Chief of Staff

Role summary

The Chief of Staff is accountable for the operating system of Betagro Ventures: the process by which venture theses become companies, and the group functions on which every one of those companies depends.

The role carries four accountabilities — oversight of the venture building portfolio, incubation of new ventures, ownership of group Finance, IT and Marketing, and support to the Office of the Managing Director. It is an execution role with direct ownership, not an advisory or executive-support position.

About Betagro Ventures

Betagro Ventures is the corporate venturing arm of Betagro Group, one of Thailand's leading integrated food companies. We establish and scale ventures that accelerate access to better quality, more sustainable and fairly-priced food, operating through three models:

Venture Capital - A USD 30M fund investing in early-stage foodtech and agritech globally. Direct positions include Plantible, Meatable, Infinite Roots and BiomEdit; fund positions include FoodLabs, Vertex, Bits x Bites and Clay Capital.

Venture Building - A systematic, stage-gated studio building ventures from inception. Own ventures include Meatly, Foodium, blüüm, Talad and FarmTech, each led by a Founder in Residence.

Partnerships - Access to the Betagro Group ecosystem: 57+ years of domain expertise, 100+ PhDs across four innovation centres, operations in five countries, exports to 30+ markets and 250+ physical distribution points.

Mandate

The venture building portfolio has outgrown the way it is currently supported, and this role is created to resolve that.

Each venture we launch requires the same foundation — a chart of accounts, a runway model, a systems stack, a brand and a hiring plan — and each currently builds that foundation independently, at the precise stage when its founder should be focused on customers. The Chief of Staff converts this repeated effort into a shared platform, and in parallel raises the quality and speed of the studio's decision-making.

The role therefore requires three capabilities in one person: a venture operator who has built inside an early-stage company, a platform builder who can institutionalise process and infrastructure, and a disciplined administrator of the group functions that hold the portfolio together.

Accountabilities

1. Venture building portfolio oversight (35%)

Own the integrity and cadence of the stage-gate process, and maintain a single authoritative view of portfolio performance.

• Run the stage-gate process end to end, from ideation through validation, build, launch and spin-out, including gate criteria and the evidence standard required at each gate.
• Operate the portfolio rhythm: weekly founder check-ins, monthly venture reviews, quarterly gate and Investment Committee sessions.
• Maintain the portfolio source of truth — performance against plan, runway, capital deployed against committed, hiring status and principal risks — at a standard the Managing Director and Group can rely on without further verification.
• Identify underperformance early and present evidence-based continue, pivot or discontinue recommendations rather than status reporting.
• Serve as the interface between Founders in Residence and Betagro Group, securing the domain expertise, production capability and distribution access that constitute our competitive advantage.

2. New venture incubation (25%)

Take new venture theses from origination through to Investment Committee approval and operational launch.

• Source and test new venture theses against our three core strategies: improving access to high-quality food, creating new sources of protein, and optimising agro-industrial supply chains.
• Lead validation work and own the resulting analysis — market sizing, unit economics, competitive positioning, and technology and regulatory diligence.
• Author the Investment Committee memorandum, build the supporting financial model, and defend both at gate.
• Establish new ventures operationally: entity incorporation, BOI and licensing where applicable, banking, statutory setup, core systems and initial hires.
• Act as interim General Manager or interim CFO for pre-seed ventures until permanent leadership is appointed, with a structured handover on exit.

3. Group functions — Finance, IT and Marketing (30%)

Own the shared infrastructure of the group, to a standard consistent with a listed-company environment.

Finance

• Consolidated management reporting across the fund, the own-venture portfolio and the studio entity.
• Annual budget and rolling forecast, with venture-level cash and runway management.
• Capital deployment mechanics, portfolio valuation and periodic marks on own ventures.
• Statutory and group compliance in coordination with Betagro Group Finance, including TFRS consolidation, related-party and transfer pricing documentation, VAT and withholding tax, and statutory audit.

IT

• Define and operate the shared technology stack across ventures — accounting and ERP, CRM, data warehouse, identity and access management, and collaboration tooling — such that a new venture inherits a functioning environment at inception.
• Establish and maintain the baseline for information security, access control and PDPA compliance across the portfolio.
• Own build-versus-buy decisions on internal tooling, including the studio's own venture management software.

Marketing

• Steward the Betagro Ventures master brand and the brand architecture governing venture sub-brands, including the determination of when a venture should carry Betagro endorsement.
• Own top-of-funnel positioning: founder-facing narrative, website, LinkedIn, ecosystem events and deal-flow communications.
• Provide shared marketing capability and agency management to ventures without assuming ownership of venture-level go-to-market.

4. Office of the Managing Director (10%)

Ensure that governance forums are well prepared and that decisions taken are executed.

• Prepare Board, Investment Committee and Betagro Group Executive Committee materials.
• Operate the Investment Committee secretariat: agenda, pre-reads, minutes, decision log and follow-through to closure.
• Represent the Managing Director where a decision-maker is required and the Managing Director is unavailable.
• Apply judgement on prioritisation, including the discontinuation of activity that does not warrant resourcing.

Qualifications

Essential

1. 8–12 years of total experience, including a minimum of **three years in an operating role within an early-stage company** (pre-Series B). A foundation in management consulting, investment banking, private equity, venture capital or corporate strategy is valued; advisory experience alone is not sufficient.
2. 2.Substantive financial capability. The candidate must be able to construct a three-statement model and a capitalisation table without a template, and be fluent in SAFEs and convertible instruments, liquidation preferences, option pools and dilution mechanics.
3. Accountability for a P&L or budget of meaningful scale, with responsibility for the outcome.
4. Professional fluency in Thai and English. Thai is required for group finance, regulatory matters and in-market venture execution; English for the international portfolio and co-investor base.
5. Systems literacy. Production coding is not required. The candidate must be able to specify tooling, run a vendor selection, interpret a data schema, and assess the credibility of an engineering roadmap.
6. Structured reasoning under ambiguity. The ability to take an undefined problem, frame the question, assemble the evidence and return a defensible recommendation.
7. Operating range. The role moves between an Investment Committee memorandum, an operational process failure and a brand review within the same day, and treats each as core to the mandate.

Preferred

• Exposure to foodtech, agritech, FMCG, agriculture or the wider food value chain.
• Experience within or adjacent to a listed-company group, including governance, consolidation and related-party discipline.
• Venture studio, venture builder or corporate venture capital experience, particularly with a formal stage-gate methodology.
• Founder or co-founder experience. An unsuccessful venture is regarded favourably where the candidate can articulate the causes.
• CPA, CFA or MBA qualifications are welcome but are neither required nor a substitute for the above.

Working style

• High standards on outcomes, limited concern for formal scope.
• A disposition toward written documentation; institutional memory is treated as a deliverable of this role.
• Willingness to disagree with the Managing Director in private and to commit in public.
• Directness with founders, including where the assessment is unfavourable.