Head of Demand Validation, New Bets

Bolt; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Hybrid work model

Job summary

Bolt is hiring for its New Bets team to explore new B2B ideas and prove them with real buyers. You will own the end-to-end commercial motion—from target list to closing pilots—driving fast decisions on whether a new product line should exist. You’ll work with product and engineering to turn insights into a scalable business.

In this role you’ll set targets, build the pipeline, and negotiate with enterprise buyers across the EU, UK and US, with hybrid office collaboration and equity upside.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in business development, partnerships or enterprise sales, sourcing and closing deals.
• Experience founding a B2B startup and running the commercial side.
• Experience IT or SaaS and speaking the language of buyers, product and engineering.
• Ability to build a complete commercial motion: pipeline, pitch, tooling.
• Excellent English communication with international exposure and willingness to travel across the EU, UK and US.

Responsibilities

• Own demand validation for one B2B bet at a time — your own target list, pipeline, pitch and materials.
• Run discovery with real decision-makers and produce an evidenced verdict: who buys, who doesn't and why, at what price, and what unlocks a yes.
• Land the first customers of a new business line — a signed paid pilot or design partner, not a letter of intent.
• Turn rejection reasons and segmentation into product decisions, alongside the bet owners, product and engineering.
• Bring back the buyer economics — pricing, budget owners, willingness to pay — that a business case can be built on.
• Be the person other New Bets come to when they need a door opened or a negotiation run.

Skills

Business development

Enterprise sales

Negotiation

Strategic thinking

English communication

Job description

About Bolt

Bolt is shaping a future where cities are built for people, not cars. What started as an ambitious project of a 19-year-old in 2013 has grown into a global mobility platform used by more than 200 million customers and 4.5 million driver and courier partners across 50 countries.

From ride-hailing and food delivery to scooters, e-bikes, and car-sharing, Bolt helps people move through cities every day. Small, autonomous teams drive this work, combining the speed and ownership of a startup with the scale of a global technology company backed by more than €1bn in funding.

That appetite hasn't stopped at mobility. We run an internal incubator — New Bets — to find and build the businesses Bolt hasn't started yet. So we're just getting started.

Why join Bolt?

• Shape how hundreds of millions of people move through cities, across 50 countries.
• Work at global scale: what proves out here rolls out across markets, not one city.
• Take real ownership early. Small, lean teams mean your decisions matter from day one.
• Grow past a single industry — Bolt went from ride-hailing to scooters, food delivery, groceries, and car-sharing, and keeps going.
• Work with people who scaled a platform to 200 million customers and still operate like a startup.
• Join one of Europe's leading technology companies, backed by world-class investors including Sequoia.

About The Role

New Bets is the team that decides what Bolt does next. We put an idea for a new business in front of real buyers and find out fast whether it deserves to exist. Several of those ideas are B2B — platforms we built to run our own business and could sell to others, plus partnerships in sectors we don't operate in yet. All of them stall at the same question: will an enterprise buyer pay for this? Nobody at Bolt owns that answer today.

That's the job. You take one bet at a time, build the pipeline from nothing, get to the people who make the decision, and come back with a verdict the company can act on. Validate it and a new business line starts. Invalidate it and we stop — worth exactly as much. Come back with the precise reason a deal was lost and we pivot, then win on the second attempt; those reasons are the most valuable thing you collect. Few people in this profession are ever rewarded for shutting something down. Industry changes every three to six months.

One senior person covers unusually broad ground here: you set your own targets, build your own commercial motion, and answer for the verdict rather than for a monthly number. If you want to run a proven playbook, this will frustrate you. If you want to be there at the inception of a business — before the product, the price or the team exist — this is that seat.

Main Tasks And Responsibilities

• Owning demand validation for one B2B bet at a time — your own target list, pipeline, pitch and materials, built from a blank page.
• Running discovery with real decision-makers and producing an evidenced verdict: who buys, who doesn't and why, at what price, and what unlocks a yes.
• Landing the first customers of a new business line — a signed paid pilot or design partner, not a letter of intent.
• Turning rejection reasons and segmentation into product decisions, alongside the bet owners, product and engineering.
• Bringing back the buyer economics — pricing, budget owners, willingness to pay — that a business case can be built on.
• Being the person other New Bets come to when they need a door opened or a negotiation run.

About You

• Either — 6+ years in business development, partnerships or enterprise sales, personally sourcing, negotiating and closing early enterprise or mid-market deals, rather than managing a team that did it for you.
• Or — you founded a B2B startup and ran the commercial side yourself: found the first customers, set the price, closed the deals.
• Either way, you come from IT or SaaS, and you speak the language of the buyers you'll sell to and of the product and engineering people you'll build with.
• You know what a good commercial motion looks like and can build one from nothing — pipeline, pitch, tooling — rather than needing one handed to you.
• You set your own targets, and you'd rather understand a no than win an easy yes — including recommending we kill your own project when the signal says so.
• You communicate excellently in English, have international exposure, and can travel readily across the EU, the UK and the US.

Why You'll Love It Here

• Impact: conceive new verticals at scale — few commercial jobs anywhere let you decide which business a company enters next.
• Never boring: change domain every three to six months and come out with real depth in several industries.
• Startup speed, global infrastructure: great people, and no committee between you and a decision.
• Access: C-level is one message away and regularly at the same table, founder included.
• Upside: a rewarding salary and stock options, so as Bolt succeeds, so do you.
• AI as a habit, not a slogan: we expect you to find the faster way, and we expect no slop.

We're hiring on evidence, not potential. Show us what you've closed, at what price, and what you walked away from — and why. Hybrid office model: at least 12 days in our modern office. The people you'll need most are there.

Everyone is welcome

Bolt is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace where all qualified applicants are considered for employment without regard to race, colour, nationality, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or disability.

We welcome applications from all backgrounds and are happy to make reasonable accommodations throughout our hiring process. If you require any adjustments, please let us know.