Entrepreneur in Residence

Join the MassChallenge UK team as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, helping Applied Artifical Intelligence startups to grow their impact

Your Mission

Startups need guidance; founders will look to accomplished individuals who have run their own startups and have overcome the challenges of making a venture a success. This function could also be filled by a successful business executive who understands how to set up operations and work with large partners. Your role as our Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) is to provide this guidance across a portfolio of startups in your domain of expertise. By acting as a coach and mentor for some of the most exceptional founders of startups in Europe, you will make a massive impact on their business.

The Position

This role is part-time on a contractor basis, from end of June to end of October 2026, and requires entrepreneurial experience. How the mentoring is delivered will be left to the EIR to work out, in some cases, it could be done at our office in East London, in regular office hours. It's realistic to expect to deliver most of mentoring by remote. This gives the EIR more flexibility to deliver mentoring to startups. Where possible (and practical) it is advantageous for the EIR to have meet our startups face-to-face, as the quality of the mentoring is undoubtedly increased with in-person meetings. It is left to the EIR's discretion to lead on how coaching is delivered and ensure meetings with all the required startups can be delivered in line with the programme requirements. The role complements the mentoring that startups gain from other Experts working with MassChallenge.

About MassChallenge UK

Since 2016, MassChallenge in Europe (Switzerland and the UK) has helped nearly 1,000 startups grow their businesses and raise more than £1.7Bn in funding. In 2026, we will run an expanded early-stage accelerator in the UK, supporting AI-enabled and deep-tech startups with the capacity to positively transform industry and society.

We work closely with major corporate partners — including BAE Systems, Bühler, Tate & Lyle and Whitworth Bros — along with investors and industry experts to support founders from prototype to commercialisation. Our equity-free, non-profit model allows us to accelerate high-impact startups with bold, disruptive ideas from non-traditional backgrounds.

Learn more at: masschallenge.org/programs-united-kingdom/

Key Responsibilities:

• Coach and mentor MassChallenge startup founders.
• Coach and mentor for a minimum of 15 days and maximum of 24 days. Approximately 120-160 hours across end June to September and if needed up to 25 hours across October.
• At the beginning of the programme (mid-late June 2026), we will require physical attendance. This to introduce yourself and create a personal connection with each founder.
• The delivery of the 120-160 hours should be evenly distributed across July, August and September. This is roughly 50 hours/month, delivered at a rate of roughly 12 hours/week.
• In October the consultant should phase out coaching, however support should not end abruptly. The maximum of 160 hours can be exceeded (by agreement), and a further 25 hours can be accessed to complete any coaching.
• Each coaching session should be broken down into 30minute or one-hour sessions.
• For an hour's coaching we expect 50 minutes of discussion with a startup and 10 minutes preparation and/or follow up. For 30 minutes coaching we expect 25 minutes of discussion with a startup and 5 minutes preparation and/or follow up.
• Submit a monthly time sheet with an invoice; detailing contact with each startup, and total number of sessions completed.
• The consultant is responsible for managing their time with the startups and booking appointments. Consulting hours will be managed via MassChallenge's own 'Accelerate' platform, onboarding will be provided to learn the system. We use Accelerate to track engagement with the cohort (EIR's, mentors, experts).
• The EIR should manage their calendar and time as efficiently as possible for themselves and is free to reschedule calls with startups to ensure they have an efficient schedule (i.e. back-to-back calls) The consultant should share with startups when they are available one week in advance.
• Provide deep and nuanced advice to startup founders to help them progress.
• Connect startup founders to relevant people in your network.
• Track the startup founders progress over the acceleration.
• Potentially lecture the startups on topics relevant to them and fitting with the Curriculum.
• Collaborate as needed with the EIR position once this has been filled.
• Submit ideas for continuous improvement of the early-stage accelerator programme. We always want to improve for our Startups. This could be curriculum ideas, recommending others as coaches, or helping to attract Corporate Sponsors.

Your Profile

• Founder or Co-founder of at least one startup who has completed a successful exit.
• Experience raising investment (to Series B and above).
• Experience building successful go-to-market strategies.
• Experience building high performing teams.
• A strong sense of wanting to 'give back' to the startup community.
• Outstanding communication and mentoring skills.
• Excellent network skills and an ecosystem builder.
• Highly organised, and comfortable working autonomously.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a team to deliver programmes and events.

To Apply:

If you are interested in applying for this role, fill out the application form linked here:

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, so please apply ASAP to avoid missing out. For any questions or technical issues, please contact our team at uk@masschallenge.org.