About Dearborn Studio

Dearborn Studio is a Montana-based company creation platform focused on building durable operating

companies in overlooked vertical markets.

We are not a fund, accelerator, incubator, or consulting firm. We research, define, validate, and launch

selected business concepts internally through a disciplined company-creation process.

About the Role

Dearborn Studio is seeking a Concept Validation Manager to own the practical vetting and validation of new business concepts. This role exists to help determine whether internally developed opportunities are real enough to keep advancing. The work includes customer and vendor discovery, market validation, competitive assessment, internal concept development, early prototype or proof-of-concept coordination, outsourced project management, basic operating models, and clear written recommendations. Research and reporting are important parts of the job, but the center of the role is disciplined validation: turning early concepts into evidence-based decisions.

Responsibilities

• Vet and validate selected Dearborn business concepts.

• Define the key assumptions that must be proven or disproven.

• Conduct customer, operator, supplier, vendor, and expert discovery.

• Evaluate market need, buyer behavior, competitive alternatives, pricing logic, and go-to-market

• feasibility.

• Help mature raw concepts into clearer business definitions.

• Coordinate outside contributors such as designers, engineers, developers, manufacturers,

• researchers, and contractors.

• Review outsourced work for quality, usefulness, cost discipline, and alignment with validation goals.

• Maintain concept dashboards, status records, next steps, and decision tracking.

• Recommend whether concepts should advance, hold, change direction, or stop.

• Manage the Concept Team

Ideal Candidate

The right person will be commercially curious, practical, organized, and comfortable working with incomplete information.

You should be able to:

• ask direct questions of customers, vendors, and industry operators;

• synthesize messy information into clear recommendations;

• build simple spreadsheets, assumptions, and operating models;

• understand product, technical, software, design, manufacturing, or prototype work well enough to

• manage scope and progress;

• Dearborn Studio

• manage outside contributors and contractor work;

• move between multiple concepts at once;

• challenge assumptions honestly;

• work in a small, founder-led environment.

Relevant experience may include product management, project management, business operations, market validation, customer discovery, startup operations, new product development, commercial diligence, consulting, manufacturing, consumer products, healthcare services, industrial markets, or other practical operating environments.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant professional experience.

• Strong written communication skills.

• Strong research and synthesis ability.

• Basic financial and commercial modeling ability.

• Experience managing projects, vendors, contractors, or outside contributors.

• High judgment, intellectual honesty, and practical curiosity.

• Comfort operating in early-stage ambiguity.

How to Apply

Please send:

• Your resume.

• A brief note explaining why this role interests you.

• One example of a time you helped evaluate, validate, improve, redirect, or stop a business idea, product, service, or operating initiative.

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Email materials to: hello@dearbornstudio.com
Subject line: Concept Validation Manager - Dearborn Studio