G-Works is General Mills’ corporate venture studio, launching and incubating new businesses that deliver remarkable value to our consumers.
The G-Works Co-founders are corporate entrepreneurs who bring passion, grit, agility and innovation to General Mills as they work in 3 person startup teams to discover new business opportunities. They develop deep empathy for consumers through research, learn through experimentation, and ultimately leverage the scale of General Mills to accelerate growth for their business.
As the G-Works program grows, we are looking for strategic, passionate, entrepreneurial leaders to join as Co-founders in January 2024. These Co-founders will identify, create, validate, and operationalize new businesses that solve critical consumer problems in the food space. Their specific focus area will be around convenience.
The ideal Co-founder is:
- Obsessed with solving consumer problems, and with deeply understanding consumer behaviors, motivations, and needs
- Tenacious, resourceful, determined; overcomes obstacles and operates with urgency
- A strong team player who collaborates well with others – has a “we before me” mindset and builds trust through candid, respectful, productive discourse.
- An avid learner who is insatiably curious and follows the evidence to uncover the truth.
- Agile, adaptable, and resilient in rebounding from setbacks.
- Highly resourceful, finding creative solutions as challenges arise
- Values progress over perfection
- Willing to roll up their sleeves, learn new skills, and wear multiple hats as an entrepreneur
- Comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty
- Able to synthesize feedback from various stakeholders and determine a path forward
As a G-Works Co-founder, you will:
- Build a high-functioning, high-performing team, motivated by a common purpose and mobilized to achieve ambitious objectives.
- Leverage agile experimentation to learn fast, at increasingly larger scale
- Build and validate a compelling business model, continuously refining and tightening key assumptions
- Define and sell the vision of the business, generating excitement and gaining buy-in from stakeholders including internal investors and, when the time comes, retailers/key customers.
- Hold total accountability for operationalizing all aspects of the business
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor’s Degree Required
- 5+ years professional experience with 2+ years experience in a startup
- A track record of end-to-end execution, preferably culminating in the launch or commercialization of one or more successful products/businesses
- Experience and passion for working directly with consumers/customers and running experiments which validate or invalidate critical assumptions
- Excellent communication and influence skills
- Strong main-point communication, organizational, creative, and time management skills
- Strong project management skills, including a track record of success leading cross-functional teams to execute complex initiatives
- Passion for team-building, and for mobilizing teams toward ambitious goals
- Proficient in software packages (Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint)
- Ability to use empathy, trust, and partnerships to impact day-to-day behaviors of business teams
- Self-starter with a strong bias for action, as well as skills for problem-solving and troubleshooting
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience raising capital for a startup
- CPG Experience, ideally in Food
- Start up founder experience
- Some experience working in large corporate environments
Salary Range
The salary range for this position is $104700.00 – $174600.00 / Annually. At General Mills we strive for each employee’s pay at any point in their career to reflect their experiences performance and skills for their current role. The salary range for this role represents the numerous factors considered in the hiring decisions including, but not limited to, educations, skills, work experience, certifications, etc. As such, pay for the successful candidate(s) could fall anywhere within the stated range. Beyond base salary, General Mills offers a competitive Total Rewards package focusing on your overall well-being. We are proud to offer a foundation of health benefits, retirement and financial wellbeing, time off programs, wellbeing support and perks. Benefits may vary by role, country, region, union status, and other employment status factors. You may also be eligible to participate in an annual incentive program. An incentive award, if any, depends on various factors, including, individual and organizational performance.