Founding Marketplace Lead Position

Founding Marketplace Lead

Location: Dubai, UAE

Employment Type: Full-time

Reports to: Founders

Build the operating system for a trusted kids-activity marketplace.

This is a hands-on zero-to-one role. You will turn a product vision into a functioning marketplace: secure the right supply, shape the commercial model, make bookings reliable, and prove that families return.

About the Opportunity

We are building a trusted family platform that helps parents preserve childhood memories, coordinate their care circle, and discover meaningful experiences for their children. The marketplace is the transaction layer within the same app, beginning with curated kids' activities in Dubai.

The first pilot is intentionally focused: a concentrated group of reliable Dubai providers, real bookings, real payments, and a complete discover-to-attend-to-rebook loop.

The Mandate

Supply

• Build and activate a high-quality provider network.

Commercial

• Design sustainable provider economics and customer value.

Operations

• Make every booking, attendance, and payout dependable.

What Success Looks Like in the First 180 Days

0–30 Days

• Map priority categories and neighbourhoods.
• Complete 20+ provider interviews.
• Recommend commercial model V1.
• Build provider pipeline and onboarding checklist.

31–90 Days

• Activate 10–15 anchor providers.
• Launch 50–100 verified weekly sessions.
• Establish inventory, cancellation, support, and reconciliation SOPs.

91–180 Days

• Scale toward 20–30 activated providers and 100–200 paying families.
• Maintain 95%+ fulfilment.
• Demonstrate repeat booking and improving contribution margin.

What You Will Own

1. Marketplace Strategy and Economics

• Translate the pilot vision into a practical Dubai marketplace plan, category strategy, and operating cadence.
• Develop provider commercial frameworks: negotiated net rates, take rate, promotions, cancellation economics, and payout terms.
• Maintain marketplace health across supply quality, useful availability, conversion, fulfilment, repeat use, and contribution margin.

2. Provider Acquisition and Activation

• Build a prioritised provider pipeline across play, sports, creative learning, camps, at-home experiences, and other relevant categories.
• Lead outreach, discovery, negotiation, contracting, content collection, session setup, and launch readiness.
• Secure useful capacity—not merely provider logos—in selected Dubai neighbourhood clusters.

3. Service Delivery and Control Tower

• Define and run the operating playbook from booking through check-in, completion, cancellation, refund, no-show, and dispute.
• Work with the product and technology team to define the internal control tower and minimum provider integrations.
• Own operational accuracy across inventory, customer support, provider payables, reconciliation, and service recovery.

4. Team and Cross-Functional Leadership

• Initially operate hands-on, then recruit and manage partnerships or operations support as volume grows.
• Work closely with the product, operations governance, and technology teams on product, go-to-market, operational controls, and delivery.
• Run a weekly marketplace review with clear metrics, blockers, decisions, and accountable next actions.

Core Scorecard

Supply

• Activated providers.
• Live sessions.
• Useful weekly capacity.

Customer

• First bookings.
• Booking conversion.
• 30-day repeat bookings.

Quality

• Fulfilment.
• Cancellations.
• Support cases.
• Disputes.

Economics

• Net revenue.
• Provider payout.
• Variable cost.
• Contribution margin.

Candidate Profile

Experience

• Typically 7–12 years in marketplace launch, supply, partnerships, local services, fitness, hospitality, experiences, or consumer operations.
• Evidence of launching or scaling a two-sided marketplace in the UAE or a comparable market.
• Commercial negotiation experience with fragmented local businesses or multi-location operators.
• Strong operational understanding of bookings, capacity, customer support, payments, and reconciliation.

Operating Style

• Zero-to-one builder who is comfortable visiting providers, fixing broken bookings, and writing the playbook.
• Commercially sharp, highly organised, and credible with founders, operators, and venue owners.
• Uses data to make decisions but does not wait for perfect systems before acting.
• High ownership, low ego, and calm judgement when customers or providers need recovery.

Especially Relevant Backgrounds

Experience with marketplace businesses, local services, hospitality experiences, family or leisure marketplaces, camps, academies, attractions, booking platforms, or other high-frequency local service businesses is particularly relevant.

Examples of relevant companies include ClassPass, Privilee, Careem, Urban Company, and Fresha.

This Role Is Not

• A strategy-only or presentation-led role.
• A conventional corporate partnerships position with a large support team.
• A pure sales role measured only by signed venues.
• A role for someone who needs finished systems before taking ownership.

What We Offer

Founding Impact

• Direct access to the founders and genuine authority to shape the business model and operating system.

Compensation

• Competitive startup salary with meaningful ESOP eligibility for the right high-impact candidate.

Growth

• Opportunity to grow into marketplace GM or broader operating leadership as the business proves scale.

How to Apply

Please share your CV or LinkedIn profile together with a short note describing:

• One marketplace, category, or city you helped launch or scale.
• The hardest operational problem you solved.
• What you would prioritise in your first 30 days building a marketplace in Dubai.