Founders Associate (f/m/d) @ Northbound

Permanent employee, Full-time · Berlin

The Role

This is a position in Northbound, a venture incubated by MVP Factory.

We're Northbound, on a mission to revolutionize supply chain operations with AI, making the movement of goods smoother and more efficient. Backed by solid pre-seed funding, we're growing fast and need a sharp, motivated Founder's Associate to join us. Our founders bring senior-level experience from Amazon, Here Technologies, Zalando, and Wayfair.

About Northbound

Northbound is revolutionizing supply chain logistics with a B2B SaaS platform that uses real-time data and AI to improve inbound cargo shipments for trade and manufacturing companies. We enable businesses to better manage their supply chains, leading to significant cost savings, more accurate deliveries, and reduced demurrage and detention fees.

Our platform doesn't just offer visibility; it combines milestone data with customer-specific contexts to create optimal operational plans through AI. This approach elevates logistics decision-making, addressing the industry's challenges with manual processes, high costs, and customer dissatisfaction due to delays.

Starting with a prototype early 2023, we’ve now partnered with our first paying customers, proving the value of our AI and automation solutions. At Northbound, we're dedicated to making supply chains more efficient and reliable. The potential to impact global logistics is huge, and we're just getting started.

As the Founder's Associate You'll be right at the heart of the action, working alongside our CEO, Andreas, who’s not just led large operations teams in Amazon fulfillment centers but has also sailed the seas with a captain’s license.

You are someone with the drive to make a big impact in a startup. If you're keen on diving deep into strategy, customer engagement, lead generation, and product development, and maybe eyeing to launch your own startup one day, you’re looking at the right opportunity.

This position is open immediately, and we’re looking to welcome our newest team member as soon as possible.

Your Tasks:

Strategize with the CEO on our market approach and customer engagement and execute go-to-market efforts.
Lead key projects across business development and product innovation.
Develop and maintain strong relationships with our early customers.
Gather and leverage customer feedback to inform and improve our product roadmap.
Get involved in lead generation and supporting direct sales efforts.
Contribute to shaping the company’s long-term strategic vision, collaborating closely with the leadership team to identify new opportunities for growth and innovation across all aspects of the business.
Assist with operational tasks and provide flexible support across the company, tackling a variety of tasks and urgent projects as needed, adapting quickly to evolving priorities.
Prepare for our upcoming seed round fundraising in mid-2025 and maintain investor relations.

What You Get:

A modern, vibrant workspace in Berlin Kreuzberg, shared with MVP Factory (a digital ventures company), offering a rich, innovative environment.
The chance to closely work with founders and significantly impact the company's direction and growth.
You will take ownership and responsibility for your tasks, learning valuable skills along the way.
Autonomy and flexibility in your role, paired with the expectation of a driven, results-oriented mindset.
A blend of in-office and remote work, with the flexibility to fit your ideal work setup.
A new laptop of your choice, and a VESOP package—tailor your compensation between more equity or a higher base salary.

Your profile

1+ years of experience in a fast-paced tech or B2B startup environment (or similar, e.g. consulting, finance, agency).
Ideally, some past exposure to supply chain or logistics.
Strong academic background in business, economics, digital innovation, finance, or similar.
Independent, with a strong sense of ownership and a proactive approach.
Natural ability to communicate through various levels and strong stakeholder management skills.
An entrepreneurial spirit, curious and analytical mindset, driven by results. You love to ask questions and you are genuinely interested in learning about the challenges of our customers. You push your limits, make smart choices, learn fast, ask a lot, and think quickly on your feet.
Fluent in German and very good in English, which is crucial for communicating and gaining trust with our customers effectively.

Our Hiring Journey:

Joining Northbound means becoming part of a team that’s shaping the future of supply chain operations. We value transparency and want you to know what to expect when you apply:

First Get-to-Know Call: This initial screen is a casual chat to understand your motivations and to share more about Northbound’s mission and the role.

Behavioral Interview with Andreas: Dive deep into your past experiences with our commercial founder. We’re keen to hear about your achievements, how you’ve tackled challenges, and how you work.

Meet Rahul, our technical founder: Get to know Rahul, understanding the technical vision of Northbound and how your role collaborates with the technical part of the company.

Case Study or Task + Debrief with Andreas: Show us your skills through a practical task relevant to your role and real challenges we face, followed by a discussion with Andreas to walk through your thought process and solutions.

At every step, we strive for clarity and respect for your time and effort. We’re excited about the possibility of having you on board!

Think you’re the right fit? We can’t wait to hear from you. Apply now and let’s transform global supply chain operations together.

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About us

MVP Factory leverages expertise from business entrepreneurship, design, engineering and data science to help organizations execute their digital transformation. We reinvent digital consulting by focusing on products, not slides and on pragmatic doing instead of just talking.

We design, build and scale digital products and ventures.

Digital consulting – reinvented.

Since 2017 we enable organisations to execute their digital transformation by using agile methodology at startup speed. Therefore, we are combining our expertise from entrepreneurship, design, consulting and engineering. With our proven approach, the MVP Factory has worked on over 300+ projects with global enterprises and early-stage entrepreneurs, including DB Schenker, Bertelsmann, Jobrad, Henkel Group, Signal Iduna or Bundeswehr Cyber Innovation Hub.

Many digital innovation initiatives get stuck at the conceptual level or end up with poor technical implementation. Our Minimal Viable Product ("MVP") empowers organisations - from startups to midsize companies and enterprises - to build better software, and bring successful products to market. We start challenging ideas before we build them. We not only have good ideas, we also implement them successfully.

Headquartered in Berlin, MVP Factory was founded by our tech entrepreneur Philipp Petrescu and consists of over 60 Venture Architects, Designers, Product Managers, Tech Leads and Growth Marketing Experts. Since mid-2023, MVP Factory has been part of Ness Digital Engineering (Ness) - a full-service provider of digital consulting services and software development.

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Join our team!

We appreciate your interest in becoming a part of the MVP Factory and are looking forward to get to know you through this application. Please show us below how you are planning to fill the role and what you'd need to grow above and beyond.

While we are curious about your professional qualifications, we also want to sneak behind the CV and get a glimpse at the person. We are growing a team that sticks up for each other and our projects, ensure a high quality through attention to detail and outstanding professionalism in our client work and aim for constant improvement and innovation through internally and externally. Show us how you'd make us stronger - we are excited to meet you!

We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. The more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. Your gender and gender identity, your neurodiversity and or other (dis)abilities, your gods, your sex life, your family constellation, your skin color or your bigshot uncle don’t make a difference here. Or no, they do - they are part of who you are and we welcome you and hear you in all your depth and with all perspectives. MVP Factory is a progressive and open-minded equal opportunity employer. You’re smart and good at what you do, come as you are.