You build first versions
Most of what you make will not have existed before. We build to think: prototypes before papers, validation before polish, and getting it wrong on the way to right is the job, not a deviation from it.
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Venture Lead (m/f/d)
Cologne, GermanyFull-time
The role
The independent automotive aftermarket runs on data. But that data sits in silos, locked inside each company. The value of connecting it is obvious to everyone. What’s missing is the infrastructure that makes sharing it safe. Kyvera exists to build it. Infrastructure, however, proves its worth only in use: use case by use case, with real partners, real data, and real outcomes. That is your job.
As Venture Lead, you own Kyvera’s use cases end-to-end, from hypothesis to validated, scalable business with committed partner traction. You identify the most promising opportunities in the Kyvera data space, lead discovery with shareholders and partners, and drive each use case through rapid validation, delivery, and the decision to stop, pivot, or scale.
This is a founding role, and a hands-on one. You will not produce concepts, business cases, or workshop outputs and hand them over. You turn partner problems into concrete use cases, define what success measurably means, mobilise the people who must commit, drive delivery together with engineering, AI, and governance, and put evidence, not opinion, on the table when decisions are due.
You will help set the execution rhythm for Kyvera: small increments, fast learning, clear evidence, and practical progress with committed partners.
What you’ll do
- Lead discovery with shareholders and partners: define the problem, the value hypothesis, target users, data needs, constraints, and measurable partner outcomes.
- Validate fast and cheaply before anything is built: partner interviews, pilot designs, workflow tests with real users, and commercial validation. Translate what you learn into clear decisions on where to focus, what to drop, and what to pursue next.
- Own each use case’s path to reality: what the first version must prove, which partners commit what by when, how success is measured, and the gates at which you decide to stop, pivot, or scale. Engineering owns how it gets built; you own that it is worth building and that partners show up.
- Co-create the models that make participation worthwhile and fair: contribution incentives, membership structures, marketplace mechanisms, and value distribution that participants accept as legitimate.
- Drive cross-functional execution with engineering, AI, and governance. Remove blockers daily; keep the team on the shortest path to learning.
- Prepare decision-ready evidence for stop, pivot, or scale gates, and communicate progress with clarity, including when the evidence says stop.
- Turn what works into reusable patterns, templates, and routines, so every use case after the first moves faster than the one before.
Who you are
- You are strong in both finding and finishing: you can test a business hypothesis with real partners, decide from evidence, and then drive it to a running pilot with signatures, data, and dates attached.
- You translate fluently between partners, shareholders, engineers, AI specialists, and governance and legal minds, without losing momentum in any of those rooms.
- You have strong business judgement: value pools, incentives, adoption barriers, ecosystem dynamics, and what makes a business model scale or stall.
- You take ownership and decide. You prioritise hard, create clarity where there is none, and communicate trade-offs with confidence.
- You move fast without cutting the corners that matter: trust, fairness, and integrity are product features here, never an afterthought.
- You work in German and English at negotiation level.
What this role offers
A founding seat in an institution the industry has talked about for years and never built. You shape the first use cases and business models of new market infrastructure from day one, not by writing strategy papers, but by turning partner problems into validated, running ventures. What you prove here becomes the pattern for how the aftermarket creates value from shared data.
You work as part of a small founding team, report directly to the Managing Director, and operate with founder-level ownership, backed by TecAlliance’s three decades of automotive data expertise, trusted neutrality, and industry relationships.
Who thrives here:
You own outcomes, not output
Success here is measured value in the market, nothing softer. Decisions sit with the people doing the work, and work that cannot prove its value is stopped, which is what protects the work that can.
You work with the market
Manufacturers, distributors, workshops: the people the work is for are in the room, and the unit of persuasion is a demonstration on their own data. Whether they use what you build is the review.
You keep commitment speed
Momentum beats hesitation: short decision cycles, direct paths, done beating perfect while we learn. The pace you saw in the hiring process is the pace of the place.