VP Operations | Chief of Staff

👋🏻 Hello, we're Laka

You might not have heard of us yet - that's OK, you've found us now - come and find out more about our journey...

Founded in 2017, Laka set out to transform insurance by connecting passionate cyclists to form a collective and protect their bikes for when things go wrong - a better model for insurance was born. For once people come first in insurance by fairly sharing the cost amongst each other. We exist to rewrite the rules of insurance so it’s something people stand with, not against.

Our model: Laka makes sure everything runs smoothly for The Collective - with exceptionally fast claims, splitting the cost fairly, guaranteeing a maximum price and all the other heavy lifting of a regulated insurance business. For that service, the collective pays Laka a fee relative to the claims in a month.

Take a closer look at exactly what this means and how it works here.

What have we been up to since then...?

In a nutshell, we've been very busy! Here are a few of the massive achievements we've had:

🚀 Raised a whopping £22m from amazing investors

🚀 Grown the team to 60 Lakanauts, based across the UK and NL, enabling a choice-based, remote-first way of working

🚀 Launched Laka in a total of 7 countries, essentially helping more people in more places!

🚀 Captured the UK and NL enthusiast cyclist market and expanded into the fast growing area of e-bikes 🚲🔋

🚀 Been awarded 'Best Cycle Insurer' (for the past 6 years in a row - go us! 🥳)

🚀 Opened 3 shiny new offices in London, Bristol & Amsterdam to provide spaces for people to collaborate as they like

🚀 We've also achieved a 5* rating on Google Reviews and Glassdoor - go check us out!

Help us continue to change an outdated industry...

We’re growing fast on our path to make the Laka collective insurance model the industry standard and we’re expanding across segments, products, and territories. We’re looking for innovative, bold and brave minds to help us build the world’s best insurance company.

🤘🏼 The role

You’ll lead our Operational Excellence function with the aim to leave no stone unturned, reviewing, assessing and improving the way we’re set up as a business - you’re the glue that connects our revenue-generating segments (D2C = Riders, B2B2C = Partners as well as Services) whilst building our internal operational backbone.

VP Operations meets Chief of Staff: this role appeals to those seeking some team management / support but is otherwise keen to take ownership of projects and processes, constantly improving the way we operate:

• Working closely with the Co-Founders & senior team - you’ll be at the 💚 of the business, connecting the dots
• Enabling cross-departmental collaboration to ensure we achieve our goals
• Empowered with great autonomy to identify problems, carry out analysis, design solutions and implement them - supported by a team
• Collaborating across the business to solve critical and complex problems
• Leading on internal initiatives to build a stronger operational backbone:
• review and challenge existing processes to remove inefficiencies
• establish best practices across teams to ensure our people work together effectively to deliver key projects
• Laka is becoming increasingly acquisitive - you’ll play a key role in supporting potential future acquisitions - seeing them through to successful integration, working with stakeholders across the business on a range of topics

Requirements

👉🏻 This role will be a great fit if you:

• Have (had) a front-row seat at a rapidly growing, Venture-backed business and experienced first-hand the unique challenges to its processes and structure as the business scales
• Have proven experience in a similar Chief of Staff or Senior Operations role with at least 6-10 years experience
• Are curious, logical and a structured thinker who can break down complex problems and leverage data in all your work
• Like working with different stakeholders daily, prioritising various workstreams effectively
• Have strong numerical / analytical skills and can express your findings in slides and docs, clearly and concisely
• Can communicate effectively, to a wide variety of audiences
• Have an outstanding ability to network and build relationships at various levels in the business
• Are a self-starter and like getting “stuck in” - we’d love to see you take the initiative and seek out problems to be solved

Benefits

🌟 Our perks

What can you expect from working at Laka?

🏠 Remote-first way of working - you choose whether you work from home or our beautiful offices in London, Bristol or Amsterdam (we have no minimum expectation of how many days you come in, although we'd love to see your friendly face!)

📈 Share options - we want you to be rewarded for Laka's success - everyone in the business is granted share options when they join

💰 Company bonus scheme - if the company hits it's targets, you'll get a cash bonus at the end of the year

🌴 Annual leave - 25 days holiday (plus your local bank holidays), plus an additional 3 days at Christmas, with the option to roll over up to 5 days per year

💶 Pension scheme - Laka pays 3% of your base salary into your pension to help you save for the future

💊 Private medical insurance - we’ll give you individual private cover, with the option to add partners & dependants too (at a small cost)

🖥 Home set-up allowance - in addition to letting you choose the kit you want (MacBook or Windows laptop, plus additional equipment like screens, keyboard, etc), we'll also give you a one-off budget of €200 to get anything else you want in order to make your homeworking environment a comfortable place to be

🍽 Weekly lunch on us - €15 every Wednesday to enjoy lunch on Laka - pop out locally with people in the office, or order-in at home, the choice is yours

💃 Company-wide events - we love getting everyone together as much as possible - expect regular events throughout the year, for team building, bonding, and general good old-fashioned fun!

🎳 Monthly socials - as if quarterly company events weren't enough, we also give each office a budget for a monthly social activity (think anything from low-key dinner & drinks through to adventure golf, paddleboarding, bowling, electric darts, trampoline parks and more!)

👚 Laka swag - we'll give you some lovely Laka kit to get you started, including a jumper & t-shirts so you can feel (& look) like part of the family

🚴 Laka credit - for all you cyclists, we'll give you €10 credit per month towards insuring your bike(s) with us - plus give you access to a bunch of cycling industry discounts

🧠 Mental health support - unlimited support via Spill, including one-to-one therapy sessions

🌈 Belonging at Laka

We're committed to building and sustaining a business that promotes diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging - our customer collective is broad and inclusive, and we'd like our own people to be too . We’re fast becoming a global community of people and we believe each person's unique qualities should be celebrated as they are a huge part of what makes Laka a great place to be. We'd love you to bring your authentic self to work every single day, no matter your age, ethnicity, religion, citizenship, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, caring responsibilities, neurodiversity, or anything else that makes you, you. If you’d like to request a reasonable adjustment as part of our application or assessment process, please let us know by emailing support@laka.co.uk .