#Hiring a Senior Venture Builder
→ Location: SHONA Office & Remote, Canon Road 1666, Ntinda, Kampala.
→ Reports to: Managing Director
Who are we?
Rootical is a venture studio that powers purpose-driven entrepreneurs in Uganda to build and own their regenerative agri-food companies.
We bring together ideas, resources, and talent to build businesses that are designed to accelerate the transition to a more inclusive and regenerative food system.
In addition to providing access to capital, we are an active co-founder and offer hands-on, long-term venture building support, services and connections for founders to build commercially viable, scalable, and impactful agri-food businesses.
💪🏾 About the Role
Are you passionate about creating a more inclusive and regenerative food system through entrepreneurship? Do you have a desire to transform farmers' livelihoods and promote healthy food for all, by building several businesses simultaneously?
Rootical is looking for a seasoned entrepreneur that has gone through the trenches of building one or more ventures successfully. You will work with our partners and team to design, build, and launch transformative agri-food businesses from within Rootical itself.
→ Key Responsibilities
Owning the full venture-building lifecycle from opportunity discovery and concept development to testing, iteration, and validation of emerging business models.
Leading and continuously improving Rootical’s systemic venture-building process, ensuring it is deeply grounded in Uganda’s context and realities.
Developing internal tools, frameworks, and resources that strengthen our venture creation engine and support Rootical’s internal venture teams.
If you have followed Rootical closely, you know that we have been running two cohorts with potential founders since 2023. As a result we are currently developing a pipeline of more than a dozen agroecological enterprises with external founders.
With this additional Senior Venture Builder position, we want to strengthen our in-house venture building capacity: to identify, validate, and develop new business models all the way to POC/PMF before launching them officially and attracting operators co-founders to lead the next stages of commercial development.
⇒ Originating & Building In-House Ventures
When no founder exists yet but the opportunity is high-potential, the Venture Builder begins and leads the build anyway.
Scouting systemic gaps in the food system to generate a venture thesis internally.
Creating Internal Venture Briefs: opportunity, model hypothesis, early validation plan.
Prototyping, customer validation, testing early feasibility, and stakeholder alignment — just like a pre-founder MVP cycle.
Running venture design sprints and piloting to reach (a clear pathway to) product-market fit and until external co-founders and operators are onboarded.
Business diagnostics- You will be expected to support the development of tools necessary for business diagnostics to identify, predict and manage business needs.
We are a small entrepreneurial team that steps up when there is work to be done. At times, you'll be expected to work outside of just your role to contribute to our team's overall efforts.
🚀 Year 1 Success Looks Like
In-House Ventures
2 internally generated venture tracks, with early validation and MVP complete.
Studio Playbook
Rootical’s venture building framework model updated and implemented
Studio Discipline
Weekly venture dashboards live (online), with real data, not theory
Portfolio Logic
Uganda Venture Thesis Map drafted, showing 3–5 systemic opportunity spaces
🔎 Who are we looking for?
You may have:
1. Built one or more companies successfully from scratch OR played a senior execution role in early-stage startups.
Demonstrates an entrepreneurial mindset, grit and determination.
Like to do, build, experiment and get a bit itchy when there's too much talk.
Demonstrates resourcefulness in finding creative solutions to problems.
Is very methodological, analytical and structured in their approach.
Natural founder energy, fast, structured, not afraid to push.
2. Strong ability to go from idea → customer → model → pipeline quickly.
3. Hunger to join a startup engine rather than another short-term, light-touch business development facilitation program.
4. Comfort engaging with farmers, informal value chains and investors in the same week.
5. Clear previous alignment, curiosity about regenerative food systems, and/or willingness to go deep and align fully with the purpose of Rootical. Determined about improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and promoting access to healthy food for Ugandan consumers.
6. Has gone through the highs and lows of building a business as a co-founder of preferably 1 or more successful businesses, preferably in agriculture or food.
→ Venture Builder Acumen
Ability to understand how a business is built, operates and becomes profitable.
Ability to proactively anticipate, navigate and leverage trends impacting a business.
Ability to manage and facilitate the venture building process.
Experienced in building a business from scratch, you are a solid sparring partner for founders and able to provide hands-on advice.
You love to work in and make strategic decisions in a fast-paced and dynamic start-up environment from discovery to conception, and from launch to achieving product-market fit.
You are able to quickly diagnose entrepreneurs’ needs, understand the key drivers in their business and the key challenges they face.
You are comfortable in leading the early stages of the venture building process (the first 12-18 months) ideally, with a human-centred design or lean startup approach:
Problem validation and discovery
Ideation and prototyping
Developing a minimum viable product
Onboarding first paying users/customers
Developing a business model (canvas), pitch and business plan
Early start-up team definition
Launching the business formally and setting up operations
Defining a clear pathway towards break-even
→ Strategic do-er
The ability to think and execute, generating and applying unique business insights to create a competitive advantage, towards achieving a set of strategic goals.
Ability to see the bigger picture and break any challenge down into smaller steps and execute on them.
Creative problem solving.
You have developed and managed a project from scratch. Experience with programme planning, resource and stakeholder management.
→ Building relationships
Ability to quickly build rapport and engagement with people.
Comfortable and confident to engage with people of all calibre, from CEO’s to young professionals. You are an extrovert people person and love work with, coaching and getting to know people. You are outstanding at the following traits:
Empathetic, active listener, curious and inquisitive
Negotiation, influencing and conflict resolution skills
Good oral and written communication
The must haves for this role include:
Strong drive to take on a vital role in a venture studio
Passionate about solving problems within the Ugandan food system
Physically available for in-person interactions in Uganda
Is convinced that agroecology and regenerative agriculture are the best way forward for our food system.
Open to exploring different finance and ownership models to avoid mission drift
Passionate about solving problems within the Ugandan food system
Physically available for in-person interactions in Uganda
Is convinced that agroecology and regenerative agriculture are the best way forward for our food system.
Open to exploring different finance and ownership models to avoid mission drift
🙌🏾 What do we offer?
We are looking for a seasoned venture builder that is ready to play in the premier league of building several ventures simultaneously: highly strategic and gets things done, with a wealth of expertise, networks and experience to call upon. We offer:
The chance to play a central role in the development of a unique venture studio.
Joining an ecosystem of pioneers, working on the forefront of regenerative food systems and venture building.
A competitive salary
Premium health insurance for yourself and 2 dependants
Other benefits (e.g., lunch, airtime)
Hybrid work
Start date: asap; ideally in January 2026
☎️ How to apply?
This is a a unique opportunity at the heart of Rootical’s operations and purpose.
We will publish this in our online networks, reach out to promising profiles directly and via curated referrals.
First read the above job description carefully. We are looking to have conversations with a small number of people that are highly qualified. If you are not a seasoned entrepreneur or not sure you would be well placed to take several venture opportunities from 0 to 1 simultaneously, for instance, please refrain from sending in your application.
Thoroughly review Rootical’s website and communication on LinkedIn.
If you are convinced you are a high-potential candidate for this opportunity, please reach out to talent@rootical.org and share your CV, motivation letter and Linkedin profile.
Ruth, Talent Manager at Rootical, will follow-up with a few screening questions and we proceed from there by getting on a call as quickly as possible.
Please reach out asap, we are engaging in selected conversations on a rolling basis, and no later than January 9th, 2026.
If you are selected for the following rounds, you might expect to have a phone interview with our team, complete a job-specific challenge (which we will explain at that time) and have a final in-person interview with the Rootical Team.
We want to encourage women to apply. If you need more context or have any questions before applying, please contact us at talent@rootical.org to schedule a call.
