
• Discretionary bonus 
• 25 days of paid holidays
• Life Assurance – 4 x annual salary. Pension Scheme, Cycle to Work Scheme
• Flexible Benefits: Private Medical and Dental, Gym Subsidiaries 

 

Process:

We have a rigorous recruitment process, which we use for all our roles to ensure we attract the very best talent.

 

Blenheim Chalcot is a proud Equal Opportunity Employer. Diversity is one of our core values, thus making it core to our business. We strive to maximise the diversity of our workforce and welcome applications from everyone. We encourage diversity through perspective, background, identity, and thought whilst also fostering an environment where everyone can express themselves regardless of your race, religion, sex, gender, colour, national origin, disability, or any other applicable legally protected characteristic. We are committed to continuing to nurture an inclusive environment and building a diverse workforce.