Not interested in taking a platform role just for the sake of making a buck? Perhaps you are looking for a position that will have a broader more meaningful impact than just hitting quarterly revenue targets or enriching VCs.
Three active searches now underway highlight the opportunity to join a mission-driven platform.
One such mission-driven role is Head of Platform at Ocean Bottle in London. This company’s ambition is to build “the world’s first impact platform and app for ocean health, where owners of our products can join a community passionate about saving the ocean and constantly be rewarded for using their Ocean Bottle in place of single-use plastic at partner refill locations.”
Ocean Bottle sells a high-end water bottle and uses part of the proceeds to fund collectors. The company currently partners with Plastic Bank which has established collection points in Haiti, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Egypt, along with payment mechanisms to incentivize and compensate collectors. The goal is to millions of kgs of plastic waste from entering the ocean, while providing payments to some of the very poorest of the poor.
Here’s a short video on how it works:
The Head of Platform role aims to broaden the company’s platform strategy. Specifically, the role requires a person who can:
Create and own the experience of users on the platform with the core goal of driving engagement and impact and to scale it globally
Manage external agencies to deliver outputs and build a team to support your requirements
Work directly with global impact partners and manage their impact programmes
Maximise output of the platform to drive impact and reach the company goal of funding collection equivalent to 7 billion plastic bottles by 2025
Ocean Bottle is looking for someone who has spent at least six years as a Senior Product Manager and has a deep understanding of UX design and driving user engagement. The company would also like someone who has hands on experience building a successful native app, strong commercial experience working with large scale partnerships and B2B negotiations on behalf of a platform and understands what motivates potential partners to join such a platform as well as experience with retail & consumer space and preferably open banking and/or hardware/IOT.
Another mission-driven platform company looking for talent is Bold. The company aims “to help older adults live their strongest, happiest, and healthiest lives.” Bold members gain access to an at-home, digital workout platform personalized to their interests and needs. The company has built a network of expert trainers and a library of virtual fitness programs designed to improve strength, flexibility, and balance – so its users avoid debilitating falls, manage chronic conditions, and increase activity levels. Bold partners with health plans and providers to improve member outcomes and reduce care costs.
To grow its revenue streams the company is seeking a Customer Partnerships & Deployment Leader. This person will be responsible for building Bold’s partnerships with health plan payers and providers, and (II) developing an operational playbook for partner implementations. The company hopes to find candidates with experience working in health care and software services who are also committed to Bold’s mission of improving health outcomes for the rapidly aging population. Specifically, the role requires:
Leading successful partnerships between Bold and key partners (Medicare Advantage organizations and provider groups)
Building the Customer Partnership & Deployment team, strategy and operations
Collaborating closely with internal teams, including Product, Clinical, Member Engagement, Data Science, Legal and Sales to drive value for our partners
Cultivating strong relationships with points of contact in the account, including but not limited to, decision makers, contract signers, administrators Identifying opportunities to expand into new service lines and locations
Driving new contract negotiations, leveraging internal legal and business partners as appropriate (working closing with Bold’s CEO & President)
The third mission-driven role is with the World Economic Forum in Geneva. The organization is looking for candidates for a one-year contract to serve as Project Lead, Circular Cars Initiative. The role sits between WEF’s Centre for Global Industries and the Centre for Global Public Goods.
The Centre for Global Industries builds and sustains industry communities through an integrated concept of high-level meetings, research networks, task forces and digital collaboration, and drives sectoral world-leading initiatives to advance industry transformation. The Centre for Global Public Goods acts as a system leader and platform curator for the environment and natural resource security, food security, development finance and sustainable development activities at the Forum.
According to the job posting, the two centers are combing forces to build “a ‘Mission Possible’ platform to deliver Industry sector initiatives that help facilitate the transition of hard-to-abate sectors towards net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The project leader will support the efforts of the Mobility, Materials and Manufacturing Industries teams in the context of elevating the “Circular cars Initiative” to the next level as part of the Mission Possible Platform.
The role has the following responsibilities:
Lead partner engagement on this topic, creating an inclusive narrative
Strengthen community management and proactively create opportunities for engagement of leaders in this space across the Forum’s global activities
Project management to ensure there is a solid community management system for engaging the private sector
Events planning and logistics
Manage the online community on the Forum’s platform and ensure active engagement of partners in the online community space and face-to-face meetings.
Align the community on actions vis-a-vis public institutions and build appropriate report and media strategy.
Over the past several years, WEF has arranged several workstreams around platforms. Although the job description does not explicitly call for platform expertise, such capability would fit this role. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a viable Circular Cars Initiative without a strong platform component as part of the solution.
If you know of other mission-driven platform roles, drop them in the comments. It would be great to hear what else may be available.
For a comprehensive analysis of platform professional roles and leadership see: