Product Manager - Academic Venture Monitor

What you'll be doing

The Academic Venture Monitor (AVM) is a live platform tracking 1,400+ academic spin-offs across 25+ Universities, University Medical Centers and Research institutes. Dutch knowledge institutions, and is the data backbone of the national ambition to quadruple the impact of Dutch academic spin-offs by 2035. It's funded by EZK (the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy), with a EUR 30 million a year national scheme on its way that will lean directly on AVM's data.

In 2026, we published a report benchmarking the strengths and weaknesses of the Dutch academic spin-off ecosystem against other countries, and used it to set concrete targets and initiatives to 4x Dutch spin-off output. AVM is not a one-off report, though: it's an ongoing programme, already in active use by universities, UMCs, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate and Dealroom.

You will become the dedicated owner of AVM's product side: partner relationships, roadmap, the public dashboard, adoption and stakeholder questions. You'll work alongside a dedicated Data & Technical Lead who owns the data infrastructure, so you can fully own the product, the partners and adoption.

North star: a permanent, open European spin-off register that outlasts any single report or person.

Responsibilities

At the core of this role is stakeholder management: you coordinate a wide network of external partners, from universities and their tech transfer offices to research institutes, incubators, venture builders and data providers like Dealroom, and you keep them engaged over time. You grow and manage these relationships, owning NDAs, agreements and access, and running the recurring data collection and enhancement process end to end.

You seek to understand what stakeholders need, both in insights and in daily workflows, to drive the roadmap and user adoption. You handle inbound partner requests and host regional report and product discussion sessions.

You take end-to-end ownership of AVM as a product: setting the roadmap for the online monitor, user dashboards, classifications, Deal Terms Monitor and access management, and co-owning the national data model with the technical lead. You own AVG/GDPR governance for the product and drive it toward a single Spin-off ID, including publishing the Open AVM Guide.

You design, implement and evaluate the analysis roadmap that feeds national policy agendas around academic spin-offs and the local ambition and action plans from university ecosystems, measuring impact against the 4x ambition on volume, quality and speed, and benchmarking the Netherlands against frontrunner ecosystems like ETH, KU Leuven and Oxford.

You explain the AVM concept and model to universities, incubators, founders, investors and government, communicate insights through reports, dashboards and deep dives, and own the AVM communications plan, including co-marketing of reports inside and outside Techleap.

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.

• End-to-end product ownership of a data product, platform, dashboard or register

• Experience building something 0-to-1

• Experience managing stakeholders across institutions/organisations

• Experience driving adoption of a tool or dataset

• Working knowledge of data governance and privacy (AVG/GDPR) in a multi-party context

• You can translate between partners and a technical data team

• Comfortable with AI tools (e.g. Claude Code) and basic technical skills, with strong analytical skills: setting KPIs, interpreting data and turning it into decisions

• Strong roadmap prioritisation and delivery experience in a small team

• Strong written and spoken communicator, credible with senior stakeholders

• Fluent in English, with a strong preference for Dutch

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with the Dutch deep tech or academic spin-off ecosystem

• Exposure to research commercialisation, tech transfer or KTOs

• Experience with BigQuery or a modern data stack at a product level

How you work

• Connect: You build relationships across a diverse stakeholder landscape (universities, UMCs, TTOs, government bodies and data partners like Dealroom and RVO) and turn those connections into real adoption of AVM. You communicate what the product does and why it matters, clearly and credibly, to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Make Impact: You translate the AVM roadmap into concrete deliverables with clear milestones (a live dashboard, signed data partnerships, a working data collection cadence) and you are rigorous about evaluating what actually drives adoption.

• Growth Mindset: You stay close to how universities, TTOs and policymakers actually work, understand the friction points in getting institutions to share and maintain data, and aren't afraid to adjust the model, templates or process when something isn't landing.

• Truly Care: Reliable, high-quality spin-off data (and the founders and ecosystem it serves) is your first priority. You're comfortable owning a still-forming product, and you act in service of the mission and the technical lead you work alongside, not your own visibility.

Your Success in 6 Months

• The public dashboard and register are live on techleap.nl.

• A prioritised roadmap for AVM (dashboard, classifications, Deal Terms Monitor, access management) is in place by month 3.

• A recurring quarterly data collection process, including the Dealroom update loop, is up and running.

• A first cohort of new data partnerships is signed with supplying institutions and/or data partners.

• AVM runs independently of any single person's availability: the key-person dependency on the current data lead is resolved.

What we offer

• A salary between €5,500 - €6,000 gross per month (full-time)

• 8% holiday allowance

• 15% pension allowance for you to allocate

• Laptop provided by Techleap (Mac or Windows)

• €100/month work from home allowance

• Travel allowance

• Unlimited holidays

• Hybrid working setup (2-3 days in office)

• Full-time contract (40h/week)

As part of our mission, we build safe communities that foster diverse, inclusive and equitable collaboration - and that includes our employees. We're taking on exciting challenges for founders and Dutch society, and we only succeed with a team that represents an inclusive and diverse set of identities and backgrounds.