Capital and Market Activation Lead

Techleap is building the Dutch Deeptech ecosystem for 2035, and you get to shape what that actually looks like. It's a rare brief: strategic ownership, creative freedom, and real cross-sector influence in a domain that matters.

One of the ingredients for success is capital, whether from investments, procurement, or market access, and this role is designed to work on investor relationships, market shaping, and demand activation. The aim is to help founders access the right type of capital as efficiently as possible. This requires building relationships, identifying key bottlenecks, designing scalable solutions, and exploring neglected or untapped opportunities.

You identify the bottlenecks nobody else has cracked yet, design the systems that fix them at scale, and go after the capital routes everyone else has overlooked. You set the direction. You deliver on the strategy.

What You’ll Be Doing

This role builds on and evolves Techleap's existing capital work, which has so far centered on investor relations and investor-facing events. That's been successful, but the ambition now is to be more proactive: not just bringing investors to founders, but unlocking entirely different types of capital and making founders more investable in the first place.

Concretely, that means working on market shaping and demand activation: advocating for tools like advanced market commitments and demand pooling to help founders get in front of customers, including public buyers. Procurement is a growing and underused lever here. When a government, region, or city becomes a customer, it puts revenue on a startup's cap table, which makes that company far more attractive to investors. You'll be the one building that muscle for the Dutch Deeptech ecosystem.

The focus is primarily the European market, but you should be comfortable looking at how these mechanisms are used elsewhere, particularly in the US, where market shaping and procurement as a lever are further along, and adapting what works to a European or Dutch context.

You will build and manage investor relationships, work on market shaping and demand activation, and explore capital routes that are currently neglected or untapped. You think in systems and portfolios of interventions, not single events, and you're comfortable operating without a fully defined brief.

Who you are

Our ideal candidate embodies most of the qualities listed below. If you don't meet every requirement but believe you're the right fit, we encourage you to make your case.

• 5+ years in a high-pace environment, preferably inside a Deeptech startup or VC/family office.
• Direct experience with the Deeptech capital stack, either from the investment or the startup side.
• Proven knowledge of the funding landscape, including alternatives or complements to VC.
• Strong analytical and structured systems thinking.
• Excellent communicator in English, written and verbal.
• Ability to think outside the box and challenge conventional thinking, comfortable looking at how capital and procurement mechanisms work outside Europe and translating that into a Dutch or European context.
• Stakeholder management across diverse organisations and seniority levels.
• Genuine subject-matter expertise on startup funding.
• Low-ego, service-oriented mindset.
• Able to design systems and portfolios of interventions, not just single events.

You know how investors think and how markets move, but what excites you is building something new, not managing an existing portfolio.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a top Deeptech VC fund.
• Existing network in European and US VC/investors.
• Experience with market shaping or activation and public or private procurement.
• Dutch language skills.

How You Work

• Connect: You build relationships across a diverse stakeholder landscape—investors, founders, corporates, and policymakers—and turn those connections into real capital access for founders.
• Make Impact: You translate strategic priorities into a structured action plan with clear milestones, and you're rigorous about evaluating what actually moves the needle.
• Growth Mindset: You stay close to developments in the funding landscape, understand what's changing in venture, procurement, and market activation, and aren't afraid to challenge conventional thinking.
• Truly Care: Founder success is your first priority. You're comfortable with ambiguity, design before you have a full brief, and act in service of the mission, not your own visibility.

Your Success in 6 Months

• Review of existing action and action plan in place with clear prioritisation by month 3.
• One flagship initiative live and generating measurable impact by month 6.
• Learning and evaluation rhythm established.
• At least one cross-vertical initiative contributed to.

What we offer

• 8% holiday allowance
• 15% pension allowance for you to allocate
• €100/month work from home allowance
• Travel allowance
• Unlimited holidays
• Hybrid working setup (2 to 3 days in office)