#VENTURE FOUNDER — TREE-BASED VENTURES
Three Venture Founders based in : 📍Soroti, Kabarole, Kibaale- Uganda
Duration: 6 Months (with potential for extension)
Reports to: In-House Venture Builder
Who are we?
Rootical Business Builder is a Startup Studio that powers purpose-driven entrepreneurs in Uganda to build their regenerative agri-food companies. Bringing together talent, capital and ideas — a Startup Studio is a structured endeavor around a repeatable process to build businesses.
We are frontrunners. We aim to regenerate and reinvent how food is produced and consumed in Uganda, with highly innovative thinking and breakthrough business building methods. With our participatory studio approach to regenerative business development, we are unique in East Africa.
As part of our In-House Venture Building efforts, we are looking for three Venture Founders who will build validated business prototypes into commercially viable, scalable and impactful businesses. As a Venture Founder, you will take responsibility for one venture and ultimately build it into a company capable of generating at least USD 1 million in annual revenue within seven years. Are you ready to join our mission to build food system shaking businesses?
This is not a programme- management role. It is a business- building role.
The Opportunity
Trees are more than carbon.
They anchor businesses in food, agroforestry, timber, biomass, ecosystem restoration, nurseries, fruits, nuts, spices, natural ingredients, animal feed, water systems, bio-inputs and other regenerative value chains.
You will be expected to put your hands on the business, win customers, build supply, hire people, manage cash, solve operational problems, raise appropriate capital and ultimately take full ownership of the company's performance.
→ Key Responsibilities
1. Build the business
Take an identified tree-based opportunity from prototype or running a real-life pilot into a commercially viable company.
Understand the customer problem deeply and develop a compelling value proposition.
Test assumptions rapidly through field experiments and real customer transactions.
Develop the business model, pricing, unit economics and go-to-market strategy.
Establish a clear path from early revenue to USD 1M+ annual revenue.
2. Take ownership of the venture
Become the entrepreneurial leader of the venture and progressively take over responsibilities from Rootical's venture-building team.
Own the company's talent, strategy, priorities, execution and results.
Build the management systems required for the business to operate without dependence on core studio functions.
Make difficult decisions quickly and take responsibility for their consequences.
Build a culture of accountability, learning and high performance.
3. Build the commercial engine
Identify and acquire anchor customers.
Develop repeatable sales channels.
Build strategic partnerships across the value chain.
Negotiate contracts and close significant commercial deals.
Develop distribution, procurement and market-access systems.
Continuously improve gross margins, customer retention and cash conversion.
You will be measured by revenue and profitability — not by the number of meetings, pilots or reports produced.
4. Build the team
Recruit and develop exceptional early employees.
Build a leadership team capable of scaling the company.
Establish clear roles, targets and accountability.
Develop future leaders who can operate the business beyond the Venture Founder.
Create an inclusive workplace aligned with Rootical's values.
5. Build the supply side
Depending on the venture, this may include:
Building networks of smallholder farmers and producers.
Establishing nurseries or production systems.
Designing farmer incentives and aggregation models.
Developing quality-control and traceability systems.
Building processing, logistics and distribution capabilities.
Creating long-term supply agreements.
Ensuring that growth does not undermine ecological integrity.
6. Protect the mission while scaling
Growth must not come at the expense of the system the company exists to regenerate.
You will therefore be responsible for ensuring that commercial growth is aligned with:
Soil and ecosystem health.
Farmer prosperity.
Fair value distribution.
Biodiversity and responsible land use.
Long-term resilience.
Rootical's purpose and steward-ownership principles.
Who you are
We are looking for builders, not applicants.
You are:
A Venture Builder who has already built and grown a company.
An entrepreneur who has taken a business from an early stage to meaningful scale.
A commercial leader with exceptional sales and business-development ability.
An agribusiness entrepreneur with deep knowledge of farmers and value chains.
A supply-chain or operations leader who knows how to turn fragmented supply into a scalable business.
A technically strong entrepreneur who has the commercial instinct to build a company around their expertise.
Experience in agriculture, forestry, agroforestry, food, natural products, climate, carbon, rural finance, supply chains or related sectors is highly valuable — but commercial ability matters more than sector credentials.
Speaking the local language dominant in the three locations like Atesot in Soroti, Rutooro in Kabarole and Runyoro in Kibaale is a key advantage.
→ Skills and Qualifications
Must-Have:
Venture Founder mindset
✅Previously founded or led and scaled a business with significant revenue.
✅Comfort operating with uncertainty.
✅Resilience when experiments fail.
✅Ability to make decisions without complete information.
✅Willingness to spend time in the field as well as in the boardroom.
Commercial excellence
✅Personally closed large commercial contracts.
✅Strong sales and negotiation skills.
✅Ability to identify a customer who will actually pay.
✅Ability to understand margins and unit economics.
✅Ability to build partnerships and close deals.
✅Obsession with revenue quality, not vanity metrics.
Nice-to-Have:
Operational ability
✅Ability to turn strategy into weekly execution.
✅Strong financial discipline.
✅Ability to build systems from scratch.
✅Ability to manage suppliers, processors, customers, employees and partners simultaneously.
Leadership Ability
✅Built a team from fewer than 5 people to 20+. Ability to attract, manage and retain talented people.
✅High personal accountability.
✅Strong communication skills.
✅Emotional maturity.
✅Willingness to give and receive difficult feedback.
✅Ability to build trust with farmers, employees, investors and partners.
Purpose
You genuinely believe that commercially successful businesses can help create healthier food systems, stronger rural economies and regenerative landscapes. You do not need to be an expert in agroforestry on day one. You do need to be willing to learn enough to become one.
What Rootical Provides
You will not build alone.
Rootical provides:
➜Initial venture capital and venture-building support.
➜Access to technical and sector experts.
➜Business-building tools and methodologies.
➜Access to experienced entrepreneurs and advisors.
➜Investor and financing networks.
➜Shared services and operational support where appropriate.
➜A community of other purpose-driven Venture Builders.
➜Support in developing the company while you progressively take over leadership.
Rootical's studio model is designed to move ventures toward autonomous operations, with Venture Founders eventually leading independent companies.
Ownership
This is an entrepreneurial opportunity, not a conventional employment position.
The successful candidate will become a Venture Founder and participate in the long-term value creation of the business, subject to Rootical's steward-ownership structure and the specific venture's founding agreement.
We are looking for people who want to build an asset they can steward for decades, rather than simply hold a job for a few years.
Application
Tell us:
What is the biggest business you have ever built?
What is the most revenue you have personally been responsible for generating?
Why would YOU be the person to build the tree based venture and why NOW?
Come build something that lasts.
