About MaRS
MaRS Discovery District (@MaRSDD) is a charitable organization and North America’s largest urban innovation hub, dedicated to helping high-growth technology companies succeed. With a focus on climate, health sciences and other emerging technologies, MaRS supports startups tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. Through its world-class facilities, strategic programs and partnerships, MaRS accelerates the adoption of groundbreaking Canadian technology and bolsters a globally competitive innovation ecosystem. MaRS is the place where you can play a meaningful role in the innovation economy.
About the Opportunity
MaRS is hiring a part-time Advisor, Global Growth & Product Strategy (Independent Contractor). We seek a former senior operator (e.g., CEO, CPO, GM, COO) who has scaled a B2B technology company from ~$10M to $100M+ in revenue.
You bring recent, first-hand operating experience connecting product strategy, commercialization, engineering investment and execution. You will help leaders make practical decisions about what to build, where to invest, which markets to enter and how AI can strengthen their products and businesses.
Advisors are engaged as independent contractors and are not employees of MaRS.
Scope of Work
Through individual advisory and group programming, you will help companies:
- Product Strategy and Roadmap
- Help leadership translate business strategy into a focused product roadmap.
- Guide founders on product portfolio choices, including investing, simplifying, or sunsetting features.
- Set priorities based on customer value, revenue impact, differentiation, and strategic goals.
- Balance immediate customer needs with long-term scaling priorities.
- Advise on product-market fit across new segments, verticals, and growth stages.
- Commercialization and Revenue Scale
- Align product decisions with revenue growth, acquisition, retention, and expansion.
- Guide the transition from founder-led sales to scalable commercial models.
- Advise on segmentation, packaging, pricing, and monetization strategy.
- Guide organizational, product, and commercial shifts through revenue stages.
- Drive focus toward repeatable growth systems rather than one-off opportunities.
- International Expansion
- Advise founders on strategic international expansion timing and target markets.
- Assess market viability, customer demand, competition, and operational readiness prior to global entry.
- Guide necessary product and operational adaptations for new geographies.
- Advise on building local teams, partnerships, sales infrastructure, and operations.
- Provide practical experience navigating multi-market organizational complexity.
- Engineering and Technology Priorities
- Align engineering investments with product, commercial, and business priorities.
- Advise on trade-offs between new products, tech debt, platforms, reliability, security, and scale.
- Guide founders in developing scalable product and engineering operating models.
- Guide build-vs-buy, architectural, and resource allocation decisions.
- Help non-technical executives collaborate effectively with product and engineering leaders.
- AI-Enabled Product and Business Decisions
- Identify meaningful AI applications across products, workflows, and operating models.
- Advise on whether AI should enhance existing products, enable new offerings, optimize operations, or drive new business models.
- Prioritize genuine customer value over AI adoption for its own sake.
- Guide decisions on proprietary data, defensibility, AI pricing, and shifting market dynamics.
- Assess AI's impact on product development, organizational design, and business economics.
- Scaling the Operating Model
- Help founders adapt org structures, decision rights, and operating rhythms as companies scale.
- Advise CEOs on building cross-functional executive teams in product, engineering, sales, marketing, and operations.
- Establish accountability, key metrics, and cross-functional planning processes.
- Identify growth bottlenecks and determine needed capabilities, systems, or structures.
- Provide operator expertise during the transition from startup to managed scale-up.
Working With MaRS
Collaborate with MaRS to deliver high-quality advisory services by:
- Assessing company needs to maximize your impact.
- Informing company assessments, growth plans, and program strategy.
- Connecting companies with network executives, customers, partners, and experts.
- Sharing B2B scaling benchmarks, operating practices, and market intelligence.
- Contributing to advisory sessions, peer groups, and workshops.
- Providing insights for MaRS content and corporate initiatives.
- Logging venture interactions in CRM and adhering to program processes.
What You Bring
We are looking for direct operating experience, beyond consulting, investing or advisory work alone:
- Senior executive responsibility in a B2B technology company, with meaningful accountability for strategy and business results.
- A personal track record helping scale a company or significant business unit from approximately $10M to $100M+ in annual revenue.
- Deep experience linking product strategy, commercialization and operating execution.
- Experience shaping product roadmaps and making technology-investment decisions with engineering leaders.
- Experience expanding internationally and evolving teams and operating processes through growth.
- Practical experience with AI-enabled product or business-model decisions.
- Broad P&L responsibility, major product transformations and experience advising founder-led companies are particularly valuable.
How You Work
You quickly identify the issues constraining growth, ask thoughtful questions and help leaders turn complex trade-offs into clear decisions. You combine strategic perspective with practical experience and work effectively across product, engineering, sales and operations.
Engagement Structure
- Advisors are engaged as independent contractors, not employees of MaRS.
- Work is assigned based on venture and program needs, with no minimum or guaranteed number of hours.
- Advisors are expected to operate independently while collaborating closely with the MaRS team.
- Specific activities and deliverables will be mutually agreed upon in advance.
- Advisors are responsible for their own taxes, insurance and business expenses.
#LI-MDD
Skills Required
- Senior executive operating responsibility in a B2B technology company, with meaningful accountability for strategy and business results.
- Personal track record scaling a company or significant business unit from approximately $10M to $100M or more in annual revenue.
- Deep experience linking product strategy, commercialization, and operating execution.
- Experience shaping product roadmaps and making technology investment decisions with engineering leaders.
- Experience expanding internationally and evolving teams and operating processes through growth.
- Practical experience with AI-enabled product or business-model decisions.
- Broad P&L responsibility, major product transformations, and experience advising founder-led companies.
- Ability to identify growth constraints, ask thoughtful questions, make complex trade-offs clear, and work across product, engineering, sales, and operations.
- Ability to operate independently as an independent contractor and collaborate with the MaRS team.
What We Do
MaRS is the world's largest urban innovation hub in Toronto that supports startups in the health, cleantech, fintech, and enterprise sectors. When MaRS opened in 2005 this concept of urban innovation was an untested theory. Today, it’s reshaping cities around the world. MaRS has been at the forefront of a wave of change that extends from Melbourne to Amsterdam and runs through San Francisco, London, Medellín, Los Angeles, Paris and New York. These global cities are now striving to create what we have in Toronto: a dense innovation district that co-locates universities, startups, corporates and investors. In this increasingly competitive landscape, scale matters more than ever – the best talent is attracted to the brightest innovation hotspots.
