Director Startup Success (F/M/D)

You’re looking for a new challenge and more than just a job? Do you want to help shape the future with us? 

As Director of Startup Success (F/M/D), you lead our Startup Success division and act as the trusted strategic partner and primary point of contact for all operational, strategic, and people-related topics.

• Strategy: You drive the strategic development of our Startup Success division, with a focus on Startup Support, Community, and Research Transfer.
• Venture Development: You support our startups throughout their entire growth journey, from program onboarding and fundraising to business development, scaling, and follow-on financing. Finding our next unicorn is more than a vision — it's your mission.
• Mission Delivery: With your visionary mindset and forward-looking approach, you empower our startups to succeed. Together with your team and our international network, you play a key role in ensuring their long-term, sustainable success.
• Leadership: You lead and develop a multidisciplinary team, establish high-performing structures, and foster a culture of ownership, psychological safety, and continuous learning.
• Sustainable Ecosystem Support: Through strategic guidance, you enable our startups to launch successfully in Heilbronn, establish a strong market presence, secure funding, and achieve sustainable growth within the region and beyond.
• Ecosystem Building: You strengthen and expand our innovation ecosystem by cultivating strong relationships with founders, investors, corporates, and strategic partners, while representing the Startup Success division internally and externally.
• Performance Management: You define meaningful KPIs, steer the division through data-driven decision-making, and continuously evolve our programs and services to maximize impact.

• Industry Experience: You have several years of experience in venture building, the startup ecosystem, or accelerator, incubator, or innovation environments, and a proven track record of working successfully with high-growth startups.
• Expertise: In addition to strong technical and business expertise, you bring deep hands-on experience gained through building a startup from the ground up or playing a key role in the growth of a rapidly scaling startup.
• Strategic Mindset: You think strategically and entrepreneurially, understand the challenges founders face, and develop pragmatic solutions that create lasting impact.
• Leadership: You have successfully led and developed high-performing teams, coached talent, and built strong, scalable organizations.
• Network & Relationship Building: You bring an established network across the startup, investor, research, and innovation ecosystem and excel at building and maintaining long-term strategic partnerships.
• Communication: You work in a structured, data-driven, and self-directed manner, communicate with confidence, and are fluent in both German and English, with excellent negotiation and stakeholder management skills.

A broad and diverse range of responsibilities with a highly varied set of tasks:

• You play a key role in the success of the next generation of thriving startups.
• You help us develop a first-class network of organizations and individuals in the startup world.
• You are part of a passionate, energetic, diverse, and international team in an exciting and fun environment.
• You actively contribute to shaping our curious, open-minded, productive, and startup-friendly community.
• You enjoy long-term personal development opportunities and a competitive compensation package.

Together with you, we aim to further develop Campus Founders gGmbH.

We look forward to your application! Join our Campus Founders community and help us make Heilbronn a gravitational hub for entrepreneurship.