INTERIM CEO (m/w/d)
📍 Berlin (hybrid) | 🕒 Full-time (39h/week) | 💶 Based on EU-Project for first 9M + Equity | 🚀 Start: 1 Novemver 2026 | 🗓 Application Deadline: 30 September 2026 | 🇩🇪🏴 German & English fluency required
About Accelerate Health
Accelerate Health helps founders and CEOs build the clarity, resilience, and energy they need to lead sustainably.
Through our current flagship program VANTAGE, we combine science-based coaching, physiological diagnostics, community, and immersive retreats to help impact-driven leaders thrive in high-pressure environments.
We work at the intersection of leadership, human performance, health, and transformation, and we are building a brand that founders talk about long after the experience ends.
Why This Role Exists
We believe healthy founders build better companies, and we have spent three years proving it rather than asserting it. VANTAGE, our cohort-based leadership and performance program, has taken four cohorts of founders and CEOs of German SMEs through 100 days of measurable change: leadership & health assessments at two points in time, health markers tracked continuously.
How to build and scale this as an EU-funded program, producing measurable outcomes, was the hard question of the last three years.
The hard question of the next three is: What is Accelerate Health when the grant ends?
Our EU funding carries VANTAGE through June 2027. Cohort 5 is the last one it pays for. Beyond that lies a method that works, a small senior team that can deliver it, an expert network, real data, and a business model still to be built. Corporate programs, shorter formats, partnerships, licensing: all to be validated in the upcoming months to put our bets on what to scale.
Our current Managing Director is handing over. We are looking for the person who takes what has been built and makes it a company that funds itself.
Your Areas of Ownership
You take full operational leadership of Accelerate Health, reporting to the shareholders within a governance framework that deliberately gives the Managing Director wide operational latitude. As Managing Director, you carry overall legal, commercial, financial and organisational responsibility for NextGen Entrepreneurship UG, both as a company and as the recipient of our public funding.
1 | Build the business beyond the grant
Own revenue beyond VANTAGE: corporate programs, workshops, masterclasses, shorter formats, partnerships
Run the pipeline yourself including sourcing, pitching, closing until the volume justifies a dedicated commercial hire, then build that function
Define the product and pricing architecture: what Accelerate Health sells, to whom, at what margin, and how our current flagship product VANTAGE relates to the rest of the family
2 | Run the company
Own budget, liquidity and financial planning; monthly reporting to shareholders and quarterly strategy sessions
Own the annual plan, headcount plan and OKRs, agreed jointly with the shareholders each cycle
Make the case for the decisions that need shareholder approval
3 | Statutory responsibility
In practice that means: strategy and OKRs with the shareholders, employer responsibility for the team, company finances and liquidity, corporate and grant compliance, and representing the company externally.
The administrative and compliance side (payroll, filings, audits, grant reporting) sits on an established setup: a tax advisor, a payroll provider, an outgoing Managing Director handing over, and two shareholders who have carried the funding side for three years. The full responsibility catalogue is part of the employment contract, and we will walk you through it before you sign.
Who You Are
Experience
Experience carrying full P&L or general management responsibility in a small organisation (5 to 25 people). Founder, Managing Director, country lead, or a business unit you genuinely owned
A personal closing track record. You have sold complex, high-trust services or programs to companies yourself, not through a team. This is non-negotiable: it is the core of the first year
Financial literacy: budget, liquidity forecast, unit margin
Fluent German and English
Being registered in Germany, willingness to be in Berlin regularly and at our in-person touchpoints, and to travel within Germany
Optional: Grant or public-funding experience, or convincing evidence that you can absorb compliance-heavy reporting fast without letting it eat the business
Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field (e.g. business, economics, marketing, communications, social sciences or similar).
Strongly preferred
Experience taking an organisation through the transition from being externally funded to profitability
Experience in leadership development, executive education, coaching, corporate health or adjacent services
A network among SMEs, corporates, family businesses, accelerators or investors
Mindset
You enjoy ownership, responsibility, and building things from scratch.
You’re motivated by impact and commercial success.
You’re curious about leadership, wellbeing, and human performance.
Who this works for: Someone with a founder mindset who wants the scope of a CEO role and is genuinely willing to get their hands dirty and dive in from day one.
Who this does not work for: Someone who wants an established commercial engine to optimise, or a team large enough to delegate the hard parts to. Neither exists yet.
What We Offer
Full operational leadership of a company with a proven method, real outcome data and a strong expert network
A proven model that is scalable: Our EU-funded pilot has been producing measurable outcomes
A highly engaged team and strategic sparring partners
Berlin, hybrid, remote-first in practice, with real in-person touchpoints
Annual training and development budget, and access to our own program, coaches and expert network. If you want to run your own health protocol, this is the right building
Salary based on our EU-Project for the first 9M plus equity
Learning & Personal Development:
Access to all VANTAGE retreats (multi-day immersive experiences)
Physiological diagnostics (Whoop tracking device & 48h ECG, HeartMath Device)
Personal development budget for individual coaching
Exposure to cutting-edge leadership and performance science
On the contract: this is a fixed-term position within our EU-funded project, currently financed through 30 June 2027, with the following months being financed by current savings. Building additional revenue that outlasts the grant is the central purpose of this role and of our plan to make it permanent.
How to Apply
Submit your CV and answer the following questions in our Typeform:
Describe why this is the ideal next step for you personally
Tell us about a time you made a business less dependent on a single source of revenue or funding. What did you actually do, and what didn't work?
What does taking your own health seriously look like in your week?
Optional: Short video or voice message (max 3 min)
We review applications and interview matching candidates on a rolling basis until 30 September 2026. We aim to get you a decision within two weeks of your first call.
We look forward to meeting you.
Accelerate Health is committed to a team where different backgrounds, bodies and life stages are genuinely welcome. If this role excites you but you do not tick every box, apply anyway and tell us why.