Founding Country Head, Germany - Life Sciences Equity Crowdfunding

Country Head, Germany

Capital Cell · Based in Germany · Reports to the Chief Executive

Capital Cell is Europe's largest equity crowdfunding platform for life sciences. We have funded biotech, medtech and diagnostics companies in Spain and France by persuading private investors to put real money into science. Germany is next, and we are appointing one person to open it.

What this job actually is. For the first twelve months you are a one-person business unit. There is no team to inherit, no pipeline to manage, no one to delegate to, and no brand recognition to trade on. Your days are spent approaching German biotech and medtech founders who have never heard of us, convincing them that raising from a crowd of private investors is a serious instrument rather than a curiosity, and at the same time convincing private investors and business angels to back companies they would not otherwise have seen. You will do this in German, cold, and you will hear no a great many times before you hear yes.

If you assess investments for a living, read this carefully. We work alongside German funds and business angels and expect to co-invest with many of them, and nothing here is a comment on that profession. But this role sits on the other side of that conversation. The day is spent originating and persuading rather than evaluating, and the people who have made our other markets work came from commercial and ecosystem-building backgrounds rather than from investment committees. If your instinct on reading this advertisement is to begin with diligence questions about our model, this is probably not the role you are looking for.

The target. Six completed raises on the platform in your first twelve months.

The package. Your base salary is deliberately modest. The majority of your earnings come from completed raises, and at target you earn considerably more than the base. If nothing closes, you do not. This is an entrepreneurial appointment and the structure reflects it. If that reads to you as a risk rather than as the reason to take the job, we will not agree on it later either.

You will do well here if:

• You have personally originated and closed early-stage financings in German life sciences
• You know German biotech and medtech founders, and the people who write private cheques into them, by name rather than by reputation
• You have built something commercial from nothing before, and can describe what the first ninety days actually looked like
• You are German, or have lived and worked in Germany long enough to be indistinguishable from someone who is
• You would rather own a number than manage a function

Please do not apply if:

• You are currently a founder or chief executive elsewhere. We have spoken to many. This role needs someone whose whole week belongs to it.
• Your background is clinical, scientific, medical affairs or R&D. Deep sector knowledge is not the constraint here. Selling is.
• Your commercial record is in health IT, digital health, medtech sales or another adjacent sector rather than in life sciences financing. We have met excellent operators in this category and it does not transfer inside the time we have.
• You have recently moved into angel investing or are working through an investor programme. That is the right direction at the wrong moment. Come back to us when you have closed rounds.
• Your German is professional rather than native or near-native. English is the language of our office. German is the language of the conversations that matter, and founders switch back into it the moment the discussion turns serious.
• You need a substantial guaranteed salary. The structure is negotiable in detail, not in principle.
• You want to build and lead a team. Later, if Germany works. Not for a considerable time.

To apply, send your CV and a covering letter. Use the letter to tell us how you would open the German market in your first ninety days, and what in your own record shows you can do it.