Chief of Staff (m/f/d)

About Buena

Buena (backed by GV) makes everything real estate as simple and transparent as buying an ETF. Whether it’s finding, buying, or financing an apartment. We do this by acquiring property managers across Germany and turning them into technology companies. Throughout the past two years we have become Germany’s second-largest property manager with less than 25 full-time team members at our HQ.

About the Chief of Staff role

First of all, forget the title, titles don’t matter at Buena. We’re hiring a Venture Builder to own one of our next revenue verticals from zero.

Property management is our entry point, but every unit we manage opens the door to adjacent businesses, complementing an end-to-end real estate experience for our customers. These verticals are also worth billions: Brokerage when owners sell. Energy and metering services on every building we touch. Insurance. Financing. The list keeps growing.

Your job is to pick one and build it into a real business. You’ll own the P&L, the strategy, the partnerships, and the product.

Responsibilities

• Own the P&L for your Vertical. Revenue, margin, payback. If the number is good, that’s you. If the number is bad, that’s also you.

• Drive the product, don’t request it. Our software runs property management today. You’ll define what needs to exist for your vertical to work, write the spec, work directly with our PMs and engineers, and ship it. If you need a feature, you fill the product manager role until it’s built.

• Roll out across all portcos. This is where the leverage of Buena pays off. One good deal × 60,000+ units. You design the rollout, measure it, and ship the playbook so it works the same way in every portco.

You may be a good fit if you

• You’ve started something before. A company you founded, a product you built and sold, a freelance business you scaled. You know what it means when no one is going to do it for you.

• You think commercially first. Unit economics, margin, payback, deal structure. You don’t need to learn this, you already think this way.

• You won’t be a brokerage or banking expert on day one. You’ll be one in 60 days because you’ll outresearch and outthink everyone: including the people who’ve been in the industry for 20 years.

• You act fast. Reversible decisions don’t get a second meeting. You move, get the information, and adjust.

• You can sell. You’ve personally closed deals, signed partners, or convinced people to give you money.

• You speak native-level German. Most partners, regulators, and customers operate in German, sometimes with heavy accent. Hard requirement.

• You work from our office in Prenzlauer Berg. This is not a remote role. Hard requirement.

Bonus: The instinct of „this is mine, I’ll figure it out“ is what we’re hiring for.

Your first 90 days

Days 1–14: Property management before vertical.

Every vertical at Buena is built on top of property management, so before you build yours, you’ll work in it. You’ll handle tickets, call customers and tenants, onboard new owners, digitalize documents, run cost audits in portcos, and solve whatever shows up that day. This isn’t ceremonial, it’s how you’ll learn the systems, the economics, and the operational reality your vertical depends on.

You’ll meet most of the HQ team in your first week. We’ll have daily check-ins (morning and evening) for the first two weeks to sync on how we each think and work. You’ll also get a first book to read (which we’ll discuss thereafter)

Days 14–30: Start building the vertical.

You start writing your Day 90 plan: the bets, the metrics, and the resources. You visit your first portco in person. We sign you up for the WEG Verwalter at IHK. By Day 30, the plan is final and you’re building.

Days 30–60: Ship the first wins.

Ops weekly with your peers, monthly Portfolio Review where you’ll present your vertical to the rest of the company. Daily check-ins are gone. You’re running.

This is where the first obvious wins land. Not „we’re making progress,“ but revenue or signed partners or a closed pilot that doesn’t need a slide to explain.

Days 60–90: Own it.

By Day 90: you’re a certified WEG Verwalter, all requests and problems related to your vertical flow to you and stop there, and you’ve got first profits on the board. You’ve also got a roadmap for the next 90 days that goes beyond „more of the same.“

We’ll have read three books together by then. We’ll know how each other thinks. The vertical is yours.

Your Benefits

• Up to €500 close-to-office bonus, if you decide to live within 10-20 mins walking distance to our office.

• €110/month lunch budget, €50 fitness subsidy.

• €1,200 yearly education budget.

• Free books: Buena pays for any book you’d like to read.

Why you should apply now

• We’re high-growth with a small, tight-knit team: Within the past 3 years we have become Germany’s second-largest property manager with around 20 full-time employees in the HQ

• We’re meritocratic: Your impact gets rewarded, quickly. Our CEO started here as a Junior Product Manager three years ago, our COO started here as the Chief of Staff two years ago. Our VP Property Management joined as a Junior Integration Manager.

• We’re personal: We work from our office in Prenzlauer Berg and place high value on knowing each other well.

• We care about outcomes: Homeownership rates in Germany are far below Global average. We’re here to enable wealth creation for everyone.